The tragic context behind this film is compounded further by the fact that it is truly wonderful. Veteran French director and one-time Palme d’Or-winner Laurent Cantet passed away during production, and the reins were taken over by his friend and colleague Robin Campillo.
Just speculating here, but had Cantet lived to complete the film, and delivered something vaguely similar to what we have here, then it would have stood as one of his finest cinematic achievements, particularly when it comes to his overarching project of exploring the lives of young people in that liminal space between education and work. In its crisp, clean clarity and subtle handling of complex emotions and relationships, Campillo has taken the baton and made the film that Cantet would’ve wanted.
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For most of Enzo, its title character (played with almost Bressonian opaqueness by Eloy Pohu) remains something of an enigma. His well-to-do parents (Pierfrancesco Favino and Élodie Bouchez) are set up in a luxury villa with a money-can’t-buy ocean view, and Enzo should be following in the footsteps of his older brother Victor to university and beyond. Except for reasons that no-one can fathom, Enzo wants nothing more than to be an honest-to-goodness brickie, hang out on work sites and getting giant blisters on his hands from the physical graft.
Initially, the film teases itself as something of a class satire, asking whether it’s possible for an entitled, middle-class lad to relinquish his economic and social status and adopt an authentically working class existence. His father is mortified, and Favino has a couple of superb scenes in which he reflects on his own deficiencies as a father when it comes to Enzo’s intractable stance. The film threatens at points to skew towards predominantly male concerns and the bond between father and son, yet it’s Bouchez as the mother who is able to softly draw out Enzo’s neurosis with her more maternal approach.
What’s more galling to the parents is that Enzo doesn’t seem to be much good as a builder, fumbling simple tasks and humiliating the boss in front of clients. He is, however, a great artist with massive potential, but has no interest in pursuing that talent further. So the question of why Enzo wants this life for himself tantalisingly hangs over much of the film’s first half, and is tenderly revealed in its second.
It would spoil the film to say what exactly is fuelling Enzo’s stolid determination, yet the story shifts into a higher, more heartbreaking gear as it goes on to explore emotions of the more romantic hue. In the end, Enzo subtly reframes itself as a love story, though one that is interested in looking at how erotic attraction can exert an intoxicating influence on our practical life choices. Enzo’s antagonistic demeanour, it transpires, is born from a place of innocence and lack of experience.
The film is shot in a way which doesn’t objectify the characters or their class, and there’s no musical score used to unduly guide our emotions. As things draw to a close and Enzo starts to make more decisions with his heart than with his head, the film doesn’t exploit tragedy, but instead takes the characters’ winding and surprising paths in its gentle, supremely affecting stride. And the final scene absolutely wrecked me.
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