La Gradiva

May we present: the best and most important debut film of the year! And, quite incidentally, the birth of a sparkling directing talent! But first things first: a French class of school-leavers travels to Naples. In the shadow of Vesuvius lurk first love, wounded pride and the cruel game of winning recognition. Marine Atlan turns this seemingly harmless school trip into a modern Grand Tour through the abysses of growing up. Toni and James, friends and provocateurs, rule the social game of the group. And Suzanne, at first the shy outsider, watches them from a distance. But among the petrified bodies of Pompeii, the asserted certainties of the hormone-driven teenagers are thoroughly shaken.

Inspired by Wilhelm Jensen’s novella “Gradiva”, which preoccupied Sigmund Freud, Atlan makes Naples the stage of the unconscious: a city between Catholic piety, erotic promise and omnipresent catastrophe. Her tactile, restless camera follows the gazes and gestures of the young people until the boundaries between fantasy and the present blur. Yet behind the naive games of love lurks a precise analysis of class: origin decides who may dream of which future. That is what makes “La Gradiva” so unique. The film tells of a youth that wants to be free and yet is long since trapped in the stories of its parents. Raw, powerful, unforgettable, a cinema that recalls the early, free films of Maurice Pialat and André Téchiné.