Dir/Wri: Robin Campillo Laurent Cantet | Cast: Eloy Pohu, Maksym Slivinskyi, Élodie Bouchez, Pierfrancesco Favino | France 102’
This compulsive rites of passage drama follows Enzo, 16, who is not much of a worker but a lazy lout who is often late on site for his apprenticeship as a bricklayer. One day his boss Mr Corelli finally gives up and drives Enzo back to his parents’ home: A swanky villa in the Var countryside (just east of Marseilles) where Enzo insists on a future as a bricky despite his family’s concerns about his unsuitability for the job.
The film was intended to be directed by Palme d’Or winner Laurent Cantet (The Class), but following his unexpected death in April 2024 his good friend and co-screenwriter Robin Campillo (Red Island) stepped in to direct the feature. The result has the best of both filmmakers’ interests and influences, intimately telling the story of a young lad who defies his wealthy family’s expectations.
Enzo, played by Eloy Pohl in his debut, is an unlikeable gruff and confused character and the reason for this comes to light in the film’s final reveal. To be begin with we’re unsure why we are supposed to sympathise with the boy when we feel more empathy for his father (Favino) and mother (Bouchez), although they clearly spoil him rotten by promising holidays and treats. and gradually our sympathy shifts towards Enzo and his tentative sexual awakening although (although there’s no ‘sex’).
Here Campillo’s narrative also touches on the culture of some rich families nowadays who kill their kids with kindness giving them no hunger to strive or make it in the real world. But the teen perseveres and continues to go against them as he claims to detest his bourgeois start in life. One example is Enzo’s decision to take a lucrative job for cash with Vlad rather than joining his father and brother on a pre-booked diving expedition, and that causes more bad feeling.
Back on the building site Enzo’s mates and one in particular, Vlad, a Ukrainian labourer, tease him about his parents’ fancy villa in the rich part of town asking to visit. And it’s here that we get a whiff of fear that echoes the undercurrent of Campillo’s 2013 thriller Eastern Boys but this theme doesn’t follow through. Instead the film goes in another direction exploring how the mixed-up teen continues to defy his wealthy family’s expectations while increasingly coming under the influence of Vlad, as tensions simmer and pressures weigh on Enzo’s future and dreams. The ending is slightly underwhelming although the journey is more captivating and enjoyable with a cast that really pulls its weight especially the enigmatic Vlad
From the producer of Anatomy of a Fall, ENZO promises to be one of the highlights of this year’s Cannes Film festival. @MeredithTaylor
DIRECTORS FORTNIGHT | CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2025