Dir: Pierre Le Gall | Cast: Alexis Manenti, Julian Swiezewski | France, Poland 90′
Another film about close encounters on the motorways of Europe Flesh and Fuel immediately brings to mind the recent roadie En El Camino but doesn’t quite evoke the same seething sense of danger as the Mexican thriller that multiple awards last year on the festival circuit.
Pierre Le Gall’s first feature could also easily be called The Loneliness of the Long Distance Truck Driver but that would be diministing Tony Richardson’s 1962 black and white cult classic. This Cannes Critics’ Week entry relies on visual atmosphere to explore homosexuality, arguably out of availability or necessity rather than instinct. It sees its protagonist reach out for warmth in the hard-edged world of metal, tarmac and petrol fumes.
Directed with cool, observational detachment by the French writer, now director, this is a spare affair, stripped down narratively and visually, aspiring to say something expansive about connection, masculinity, and the fragile negotiations of identity for a lonesome trucker driver navigating the motorways of Europe.
Alexis Manenti is Etienne, a solitary long-haul driver drifting across European highways, whose chance encounter with Bartosz, a younger Polish mechanic, becomes the connection around which the story turns. At its best, Flesh and Fuel thrives in ambiguity. The relationship between Etienne and Bartosz begins as a chance aquaintance then develops into companionship, desire, projection, and transaction. This enigmatic state is clearly intentional, and at times deeply effective. Their interactions are sparse, often awkward, charged more by silence than conversation. So we are left to read meaning into gestures and glances, as the camera hovers over hands and expressions, rather than all-body action. However, that same restraint can also feel hollow. There are moments where the emotional stakes seem underdeveloped, not because they are subtle, but because they are withheld to the point of opacity.
Flesh and Fuel inhabits industrial landscapes—endless roads, dimly-lit truck stops and petrol stations, grease-stained garages. These settings mirror Etienne’s internal emptiness, The recurring imagery of fuel—both literal and metaphorical—suggests a life sustained by routine and necessity rather than passion or purpose. But the story never really develops into anything meaningful.
Alexis Manenti is convincing as Etienne and carries much of the film’s weight with a stoic, impassive almost submissive presence: waiting to be approached and accepted, rather that taking control in the extended sex scenes where the camera lingers suggestively, the action telegraphed by grunting sounds. These encounters bear witness to a quiet desperation beneath his surface, fleeting and ephemeral rather than full-blooded. Bartosz, in contrast, brings a flicker of unpredictability, but his character feels underwritten; he is more a catalyst for Etienne’s introspection than a person in his own right. And this suggests his physical relationship with Bartosz may well be a figment of his imagination, a reverie rather than a reality.
Where Flesh and Fuel succeeds is with its rough and ready social realism. Contrasting with some rowdy scenes of rousing camaraderie between the trucking community, there’s a persistent sense of loneliness that permeates Etienne’s world, a kind of existential drift that feels authentic to the transient habitat it depicts. But atmosphere alone cannot sustain the film’s ambitions. Its minimalism, while stylistically coherent, sometimes borders on evasive—dodging deeper emotional or psychological excavation.
Flesh and Fuel is thoughtful but frustrating, intimate yet distant. There’s something compelling in its restraint, but also something incomplete—as if the film, much like its protagonist, is in a perpetual quandary about his emotional status, his sexual orientation. But also perpetually in transit, never quite arriving at a real destination.
SEMAINE DE LA CRITIQUE | CANNES 2026