The Kids Are Not All Right at Cannes

La Gradiva won the Grand Prix in Critics’ Week at the Cannes Film Festival. The film centers on unruly French high-school seniors during a five-day class trip to Naples and Pompeii. Warm weather and striking scenery temporarily ease college-admissions anxieties while the students confront deeper questions about who they are. The story functions as a travel saga and a coming-of-age drama. The young characters are individually drawn yet collectively trapped in multiple identity crises. Toni, one of the students, seeks self-discovery while projecting vulnerability and bluster. He claims Italian roots through family lore but lacks confidence in his new surroundings, behaving disruptively and struggling academically.

"“La Gradiva,” an exceptional début feature from the French director Marine Atlan, won the Grand Prix in Critics' Week, an independently run program for first and second films that runs parallel to the official selection. Great things do, in fact, happen to great films, although Atlan's movie was arguably still ill-served. I've heard more than one colleague suggest that it warranted a berth in the main competition, where it would have had a shot at winning the Palme d'Or, the festival's highest honor."

"“La Gradiva” follows a group of unruly French high-school seniors on a five-day class trip to Naples and Pompeii, where the weather is warm and the scenery gorgeous enough to keep college-admissions anxieties at bay. It's a travel saga, a coming-of-age drama, and a movie of precisely drawn, superbly individuated young characters who are nonetheless locked in myriad crises of identity, flailing about for a deeper understanding of who they are."

"None is more bent on self-discovery than Toni (Colas Quignard), who comes at us in a charismatic blur of vulnerability and bluster. He boasts to his friends of his Italian roots-his mother, per family lore, is the love child of a lowly Neapolitan servant girl and her wealthy employer-but, having never visited Italy until now, seems less than confident in his new surroundings. Toni is goofy, disruptive, and behind on his schoolwork, a perpetual thorn in the side of his long-suffering Latin teacher,"

Read at The New Yorker