Cinematographer turned director Marine Atlan delivers a beautiful debut film about young love, superbly acted and directed. La Gradiva reminds us how fundamentally dishonest and pseudosophisticated it is to dismiss the emotional dramas of our teenage years. Those long-repressed moments of euphoria and humiliation, so dangerous and potentially explosive, guide us for the rest of our lives, whether or not we acknowledge them.
A Freudian Inspiration
Atlan's title references Wilhelm Jensen's 1902 novella Gradiva, admired by Sigmund Freud. In the story, an archaeologist is transfixed by the image of a woman he names Gradiva, or 'she who walks,' imagining she existed in Pompeii during the eruption of Vesuvius in AD79. This transplantation of an image to a time of catastrophe brings him to understand his own lost love.
The School Trip to Pompeii
Atlan and her co-writer Anne Brouillet imagine a lively class of talented French teenagers, played by newcomers, led on a stressful but exciting school trip to Pompeii and Naples by their teacher, Mercier. Antonia Buresi portrays Mercier with superb intelligence and sympathy. She has been brought to the verge of quiet breakdown by emotional frustration and the thankless task of keeping the kids in line. A funny and heartbreaking moment occurs when the Italian coach driver asks if she is 'on her own,' and she embarks on a thoughtful monologue about being without a partner or children before realizing he was asking if she was leading the class alone.
One particular pupil, Toni (Colas Quignard), winds up Mercier by playing his music loudly on the train and failing to submit his homework despite extensions. Atlan places Toni at the centre of the film's opening tableau on the train, in a mysterious nexus of sexual tension. Toni secretly stares into a couchette where his handsome friend James (Mitia Capellier-Audat) and Angela (Hadya Fofana) have just had sex. Later, James casually reveals it meant nothing to him.
Watching Toni from the corridor is Suzanne (Suzanne Gerin), a smart, disaffected girl fascinated by Toni and James, who feels herself the least attractive of the class. She reads Agatha Christie's The Body in the Library and listens with angry lack of empathy to Angela's complaints about James ignoring her texts. 'Some women have to be unfuckable for others to be fuckable,' she says. Atlan creates a vivid dream sequence for Suzanne in which she appears as Gradiva in Pompeii and has sex with Angela.
Toni's Personal Quest
Toni believes his own problems and backstory are the most important. His mother told him his grandmother was a maid in a grand castle in Pompeii, having a tragic love affair with the aristocratic master, and had to leave when the 1980 earthquake reduced the castle to rubble. This forbidden love caused his grandmother to become pregnant, and the earthquake, analogous to the Vesuvius eruption, explained her departure to France. Toni gets high in Pompeii and hooks up with guys he meets online, but his main mission is to discover the truth about his noble lineage.
Teaching Scenes and Student Discussions
Teaching scenes in films always fascinate, and these are tremendous. Mercier patiently, sometimes angrily, tries to get students to appreciate the complexity, nuance, eroticism, and social commentary in the frescoes and artwork. A nerdy student, Jean-Eudes (Mathéo De Carlo), thrills Mercier and irritates the class with his brilliant exegesis of the imagery. Mercier brings commitment to an alfresco geological class about volcanoes. The pupils' evening discussions on politics, racism, and sexism also show sinew and interest, with Mercier often listening tolerantly.
Suzanne's Transformation
Atlan shows Suzanne's sense of self-worth restored not by sudden luck in love but through events that reveal her in a not-so-flattering light. She successfully humiliates James with a nasty prank, does well in college admissions, and becomes an intimate witness to Toni's disillusion. Suzanne has a vivid sense that she is one of life's winners after all. This shifting status is part of the mysterious darkness engulfing the story, which is overwhelmingly sad and sombre. La Gradiva screened at the Cannes film festival.
