Pompeii : there is No love and too much trouble ** 1/2

The story takes place in a place and at a time unknown, a place arid evokes the american wilderness and the western twilight.

July 23, 2020

Updated 24 July 2020 to 4h03

Pompeii : there is No love and too much trouble ** 1/2

Eric Moreault

The Sun

CRITICAL / Pompeii has beautiful count on a selection at the recent Berlinale in the section Generation 14+, it would not appear here without Aliocha Schneider featured. The charismatic Quebec delivers a good performance, but it does not save the film from its doldrums.

The proposal of Anna Falguères and John Shank, of which this is the first and the second presence to the making of a feature film, respectively, does not lack boldness. The story of the drama unfolds in a place and at a time undetermined — even though the cars are old and that there is no cellular, which gives a clue.

This place arid evokes the american wilderness and the western twilight, while the characters speak French. This group of young people, left to themselves, lives there, together as a pack around Toxou (Vincent Rottiers).

The head of the gang took Victor (Aliocha Schneider) and his little brother Jimmy (Augustus Wilhelm) under his wing. The latter is found to three weeks to become a man — understanding sex for the first time, in a well-defined framework.

In the meantime, the three struggle to fix a car in a gas station abandoned and digging around in search of relics that will allow them to pay their debt to an enigmatic tour guide. With his draws to the James Dean, often bare-chested, Victor walks there on a bike with no helmet.

Until the arrival of Billie (Garance Marillier), a young girl androgynous and rebel who refuses to bend to the rules of this micro-society and shakes up the established order. They are going to crack one to the other, to the despair Toxou, who does not understand this desire for emancipation and freedom.

Pompéi : Pas d’amour et trop d’ennui ** 1/2

Victor (Aliocha Schneider) and Billie (Garance Marillier) will crack the one for the other.

Photo Metropole Films

The film lodge somewhere between Paris, Texas from wim Wenders and Jeanne Bruno Dumont in his search for minimalism and a framework that stands out. In this scene, crushed by the scorching sun, everything goes in slow motion, adding a boredom that eventually contaminate the viewer with a lot of good will.

The economy of dialogue and the omnipresence of the noise of the wind also contribute to this desire for refinement, without that it exudes, however, something really meaning. We rest to admire the magnificent cinematography of Florian Berutti and the good control of the filmmakers of the art of the ellipsis it adds a dose of magical realism.

The conclusion, on which plane a thriller, has just marked the end of a world. In this universe frozen, nothing will be as before. But their fate leaves us completely indifferent.