La Gradiva

Simmering desires erupt among a group of teens visiting the ruins of Pompeii in this year's Bright Horizons award winner.

Passionate but put-upon teacher Madame Mercier shepherds twenty of her students from Paris to Naples, where they visit the sites devastated by Mount Vesuvius two millennia prior. Being in such close quarters for an extended period heightens the high schoolers’ extant dynamics. Boisterous Toni yearns for his best friend James, who canoodles with his classmate Angela, herself vexed by masculine insensitivity. Meanwhile, ostracised star pupil Suzanne observes and fantasises about how she might become embroiled. Surrounded by scenes of calamity, the teenagers confront the crises within themselves.

Inspired by Wilhelm Jensen’s novella Gradiva: A Pompeiian Fancy and Sigmund Freud’s analysis of it, César-nominated cinematographer Marine Atlan’s searing full-length debut is a rare work that dramatises the turmoil of adolescence without recycling tired tropes about caprice or rebellion. Juxtaposing the transitory nature of youth with the timelessness of Pompeii’s ruins, Atlan also captures the human penchant for concealing emotions and their inevitable eruption when surface and substance no longer coincide. Glorious, sun-dappled cinematography enriches the film’s illuminating studies of each character, while the naturalistic performances of its breakout cast bring authenticity and verve to this visionary coming-of-age tale.

La Gradiva received the Bright Horizons award at the Melbourne International Film Festival this year.