The eagerly-awaited second film from writer/director Alix Delaporte (Angèle et Tony) is a profoundly affecting drama about a young boy determined to change the course of his future. Soccer mad 14-year-old Victor (extraordinary newcomer Romain Paul) lives in a community of trailers and huts on the seaside with his single mother Nadia (Clotilde Hesme). One day after practice Nadia announces she’d like him to go live with her parents. Victor decides instead to seek out his long-absent father, the famous conductor Samuel Rovinski (Grégory Gadebois). Samuel has recently arrived to rehearse Mahler’s Sixth Symphony with the local orchestra, and is completely unaware of Victor’s existence. His initial hostility soon turns to an awkward kind of tenderness, and ? possibly ? love. Intimate and emotionally satisfying, Delaporte’s film is a poetic, neo-realist jewel. Hesme and Gadebois deliver wonderful, nuanced performances, but it’s Paul who, appearing in almost every frame, completely steals the show. His mesmerising breakout performance was the deserving winner of the Marcello Mastroianni prize for Best Young Actor at the Venice Film Festival.
