THE STORY – Otto Vidal, 14, disappeared after writing a farewell letter to his classmates. While everyone believes he is dead, Léna, a girl from his high school, spots him one night roaming the streets of the city.
THE CAST – Milo Machado-Graner, Jane Beever, Françoise Lebrun, Maïa Sandoz, Emmanuelle Destremau & Erwan Kepoa Falé
THE TEAM – Félix de Givry (Director/Writer) & Marie-Stéphane Imbert (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 93 Minutes
“Goodbye, cruel world!” It’s a wonderfully hyperbolic and evocative statement, perfect for a teenager who wants to end their life but can’t imagine the consequences, not least the possibility that they might survive. In “Adieu Monde Cruel,” writer-director Félix De Givry crafts a charming little tale of one young man trying to reckon with his own extreme actions, though it ends up too slight for its own ambitions.
“Adieu Monde Cruel” risks alienating its audience with its full-on Virginia Woolf opening. After fleeing some bullies, Otto (Milo Machado-Graner, the young star of “Anatomy of a Fall”) decides to end things once and for all. He mails copies of a letter to all his classmates outlining the bullying he’s suffered over the years, before heading to the river with rocks in his pockets. Though visibly well in his teens now, Machado-Graner still has a childish look that creates tension with this material. He invites our sympathy, and the sight of him walking above a bridge, preparing to make the jump, is deeply sad. It’s almost worse when his head bobs out of the water, and he gasps for air. If the poor moppet was feeling bad about living, dying doesn’t appear to be in his wheelhouse either.
De Givry draws from a variety of influences for his debut as director, though he clearly has a fascination with the psychology of emotional development, whether premature or arrested. He may be best known as the star of Mia Hansen-Løve’s “Eden,” in which he plays a DJ who can’t cope when the realities of adulthood hit him too hard. Last year, he co-wrote Ugo Bienvenu’s animated sci-fi “Arco,” in which its young heroes work against their received wisdom to save the day and each other. In the case of “Adieu Monde Cruel,” the most obvious forebear is “The 400 Blows.” Otto’s leather jacket and ways of sneaking about town are evocative of Antoine Doinel in Truffaut’s classic of the French New Wave. Doinel is a good role model for Otto, as he’ll need that same sense of rebellious moxie when he realizes he can’t go back home, as everyone in town will be convinced he’s already dead. He sneaks into an abandoned building and holes up there for the night. It’s a sad sight, but De Givry doesn’t need to romanticize it. Seeing young Machado-Graner curled up alone does the job.
Naturally, young Otto needn’t go it alone. He’s spotted by classmate Léna (Jane Beever), who sympathizes with Otto’s plight and allows him to stay in a disused room in her mother’s small hotel. A burgeoning romance emerges while the town tries to track down Otto’s body, and Léna tries to keep Otto hidden for as long as possible. Given that no one has really been hurt and that this all takes place in the relatively isolated and unassuming locale of a small town in northern France, “Adieu Monde Cruel” feels comparatively small in stakes. This is both a blessing and a curse; it means no harm to anyone, but leaves very little impact, especially when it borrows from so many other films. The blues of the nighttime exteriors recall Bresson or Leos Carax, while the hotel rooms in which these kids spend their days recall the musty, dated interiors of Claire Denis’ “I Can’t Sleep.” Cinematographer Tara-Jay Bangalter (Son of Daft Punk’s Thomas) captures the ennui of a sleepy country setting, but the influences he and De Givry invoke leave the film with little of its own identity.
The chemistry between the two leads does a lot of heavy lifting for “Adieu Monde Cruel.” Their blossoming romance plays out so sweetly and with visible investment from the young actors that they become the main reason to keep watching. As the town begins to succumb to the grief of losing a young man to its own poor behavior, the net tightens on the young pair, and the plot begins to unravel from its own inevitability. De Givry locates enough darkness in his setup that he can’t bring himself to drag the film into misery any more than he already has. “Adieu Monde Cruel” has a lightness of touch that keeps it very watchable, but scarcely memorable. By the time the ending rolls around, with a final shot evoking another French master (namely Lamorisse’s “The Red Balloon”), “Adieu Monde Cruel” has just about got to 90 minutes on whatever it has to say. It’s ultimately a mere slip of a movie, but a likable one on its own terms.
