This slender, ethereal, ultra-low-budget French film, getting a limited theatrical release before it goes to Mubi, starts off sort of dull and becomes increasingly entrancing. There’s something unresolved and formless about the ending, even within the film’s own avant garde terms of reference, but this second feature for director Damien Manivel may herald better things to come from the film-maker and his director of photography/co-writer/collaborator Isabel Pagliai. In a park in an unnamed city, two teenagers meet for a first date. The tall, gregarious boy (Maxime Bachellerie) has just discovered Sigmund Freud and lives with his single-parent mother, a hypnotherapist. The girl (Naomie Vogt-Roby), quieter and more thoughtful, was once a gymnast until she broke both wrists. They exchange relatively banal chit-chat and make out a bit until he leaves, and she stays on as the sun sets. Text messages displayed on-screen reveal a road bump on the course of true love. The girl wishes she could turn back time, and that’s when it all starts getting seriously freaky, moving into the realm of low-key Apichatpong Weerasethakul-style quotidian surrealism. Sobéré Sessouma is particularly impressive as a park keeper who at first seems kindly if a little officious, but who gradually reveals a more sinister persona.
