A review for L’amour du monde.
German version here.
It is the wordless scenes that are particularly enchanting in L’amour du monde by Jenna Hasse. When two girls, partially accompanied by a young man, simply drift in the water, sitting next to the excited action, preferring not to be part of it, but happy to keep each other company.
Margaux (Clarisse Moussa) and Juliette (Esin Demircan) don’t need many words from the start, most of all for each other. Their connection is between the words they so rarely make use of. So much is happening around them. The boys at the shelter where Juliette is staying and Margaux is doing a summer internship have a lot to say and a lot to do. The adults, likewise, hardly let a moment pass without words. They lecture, scold, reprimand. Juliette and Margaux meet aside from this. In Joël, a young fisherman, the two find another connected soul. All three are shaped by mothers who have passed away or disappeared and by fathers who are remarkably absent. All three seem lost in their world. Only when they are together, things get a little easier.
Jenna Hasse captures the endless free time in summer that characterizes the summer vacations of many children and young people. Weeks at a time without school in the endless heat, without much to do. Although it’s a cold February day and I’m sitting in the Zoopalast, I feel transported to Lake Geneva, where the film is set. Summer is a time that offers most people a lot of freedom. But the three protagonists feel trapped in their everyday lives, wanting to get far away.
The relationship that Margaux and Juliette build is fundamental for both of them to make their own way. Margaux is the companion Juliette needs in her father’s absence. And Juliette restores to Margaux a lightness she seems not to have felt in a long time.
L’amour du monde is a summer film, yet it brings so much more to the table than just a touch of warmth. With vivid shots by Valentina Provini and the heartfelt music by Cedric Blaser, the result is a coherent film that takes you to Lake Geneva and invites you on a journey with three lost souls who are making their own way in life.
