VERDICT: With 'Lost Children' Lola Cambourieu and Yann Berlier have created an aching, poignant and keenly observed depiction of a dislocated father-daughter relationship.
In a similar vein as their excellent short, Bachelorette Party, the new film by Lola Cambourieu and Yann Berlier, Lost Children, shows them to be masters of understated but heart-rending drama.
Where their previous short concerned a weekend of affectionate sorority, their new film focuses on a single night in which a father is responsible for his young daughter for the first time. As in their previous work, the scenario is rife with currents of drama that ebb and flow beneath the surface, building to a supremely understated but quietly devastating denouement. Lost Children screens as part of the European Shorts programme in Sarajevo this week, having taken the fiction award at Go Shorts earlier in the year.
Shot in an intimate style that is familiar from their prior work, the film opens with Nathan (Nathan Le Graciet) arriving to collect his infant daughter Anouk (Anouk Berlier Cambourieu) from her mother (co-director, Lola Cambourieu). The exchanges between mother and father are slightly awkward and it revealed that this will be the first time Anouk spends the night with her dad. His plan is to drive her to a local hotel, but it becomes evident that he has no car, no money, or place to take her, so they go on a hazy nocturnal perambulation. Later, the film jumps forward a couple of years, to how their relationship has developed since that night.
Cambourieu and Berlier’s command of the tone and timbre of their film is exquisite managing to finely balance the borderline irresponsibility of Nathan’s actions with his apprehension about doing right by his daughter. The sequence in which he takes her to a local bar to pass the hours, then walks the streetlight-flooded paths with her in his arms is almost dreamlike. The later scenes, in which she is a few years older, and Nathan has a new baby with another woman, are perfectly weighted to bring out the nuance in the almost imperceptible estrangement that occurs in such a situation. It makes for a deeply sad but beautifully calibrated family portrait, one in which the tragedy plays out in miniature instalments and the complexities of parental bonds are laid bare.
Directors, screenplay, editing: Lola Cambourieu, Yann Berlier
Cast: Nathan Le Graciet, Anouk Berlier Cambourieu, Lola Cambourieu, Léa Le Gall
Producers: Ninon Chapuis, Thibault de Gantès, Lucas Le Postec
Sound: Hugo Rossi, Victor Praud
Music: Tourner ma page, Jenifer Romanza, N. Paganini
Production:L’Heure d’été, Réalviscéralisme Films (France) Venue: Sarajevo Film Festival (European Shorts)
In French
29 minutes
