Interpreters: Laetitia Casta, Louis Garrel, Joseph Engel. The filmography of Louis Garrel expands with a concise, bold statement about love, responsibility, and the planetary future. This is the third chapter in a trilogy centered on a steady character named Abel, a performer who threads through different narratives and emotional landscapes. In the first two entries, Abel moved through stories about desire, loyalty, and the tension between personal longing and social duty. The new feature arrives as a compact, self-assured work that tests the limits of cinema about environment and generational change while keeping faith with the intimate, often comic, tone that characterizes Garrel’s collaboration with his partner Laetitia Casta. [Citation: Canadian/US reception of Garrel’s trilogy, film critic consensus]
Premiere: Friday, April 22, 2022. The release marks a deliberate shift in Garrel’s approach. The film’s running time stretches to a lean 67 minutes, making it unusually brief by feature standards while delivering a complete, self-contained portrait. Its brevity is not a limitation but a deliberate choice that heightens focus on character and idea. The result is a work that feels both intimate and audacious, a small vessel carrying a bold message about how people relate to one another and to the world around them. [Citation: premiere context and reception notes]
★★★★. The score is a compact, concentrated nod to Garrel’s evolving sensibility. He continues to inhabit a single character across three distinct seas of storytelling, yet the tonal shift here is unmistakable. The movie invites a patient viewer to notice the way light, sound, and gesture carry as much weight as dialogue. The coincidence of a short form with a sweeping aim gives the film a unique cadence that lingers after the screen goes dark. [Citation: critical star rating interpretations]
In this third installment, the central idea remains a personal thread that meets a broader social question. Garrel uses a simple premise to illuminate a complicated frame: the son of a couple, a child who embodies both innocence and a hunger for a future beyond adult pragmatism, chooses to part with his most cherished possessions. The motive is not selfish but a symbolic act aimed at funding an environmental expedition to Africa. The premise could feel naïve if not handled with care, yet Garrel crafts it with a sly intelligence. The camera lingers on small, telling details, turning the everyday into a metaphor for immediate, real concerns about the planet. [Citation: thematic analysis]
The director navigates a delicate balance between optimism and critique. The couple at the story’s center looks outward as much as inward, contemplating the gap between generations and between adult skepticism and youthful idealism. The film treats environmental commitment not as a grand manifesto but as a lived, evolving conversation. The visual language suggests a world where images matter almost as much as words, where a moment of stillness can carry a charge of urgency. The result is a work that feels both pristine and palpably urgent, a rare blend of entertainment and reflection. [Citation: visual storytelling notes]
The narrative voice is careful not to oversimplify. It acknowledges that adults often treat grand projects as a kind of joke, yet it places faith in the unfiltered honesty of a child’s impulse. The son’s decision to exchange his prized items becomes a catalyst for a broader meditation on responsibility and hope. The film’s texture is gentle yet persistent, with humor that lands in the right places even as it invites a sober reckoning with environmental stakes. The tone can be pleasantly tragicomic, a blend that the film uses to soften sharp ethical questions without diluting their importance. [Citation: tonal analysis]
Garrel’s straightforward setup invites audiences to consider not just the environmental project itself but the manner in which adults and children interpret risk, sacrifice, and the meaning of progress. The elder figures listen, wonder, and sometimes resist, but the film never allows critique to become cynicism. Instead it offers a vision of shared responsibility and a sense that even small, personal actions can ripple outward. The concise form gives room for a few striking images that work as modern parables, suggesting that the future is built not by grand speeches but by everyday commitments that endure. [Citation: narrative resilience commentary]