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‘Enzo’ Review: Robin Campillo Honors the Late Laurent Cantet With a Film That Embodies the Best of Both Directors
Cannes' Directors' Fortnight kicked off with a unique tag-team effort about a confused teenager who becomes infatuated with a co-worker from Ukraine.
Cantet died in April 2024, too diminished by cancer to direct what turned out to be his final feature — a slight yet insightful drama about an agitated 16-year-old French boy butting his head against the sheltered upbringing that feels more alien with each passing day. The result beautifully melds the two filmmakers’ sensibilities — one straight (Cantet), the other gay (Campillo) — in a blurring of the lines that renders all the more intriguing the ambiguous sexual attraction between 16-year-old Enzo (Eloy Pohu) and Vlad (Maksym Slivinskyi), the 20-something Ukrainian laborer on whom he fixates. Featuring newcomer Eloy Pohu in the title role, the understated film focuses on a teen’s clumsy and occasionally contradictory struggle to define himself apart from the relatively privileged life his doctor father (Pierfrancesco Favino) and nurse mom (Élodie Bouchez) have given him.
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