A debut film about young love portrays teen emotional intensity as fundamentally meaningful rather than laughable. The title draws on a 1902 novella in which an archaeologist becomes fixated on an image and imagines a past life connected to Pompeii and the Vesuvius eruption. The story follows talented French teenagers on a stressful school trip to Pompeii and Naples, led by a teacher pushed near breakdown by frustration and responsibility. A coach driver’s question triggers a revealing monologue about being alone, later clarified as a practical inquiry about leading the group. One disruptive student, Toni, anchors the opening tableau through music, defiance, and missed homework.
"It is a reminder of how fundamentally dishonest and pseudosophisticated it is to laugh dismissively at the emotional dramas of our teen years, and to claim we just want to tell our younger selves to relax and get a sense of humour. In fact, those long-repressed moments of euphoria and humiliation, so dangerous and potentially explosive, will guide us for the rest of our lives, whether or not we acknowledge it."
"Atlan's title is a reference to Wilhelm Jensen's 1902 novella Gradiva, much admired by Sigmund Freud, in which an archaeologist is transfixed by the image he sees in a Roman museum of a woman he names Gradiva, or she who walks, and imagines that she existed in Pompeii in AD79, the time of the great Vesuvius eruption; it is something about transplanting the image to a time of such catastrophe that brings him to an understanding of his own lost love."
"Atlan and her co-writer, Anne Brouillet, imagine a lively class of talented French teenagers (played by newcomers) being led on a stressful but exciting school trip to Pompeii and Naples by their teacher, Mercier, played with superb intelligence and sympathy by Antonia Buresi. She has been brought to the verge of quiet breakdown by emotional frustration and the thankless task of keeping these kids in line."
"There is a funny and heartbreaking moment when she is asked by the Italian coach driver if she is on her own, and embarks on a thoughtful monologue about being without a partner or children before she realises he was asking if she was leading this class with or without a colleague. There is one particular pupil who is winding up Mercier; that is Toni (Colas Quignard), who plays his music annoyingly loudly on the train heading to Italy and has failed to get his homework assignment in, despite endless extensions."
Read at www.theguardian.com
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