Enzo
A sensitive, well-acted coming-of-age drama is born of an extraordinary collaboration between two French filmmakers.
Image courtesy of Curzon Film Distributors.
by MANSEL STIMPSON
The history of how Enzo reached the screen is an unusual one since it involves a director who died and another who in taking over the project became the man who filmed it. It is a situation which carries echoes of what occurred when Steven Spielberg made A.I. Artificial Intelligence in 2001. That work was for many years a venture developed by Stanley Kubrick but he eventually decided that the material would be better suited to Spielberg who, following Kubrick's death, went ahead with it in his own way. But in the case of Enzo a direct collaboration between the two filmmakers was involved. Indeed, Enzo represented the sixth feature set up by Laurent Cantet on which Robin Campillo, a close friend for forty years, had worked with him on the screenplay. When writing Enzo it was already apparent that Cantet’s health might prevent him from actually directing it and Campillo was so involved in the preparation of the film that it was understood between them that Campillo, who had of course become a noted director himself, would make Enzo if Cantet could not. In the event Cantet died of cancer on 25th April 2024 aged sixty-three and all of the filming was done by Campillo. Consequently, the credits for the film take a most unusual and rather touching form and the wording in question illustrates how on occasion the French language takes on an eloquence that is lacking in an English translation: ‘Un film de Laurent Cantet. Réalisé par Robin Campillo’. Even the pause between the two statements adds to its effectiveness.
The film’s titular character is a 16-year-old (Eloy Pohu) who, turning his back on school, has chosen to become apprentice to a mason named Corelli (Philippe Petit). That Enzo should take on work as a bricklayer surprises his parents, Paolo (Pierfrancesco Favino) and Marion (Élodie Bouchez) since it seems so inappropriate. Their upper-class house on the Côte d’Azur, one with a pool of its own, is evidence that they are well-to-do and their older son, Victor (Nathan Japy), is academically minded and has been studying to get into a university in Paris. Paolo and Marion are good, caring parents but he is a teacher and she an engineer and, while Victor is acting as they would expect a son of theirs to do, Enzo in choosing to be a dropout is behaving in a way that they cannot understand.
For much of its length, Enzo comes across as a deliberately understated but wholly credible portrait of those contemporary youths who feel that they do not fit in and are trying to find their way while at the same time dismaying their parents in consequence. What the film does is to set up a tone in which without melodrama and through subtle details we are made to understand why Enzo is so disaffected. He sees his parents’ way of life as materialistic in that they have achieved wealth but show signs of not having found true satisfaction in their work. Furthermore, if there is unease about the class to which he belongs, Enzo is also aware that he lives in a world with a very uncertain future. He tells his parents that working on a construction site could involve him in making buildings that will outlast their own lives including his. That he has skills in drawing may point to the possibility of an artistic career, but he lacks confidence in that respect and, while not being a macho type, he is also confronted by the fact that some young Frenchman seeing it as the right thing to do are choosing to fight on behalf of Ukraine.
Questions around responses to that war arise naturally because two of his fellow workers employed by Corelli are Ukrainian and it is they who befriend Enzo. One of them, Miroslav (Vladislav Holyk) has had army experience at fourteen and has subsequently been in Mali in the foreign legion and is now coming to the conclusion that it is his duty to return to his own country. The other is now in his mid-twenties. This is Vlad (Maksym Slivinskyi), who had come abroad to prosper and likes to think of himself as being at home in France. Consequently, he is not planning to go back and Enzo admires the way in which Vlad is living on his own terms. But, if the boy looks up to him, the rapport that he experiences leads on to something else. We see how Enzo brings a girl home – Amina played by Malou Khebizi – and when they are alone in his parents’ house she seems ready to become intimate with him. But, while he is not wholly unresponsive, he chooses for whatever reason not to seize his chance. Instead, we subsequently find that, on staying overnight with Vlad, he has a desire to reach out and to touch him, something that Vlad immediately discourages.
Because this is a study of someone so unsure of his identity and what he wants of life, Eloy Pohu’s portrayal of Enzo is inevitably enigmatic and unformed but credible with it. In contrast, Favino and Bouchez as the parents – he prone to stir things up, she more subtle in approaching Enzo but both well-meaning – emerge persuasively as clear individual characters and the two Ukrainians are admirably played by Slivinskyi and Holyk. The high-level of the acting helps the viewer to feel concerned as the film unfolds despite its quiet tone. But, just when Enzo looks set to be an effective studied look at the insecurities that many youths experience today, the film changes character in a way that for me weakens it.
In the last third of the film two incidents occur (one involving a toy gun which is mistaken for a real one) and both of them suddenly introduce a touch of melodrama into a film which has avoided any previous hint of it. But even more significant is the direction that Enzo takes in its late stages. As it happens, Campillo is gay but Cantet was not and, in an interview with Campillo in which he discussed working on this film with Cantet, he has declared that they did not see Enzo as a coming out story. Nevertheless, ultimately the film seems to take on that theme. Of course some uncertainty about sexuality including the possibility of being bisexual can be part and parcel of what is experienced by an adolescent like Enzo when trying to come to terms with finding himself. Here, however, I felt that that element was allowed to take over and given a prominence that undermines the general portrait of how unstable and difficult it can be for those approaching adulthood today. Enzo is a sensitive, well-acted film and as such is in keeping with Cantet's work generally, but I am not convinced that it keeps faith with the more widely relevant study that the film promises to deliver for over half of its length.
Cast: Eloy Pohu, Élodie Bouchez, Pierfrancesco Favino, Maksym Slivinskyi, Vladislav Holyk, Nathan Japy, Malou Khebizi, Philippe Petit, Charline Paul, Mounir Margoum, Samir Sadoun, Fanny Roger.
Dir Robin Campillo, Pro Marie-Ange Luciani, Screenplay Laurent Cantet, Robin Campillo and Gilles Marchand, Ph Jeanne Lapoirie, Pro Des Mélissa Ponturo, Ed Robin Campillo, Costumes Isabelle Pannetier.
Les Films de Pierre/Lucky Red/Page 114/Les Films du Fleuve/France 3 Cinéma/Ami Paris/Orange/BE TV/ Proximus/RTBF-Curzon Film Distributors.
103 mins. France/Italy/Belgium. 2025. UK Rel: 5 June 2026. Cert. 15.
