There’s comfort on familiar terrain. The coming-of-age story has been a mainstay in storytelling across all media for as long as stories have been told; the queer coming-of-age story, less so. But where other narratives and styles may be transformed, sometimes provocatively so, by the addition of a queer angle, the coming-of-age narrative befits LGBTQIA+ topics much more comfortably. And, in 2025, the kid (in the right environment) coming to a realization about their sexuality, exploring it, learning how to live within their new perception of themselves, is scarcely any different from the kid experiencing the same things about any other newfound aspect of their identity.
And so Robin Campillo’s Enzo treads extremely familiar terrain, following a 16-year-old boy over a summer where he explores, seemingly for the first time, the queer aspect of his identity. Enzo (Eloy Pohu) is working on a construction site, a vocational choice that’s surprised his wealthy parents (Élodie Bouchez and Pierfrancesco Favino), despite their acceptance of his unsuitability for traditional education. Their son is sensitive, artistic, unused to manual labour; he’s arguably equally unsuitable for it, though he persists, despite the disapproval of his boss. What keeps him on the site? It may be the company — Enzo tentatively makes friends with a pair of older Ukrainian men, Miroslav (Vladislav Holyk) and Vlad (Maksym Slivinskyi), the latter of whom displays a sensitivity toward Enzo that ignites a more profound attraction in him than the merely platonic.
But that attraction is apparently only one-sided, leaving Enzo adrift, harbouring a passion he’s neither known before nor is able to express in full. Neither is Campillo, nor writer Laurent Cantet, whose work here is the last he completed before his death in 2024. Enzo’s general withdrawal, the distance he keeps from all around him until his hormones erupt in sudden, sporadic bouts of reckless behavior, is mirrored too closely in Campillo’s direction. Classy, placid, manicured medium shots capture scenes of tepid emotion, following banal narrative lines to conclusions so straightforwardly you can almost see from the outset. Pohu is reserved, even in expressing Enzo’s torment, so one never gets the sense of irrepressible fervour required from the character to overcome the conventionality of the plot. There’s precious little tension, intensity, or ingenuity, and so, despite the sincerity, the movie’s terrain feels far too calm, far too familiar.
Both Campillo and Cantet are capable of markedly better work than this, though it shows through in occasional details here. Bouchez and Favino give strong, astute, unshowy performances, succinctly and unpretentiously communicating a depth of feeling that’s otherwise in short supply. The final scene has a quiet profundity that’s a little surprising, not least in the wake of the mundanity that’s preceded it, and it’s emotionally incisive in a way that the rest of the movie has failed to emulate. Besides, the movie is never outright bad — it’s handsome, reliable, and genuine. It’s just also far too comfortable, not least for its inclusion in a genre of storytelling that’s been around for so long.
Published as part of LFF 2025 — Dispatch 1.
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