Review by Beatrice On 31-May-2023
"The perfection of means and the confusion of ends seems to characterize our era."
Julia is a rebellious, wild girl willing to do anything to have a motocross bike. She introduces herself as "unknown" to anyone who asks her name and through cunning tricks, she manages to steal motorcycles for sale from their rightful owners. Her mother is never around, and her brother doesn't know how to handle her. She only comes home for money matters.
She becomes part of a group of acrobatic motocross riders, encouraging the underground motorcycle market. The gang is led by a prisoner who manages the business from jail.
Julia's desire is to successfully rob a truck full of motorcycles while traveling on the highway. She and her friends/enemies have great skill to accomplish this.
Some of them are attracted to her, while others distrust or detest her.
Julia is not a likable person. She doesn't exercise any seductive skills, despite her exotic sensuality. Her obsession is motorcycles, and nothing justifies her attention except having money to ride freely like the wind.
Directed by Lola Quivoron, this is her debut film. She was previously in competition at Un Certain Regard in Cannes and is now competing at TFF40. It is a harsh and powerful story, especially due to the presence of Julie Ledru, a debut lead actress with surprising charisma.
It transports you into Julia's dreams, her harshness, and her rebelliousness without resorting to gratuitous psychological analysis. The mother changed the locks to keep her out of the house, and Julia has a recurring nightmare about the generous centaur Abra, who had opened up his world to her but soon fell into a coma and died.
The motorcyclist trusts no one but approaches the wife of the imprisoned boss, seeing her as a symbol of femininity to be redeemed.
She, so far from being the woman men desire, has a destiny already written by that masculine force that cannot accept figures so distant from the preconceived stereotype.
A film that overwhelms with masterful visuals, murky cinematography, an underground setting, and a reality on the fringes, but above all, it relies on a paradigmatic and indispensable presence and face.
The motorcycle is the goal, the means, whatever it takes: a hypnotic representation of the psychopathology of a young woman, an Amazon, a centaur chasing the allure of anarchic freedom, regardless of the cost.
"If it is true that the end justifies the means, it follows that the failure to achieve the end renders them unjustifiable."
31-May-2023 by Beatrice