It isn’t often that a film leaves me speechless.
And yet, I couldn’t find the words as the credits rolled on La Gradiva, part of the Main Slate of the 64th New York Film Festival. All I could manage was an open jaw and a bewildered look at my surrounding colleagues, who were similarly stunned by what they had just seen.
If I had to posit a reason for our stunned silence, it would likely be that La Gradiva sneaks up on you. At first glance, Marine Atlan’s directorial debut reads like a standard coming-of-age tale, in which a group of French teenagers on the cusp of adulthood embark on a school trip to Italy. Their trip bears all the hallmarks of a post-pubescent romp run amok: sex, smoking, more sex, fretting about said sex, and unsanctioned side quests off the beaten paths of their guided tours.
However, as the film unspools, there are hints that something is bubbling just below the surface. There is Toni (Colas Quignard), the ostensible class clown who uses that perception to mask his intense infatuation with his best friend James (Mitia Capellier-Audat). James’s aloofness and casual regard for sex are also a mask, as he fears genuine connection that could either hurt him or exploit him for his family’s wealth. Suzanne (Suzanne Gerin) could probably match James and Toni’s devil-may-care attitudes on her best day, but the trip leaves her vulnerable to her wobbly self-esteem. Tasked with overseeing the rowdy soon-to-be-adults is Madame Mercier (Antonia Buresi), who hoped to broaden the students’ horizons and introduce them to a higher level of thought and engagement with the outside world.
The problem for Madame Mercier is that, at first glance, her students don’t seem especially interested in such engagement. What’s remarkable about La Gradiva is how Atlan deftly reinforces Mercier’s thinking while undercutting it with glimmers of depth that only the audience can see. Madame Mercier, for instance, doesn’t see Toni’s limited self-esteem and internalized homophobia, which we do on a study break where the group plays with some local kids. What she does see is Toni ostensibly goofing off with James while she lectures at an archaeological site. She admonishes him, not realizing that she is further chipping away at his fragile sense of self, already damaged by James’s hot-and-cold flirting.
Madame Mercier has a better rapport with Suzanne, recognizing and spotlighting her intelligence whenever she can. However, Suzanne has her own self-esteem issues. Again, Mercier is out of view when we see it. Late one night, a group of girls is talking about James ghosting Angela after they hooked up on the train to Pompeii, with her seeking the room’s advice. She asks Suzanne, and Suzanne uses the opportunity to lament how undesired she feels by the boys and girls in her class. It’s a bracing bit of vulnerability that reshapes our understanding of her behavior leading up to that revelation, from that of someone actively seeking connection to that of someone struggling to do so in such a rambunctious atmosphere.
The cast of La Gradiva does wonderful work navigating such turbulence. Colas Quignard is revelatory as Toni, with an acute awareness of how to reveal the character’s vulnerabilities through gaps in his aloof countenance. Even when he is mostly in goofball mode, or when he’s being antagonistic towards another, Quignard conveys the fragility driving that behavior thoughtfully. Antonia Buresi is an excellent antagonist for Quignard. She physically winds herself up to convey Madame Mercier’s growing frustration with Toni’s attitude, but her eyes betray her acknowledgment of his and the other students’ potential, which she fears is being wasted on the trip.
La Gradiva is a film of missed connections and miscommunications, where everyone’s lives would be improved by knowing what’s withheld from them or simply taking a closer look. Atlan understands, however, that greater knowledge or more compassion isn’t an immediate solution to the characters’ problems. Perhaps Madame Mercier would’ve been less critical of Toni if she had known about his troubled home life and his terrible loneliness, but what guarantee is there that Toni would accept it, that he wouldn’t regard her outreach cynically? Would James treat Angela, Suzanne, and Toni better if he knew that being so cavalier wounded them so much? Possible, but unlikely. After all, they are self-involved soon-to-be college students, susceptible to the greatest ill of one’s teen years: peer pressure.
Atlan delivers that uncomfortable honesty through compelling frames of shadowed spaces cut with glimmers of natural light. In scenes like the class’s visit to the archeological site and a dinner-time debate over French politics, we see the possibility of truth – about the characters’ feelings about themselves and each other – peeking through, but it never lasts long enough to pull any of them out of their worst behaviors. That visual metaphor helps make the film’s final act so devastating. What happens to one of the characters is shocking, a massive narrative swing that few films take. However, it isn’t surprising, nor is it inevitable. The character’s choice sits in an awful middle ground where we can see why they felt they had to, but also see a more hopeful solution just beyond their grasp.
By the time you’ve acknowledged the existence of that awful middle space, the credits for La Gradiva will likely have finished rolling. Even as the film ends, you’ll still find yourself stumbling about, stuck in how this summery diversion to the western Italian coast melts into a heartrending look at what happens when children slip through the cracks. It’s a dizzying experience, but a worthwhile one, one of the most worthwhile of the year.
La Gradiva held its U.S. Premiere as part of the Main Slate section at the 2026 New York Film Festival. The film will debut in select theaters on December 18, 2026, courtesy of 1-2 Special.
Director: Marine Atlan
Writers: Marine Atlan, Anne Brouillet
Rated: R
Runtime: 145m
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Even as the film ends, you’ll still find yourself stumbling about, stuck in how this summery diversion to the western Italian coast melts into a heartrending look at what happens when children slip through the cracks. It’s a dizzying experience, but a worthwhile one, one of the most worthwhile of the year.
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GVN Rating
A late-stage millennial lover of most things related to pop culture. Becomes irrationally irritated by Oscar predictions that don’t come true.
