Director: Zoé Wittock
Writers: Zoé Wittock
Stars: Noémie Merlant, Emmanuelle Bercot, Sam Lauwyck
Synopsis: Jeanne, a shy young woman, works as a night guard at an amusement park and has a close relationship with her mother. Whilst no man can compete with this opposed duo, Jeanne begins to develop strange romantic feelings for Jumbo, the latest attraction at the theme park.
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Many people might find the premise of this story unbelievable, the idea that someone can fall in love with an inanimate object such as an amusement park ride. The phenomenon, known as objectophilia, is something that I had actually heard of several years ago on two separate occasions: one person who is married to the Berlin Wall, whilst another being married to the Eiffel Tower. It sounds bizarre, but this is a thing that does exist and emotions that people do have.
It is actually easy to buy the relationship in this film due to the wonderful leading performance by Noémie Merlant. After her stunning work in Portrait of a Lady on Fire in 2019, it is no surprise that once again she nails it. This is an incredibly tough role to pull off, given the nature of the material and the emotions our lead character, Jeanne, goes through. Instead of making the audience concerned about her relationship with the amusement park ride, we instead are able to care about it and understand Jeanne’s feelings.
One way that director Wittock helps establish the relationship is through the stunning cinematography, particularly in the night sequences. Having worked at an amusement park myself, I particularly know how beautiful the LED lighting and motion of these rides can look at night, and the cinematography picks all of that up. There is a certain magic that comes with the moment that Jeanne first sees Jumbo lit up and moving at night. Wittock is also able to show the personal and sexual relationship that Jeanne has with Jumbo without making it completely graphic, which is handled beautifully.
Whilst the relationship between Jeanne and her mother is the main relationship in the story, it is actually the relationship between Jeanne and her boyfriend, Marc, which adds some weight to the narrative. Not only is this relationship playing out at the same time as Jeanne finds her connection with Jumbo, making for a great comparison between her feelings, but her relationship with Marc has a real impact on the narrative as he is her boss. It feels like there are stakes at risk when she is going behind his back to be with Jumbo, and yet it is easy to see why she makes the decisions that she does.
I do wish the film had a concrete way of handling the physical relationship between Jeanne and Jumbo. When the first signs of connection occur, the relationship is established with a sense of fantasy as Jumbo is able to communicate to Jeanne. This is done through the lighting, using green for yes and red for no. The machine also operates completely by itself as Jeanne is able to go on the ride and experience it herself, seeming like Jumbo is operating itself. This would be fine, but this does not continue throughout the film. In moments where you expect Jumbo to need the flash of a colour light to communicate something, Jeanne is suddenly able to understand it by itself. I just wished that there was some form of consistency with this relationship and either choosing to commit to fantasy or keeping it real.
I also wish that more time was spent fleshing out the other characters in the story. They have enough presence and screen time that it feels like we should be able to connect to them, but they just seem to fall flat. They are only there to serve a narrative purpose and it is hard to understand their motives and care about them personally. It would have added more weight to the story if we got to find out a little more about Jeanne’s co-workers and her relationship with them.
Zoé Wittock gave herself an incredibly tough task when making this her feature directorial and writing debut. For a lot of audience members, they might have never heard of objectophilia before and might be confused as to why this is a thing. Wittock does a wonderful job of selling this main storyline and whilst I do wish there was a little more meat on the bones of the characters and the subplots, I found that the main storyline was incredibly effective and engaging to watch.
