Enzo is a poignant and critically acclaimed French coming-of-age drama that serves as a touching cinematic farewell from the late director Laurent Cantet, whose final project was brought to life by his longtime collaborator Robin Campillo.
Set against the sun-drenched backdrop of the South of France, the film follows sixteen-year-old Enzo, who shocks his affluent bourgeois family by flatly rejecting their academic expectations and elite university tracks to pursue a blue-collar masonry apprenticeship.
Leaving behind the comfort of his parents’ luxury villa, Enzo plunges into a rugged world of physical labor where he forms an intense, complicated attachment to Vlad, a charismatic Ukrainian migrant worker. Vlad’s presence—alongside the heavy, anxious background hum of the war back home—shakes up Enzo’s internal world, awakening deep, fluid emotional currents and a restless desire to break free from his privileged bubble.
Blending a sharp, incisive critique of modern social classes with the sunlit tenderness of youth, the film captures the beautiful, untidy confusion of growing up.
Anchored by striking cinematography and a magnetic breakout performance by newcomer Eloy Pohu, the movie stands as a deeply humanistic triumph that resonates long after the credits roll.
Drama
France (French, Ukrainian)
English subtitles, 102 Min
