The fable-like French drama “Eternal Playground” is melancholy, but only for a moment. It begins with Andranic Manet’s open beaming face. He plays Gaspard, a young Parisian music teacher mourning his twin sister. Saying goodbye to his students on the last day of school, the actor’s face holds out all potential while adding a bittersweet note of what can never be regained and that sets the tone for co-directors Joseph Rozé and Pablo Cotten’s story of friendship and growing up.
Gaspard’s five best friends show up soon after, ready to spend a few days with him in their old middle school building where they were all once students to honor Louise (she was Gaspard’s sister). Her dying wish was for them to gather there and reclaim the fun, frivolity and innocence they shared as children. But that is where their similarities end old wounds, love triangles (and squares!) and stubborn rivalries quickly reveal themselves among this group of neurotics who push 30 but revert to adolescence when they are together.
This plot summary makes “Eternal Playground” sound like any number of American independent movies or TV shows about young-ish friends figuring life (and love) out together, it could not be further from those stories. The difference is in the offbeat joviality. Cotten and Rozé have written a script with an amiable center; many scenes luxuriate in tracking shots that follow characters’ memories back into happier times together, Louise comments on the proceedings via Noée Abita’s smooth narration it adds an otherworldly touch, as though an angel were really watching over them; these could be affectations but also give the film its unique atmosphere.
Gaspard is at the heart of this motley crew, and through Manet’s disarming performance “Eternal Playground” reveals itself. Sometimes, when we mourn, we try to go backward instead of dealing with the pain. Manet captures both Gaspard’s raw agony and his naive, wide-eyed hopefulness, this is a person who thinks that by being around his middle school friends he might be able to bring back not only his sister, but also those blissful days.
The rest of the ensemble who are all made to seem believably like friends quietly fill in around Manet. Two actors, in particular, stand out among equals. Alassane Diong carries himself with brusque swagger as Adel, a successful musical artist; Nina Zem underplays Alma’s hesitation about motherhood with such a soft-spokenness that it doubles back around and becomes twice as affecting.
As directors, Rozé and Cotten use their actors’ faces (and slow deliberate movements of the camera) to find the story. When it pans from one face to another or starts in close-up then gradually travels out to include others beside or behind it, the complicated interrelationships between these characters come into view. “Eternal Playground” sometimes feels like a flight of fancy disconnected from real life, but the filmmakers working in total sync with Tara-jay Bangalter’s camera manage to make it feel true.
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