04/08/2023 - Frédéric Mermoud’s third feature film takes us behind the scenes at an elite school where rigour fast becomes an obsession

Previously selected for the Locarno Film Festival thanks to his first two feature films Complices [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Frédéric Mermoud
film profile] (screened in the International Competition and awarded the Swiss Film Prize for Best Screenplay) and Moka [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] (the winner of the Variety Piazza Grande Award), Swiss director Frédéric Mermoud is returning to the Piazza Grande to present his latest effort, The Path of Excellence [+see also:
trailer
film profile]. A cruel yet touching saga about a character desperately trying to give meaning to a life endured too passively, The Path of Excellence invites us into the private world of an elite boarding school, where losing your own humanity seems to be the only road towards success.

Sophie is a brilliant student with a fine mind who doesn’t know her own potential. Her day-to-day reality is punctuated by life on her parents’ farm - who are trying, like so many others, to survive the greed of a ruthless food industry - and lessons at the local high school. Encouraged and supported by her maths teacher, Sophie leaves the comfort of the family farm to join a prestigious scientific preparatory class in Lyon. It’s a totally alien environment for her, where students – rarely female – dream of becoming the country’s future elite. Her new life is marked by decisive encounters but also smarting failures. Competition is fierce and the race to success ruthless.

Despite her ongoing love of maths and physics, Sophie (Suzanne Jouannet) realises that nothing is ever a given and that past victories can become distant memories in the blink of an eye. Determined to achieve her goal – gaining entry to a prestigious university - our young protagonist turns into a fighting machine, stopping at nothing to haul herself up onto the highest step of the podium. Struggling and suffering countless humiliations meted out by decidedly anti-Steiner teachers, or else giving up on her deepest desires, become key to successfully integrating an elite which expects to dominate the world.

But what hides behind this perverse machine which seeks to turn human beings into walking, talking computers? Although her physics teacher (Maud Wyler) sometimes betrays traits of a more complex personality than she’d like to admit, the adults around her generally seem deprived of all empathy. Left alone to her own devices after her friend and study companion (Marie Colomb) decides to abandon her scientific career in favour of the theatre-focused studies which she loves more than anything, Sophie must contend with her own frustrations and existential doubts, which she can no longer keep a lid on.

Torn between two worlds – that of her family, dominated by precariousness and social struggles, and that of the elite boarding school where financial troubles don’t even make it past the door - the protagonist of The Path of Excellence must find her own way. Determined to achieve her goals but also conscious of the precarious situation her parents are forced to contend with, Sophie realises she needs to lend meaning to her battle.

Frédéric Mermoud’s movie reveals the other side of a society where excellence is the driving force behind everything, a society dominated by wealthy families who unashamedly impose their own rules. Is it still possible to speak of a meritocracy when power seems to be reserved for an elite? Without turning Sophie into a victim of an unjust social system, Mermoud shows us the relentless struggle she has decided to embark upon in order to reach the highest spheres of power. Despite an undeniable feeling of inferiority and the mask she wears every day in order to protect herself from the world, Sophie doesn’t give up, because she knows deep down that she just might make a difference.

The Path of Excellence is produced by Tabo Tabo Films, Bande à part Films and RTS Radio Télévision Suisse, with international sales entrusted to Pyramide International.

(Translated from French)