15/08/2024 - In her debut feature, Lucie Prost follows the adventures of a young man confronted with trauma that he can’t overcome, with repressed emotions that burn inside like poison

Young French director Lucie Prost presents at the Locarno Film Festival, in the Cineasti del Presente competition, her fascinating first feature Fario [+see also:
interview: Lucie Prost
film profile], the touching portrait of a young man who must face emotions repressed for too long. Fario is a seemingly “simple” film, aesthetically elegant and delicate, that nevertheless hides within itself a more complex and ambiguous nature.

Young engineer Léo (the fabulous Finnegan Oldfield), who has been living in Berlin for years, returns to his village to sell the agricultural lands of his dead father to a rare metal drilling company. Although planning to stay at his mother’s house, where his younger sister also lives, only for a few days, Léo gradually lets himself overwhelmed by violent emotions he had repressed for too long. The metaphorical corollary to his existential torments are some strange natural events that the protagonist understands to be signs of an imminent natural catastrophe. The mining site to which he wants to sell his father's land is, in his opinion, contaminating the river, the only place that allows him to emotionally connect with his deceased father. Léo then embarks on a hallucinatory scientific investigation that will allow him to make his pain explode to the surface, facing distressing memories he must now deal with in order to move forward.

With Fario, Lucie Prost confronts the delicate and complex theme of suicide amongst French farmers and does so through the eyes of her protagonist, Léo. The film doesn’t aim to be an sociological investigation but rather a slice of life, a sincere testimony by someone who has experienced the difficulties of those who try to survive by working the land. Although Léo had tried to forget his origins by numbing himself with parties with increasingly dark consequences, the ghosts of the past never left him, like travelling companions with dark features. In Berlin, Léo built himself a new identity but his true self will take him back to the village where he was born and raised, amongst the memories of a father who decided to give up. Fario is also perhaps a film about youth, the desire for freedom and the utopias of a generation that no longer has any intention to settle or, worse yet, to meekly follow the rules. Topics such as impotence, homosexuality or not wanting children are tackled head-on, as if to remind us that young people definitely have no intention of bending to absurd hetero-patriarchal rules. Surrounded by his childhood friends, the protagonist allows himself a break from a frenetic daily life that was, quite literally, crushing him. Self-medication with drugs is no longer enough to calm his panic attacks and Léo must brutally surrender to the evidence: trauma is a monster with a thousand faces that must be confronted head-on to be defeated. Thanks to the support of his childhood friend (magnificently played by Megan Northam), Fario's protagonist will be able to look at his past with different eyes, rediscovering the tenderness of childhood.

It is admirable that in the film, the female characters do not need a man to exist but, on the contrary, proudly impose their indomitable character. From this point of view, Léo’s mother, poetically embodied by Florence Loiret Caille, is interesting; despite having started a new relationship, she processes the trauma linked to the loss of her husband through theatre. Fario is an elegant and delicate first film that progresses by giving its characters time to breathe, to look inside themselves, perhaps for the first time.

Fario was produced by Folle Allure and Yukunkun Productions.

(Translated from Italian)