15/02/2025 - BERLINALE 2025: Blending instinct, simplicity and suggestion and showing remarkable sensitivity, Léonor Serraille depicts the poignant meanderings of a gentle man living in our rough epoch

Andranic Manet in Ari

"Something alive, a little piece of a heart” – “Meat?” – “Or his heart placed next to him, like it’s separate from him." Much like these characters puzzle over a small detail hidden in a painting, life can often be observed, felt, interpreted and experienced in different ways, ranging from utterly prosaic to wholly poetic. It’s as if Léonor Serraille is diving between these two opposing perceptions, immersing us in the heartlessness of the modern world "which doesn’t make sense" while following in the wake of a young, gentle, affectionate and sensitive protagonist who bears the brutality of the transition to adulthood head-on in the charming movie Ari [+see also:
trailer
interview: Léonor Serraille
film profile], a very simple and subtle work which has now been unveiled in the 75th Berlinale.

The portrait of an emblematic individual belonging to a generation in their twenties who are rocked by uncertainty and torn between intense yearnings for freedom (notably in love and in the world of work) and the stressful pressures of modern life ("we’ve grown used to dirty stuff which doesn’t even affect us anymore, except when it comes too close") and societal traditions, the film employs small and almost subliminal touches to casually explore a multitude of themes which are crucial for the future ("people will ask the right questions"), first and foremost the mirror of childhood ("the only normal people").

The protagonist, Ari (a fantastic Andranic Manet) is a trainee primary school teacher, but it’s no small thing trying to convey the profound meaning of a poem by Robert Desnos (L’Hippocampe, one of the only fish that swims in an upright position, but also a word relating to the brain, cognition, memory, learning and spatial bearings) to a class of very noisy children. It’s all very well loving kids, Ari just can’t hack it, and he snaps. He subsequently finds himself on sick-leave and on the verge of resigning and, to add to his worries, his exasperated father (Pascal Rénéric - "am I going to have to carry you your whole life? What a rubbish generation! You’re wasting everything you have") throws him out. Thus, gentle Ari begins to wander through urban landscapes (northern France and Roubaix in particular), meeting up with old friends (Eva Lallier Juan, Théo Delezenne and Lomane de Dietrich, Ryad Ferrad) who shed light on his own personal journey as well as the world around them, encountering random people (Mikaël-Don Giancarli) and bumping into a major former love interest (Clémence Coullon). Like The Acrobats by Guillaume Apollinaire ("children go first, others follow them dreaming") and Hermann Hesse’s Demian, Ari lives and learns…

Léonor Serraille depicts this initiatory journey in a seemingly modest, playful and instinctive movie (which is one of a collection of films based on screenplays written in workshops by students from the Conservatoire National Supérieur d’Art Dramatique in Paris), whilst also foregrounding a variety of suggestive echoes under the gaze of the sensorial, almost tactile and highly intimate camera of director of photography Sébastien Buchmann. This makes for a film which isn’t only incredibly poignant for those on the same wavelength as the director, but which also confirms the sophisticated talent (especially apparent in the film’s sound and short flashbacks, and following on from Montparnasse Bienvenue [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Léonor Serraille
film profile] and Mother and Son [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Léonor Serraille
film profile]) of a director who’s capable of opening up a variety of worlds through the prism of one singular universe and of examining our society through an incredibly human form of novelistic realism.

Ari was produced by French firms Geko Films and Blue Monday Productions, in co-production with Arte France, Pictanovo and Belgian outfit Wrong Men. Be For Films is steering international sales.

(Translated from French)

Photogallery 16/02/2025: Berlinale 2025 - Ari

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Léonor Sérraille, Andranic Manet, Théo Delezenne, Clémence Coullon, Eva Lallier Juan
© 2024 Dario Caruso for Cineuropa - dario-caruso.fr, @studio.photo.dar, Dario Caruso