Goodbye Cruel World

A lamp-lit street’s gleam, punctuating the inky blot of night in a remote Normandy village enveloped by forest, looks for all the world like the Milky Way brought low. It’s the first sign that Eden star Félix de Givry’s beguiling debut directorial feature, Goodbye Cruel World, will lend a mystical element to this story of a lost boy finding his way.

That ‘boy’ is teenager Otto Vidal, played by Milo Machado-Graner, best known for his turn as the visually impaired kid, Daniel, in Justine Triet’s courtroom drama Anatomy of a Fall. 

We hear Otto before we see him, racing through gloomy streets pursued by the bullies who’ve driven him to feel like life’s not worth living. A passing comment about the rigidity of his Catholic schooling and the nuns who stroll by his hiding spot, oblivious to his presence, illustrate his outsider status. A narrator (Françoise Lebrun) underlines his predicament with gentle grace, amplifying the almost fairy-tale nature of this melancholy story. 

Otto posts an accusatory suicide note to all of his classmates, escusing only two kind girls and another boy (‘at a push’) from causing his death. He’s been pushed to his limit, as we witness him all alone on a high bridge over a roaring river that’s captured in gorgeously textured 16mm by cinematographer Tara-Jay Bangalter. Except that his desperate plunge isn’t as final as the husband’s in Anatomy of a Fall.

A love song for the lonely that glows like starlight

Surviving, bedraggled and ghostly, a bruised and soaked Otto retreats to an abandoned building. He’s discovered by Léna (Jane Beever), a fellow loner unknown to him at school who squirrels him away in a locked and supposedly haunted room in the hotel her family runs. Both her mum (Maïa Sandoz) and his (Emmanuelle Destremau) are only lightly featured in a world where adults are at the periphery. Determined to aid his disappearance, as both the school and the town mourn his assumed loss during a prolonged search, Léna’s rebellious kindness and his receptiveness help the pair truly come alive.

With Arnaud Toulon’s lilting score and the sad-boy energy of a Xavier Dolan film, plus a hint of Louis Malle’s Au Revoir Les Enfants or François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows, Givry’s tender coming-of-age film is a striking debut. Machado-Graner’s gaze is mesmeric, beneath those bushy black eyebrows, with Beever’s layered performance another rare find for one so young. 

Together, they breathe life into Goodbye Cruel World. The result will feel like a welcome embrace for anyone who ever felt it best they were not here – a love song for the lonely that glows like starlight.

Goodbye Cruel World screened at the Melbourne International Film Festival.