Twenty-seven-year-old Ari (Andranic Manet) is not the picture of an alpha male. His hair is long and dishevelled, his scruffy face covered in stubble, the bags are his eyes unforgiving, and his lips thin. His scrawny and sickly body, and his unimaginative attire cut an unsightly figure. His only saving grace are his angelic blue eyes. They are bursting with honesty and innocence. They are capable of bewitching even the hardest of souls.
Our hapless protagonist is a substitute teacher in a primary school. He loves the children, yet his teaching methods are highly questionable. He discusses the hippocampus (a brain structure), old-fashioned poetry and the joys of opium with the young learners, who mostly ignore his unorthodox lesson. Ari collapses on the floor, right in front of a school inspector. Is this a physical condition or a mental health disorder? More likely a combination of both.
There is no safety network at home. Ari lives with his father Gérard (Pascal Reneric), who resents his son’s inability to give him an heir. His vicarious demand for fatherhood jeopardise their toxic relationship. Gérard perceives his only child as an irrevocable failure, and proceeds to evict him. So he seeks shelter with his childhood chum Jonas (Théo Delezenne), a highly manipulative bully who mortifies his friend with class anecdotes and painful memories from the past. Delezenne delivers the film’s strongest performance, with a broad smile that shifts from compassion to patronisation and back within a split second. Ari’s former girlfriend Irene (Clémence Coullon) is not within arm’s reach: the two broke up in non-amicable terms due to an unwanted pregnancy.
Léonor Serraille’s third feature film (after 2017’s outstanding Montparnasse Bienvenüe and 2022’s Mother and Son) deals with a slightly unusual subject: the pressure for paternity. It is normally the woman who is required to conceive a child and crave parenthood. Here it is Ari who has to pay the price for his perceived ineptitude. A recurring symbolism is a very meaningful one: a seahorse. This is the only animal in the entire animals kingdom in which the duty of pregnancy is bestowed upon the male. Ari is a rare species expected to endure a significant physical and emotional ordeal not typically associated with his kind. Serraille gives Ari the possibility to reconcile with his masculinity through the gift of fluid sexuality (surely a little man-on-man action can’t do him some good?). But that’s just a brief moment of respite.
Despite the interesting topic, a largely auspicious cast (Manet is entirely convincing in the lead), Sébastien Buchmann’s up-and-close cinematography, and a clever twist (if not entirely unpredictable), Ari never reaches the same dramatic heights as Montparnasse Bienvenüe. That’s because the script (written by Serraille in collaboration with Clémence Carré and Bastien Daret is a somewhat fractured, plus the conflict often lacks fuel. A tedious acoustic guitar score prevents audiences from engaging with the story more thoroughly. In a nutshell, this is a warm and effective little film that never reaches its full potential.
Ari premiered in the Official Competition of the 75th edition of the Berlin International Film Festival, when this piece was originally written. Also showing at IndieLisboa.
