Excluding a small supporting part in Olivier Assayas‘ “Something in the Air” (2012), Félix de Givry was first introduced to many filmgoers as the lead of Mia Hansen-Løve‘s “Eden” (2014), her decades-spanning story of French house and garage music. In that film, he plays a young DJ who experiences minor success for a few years before his career and personal life stagnate, triggering a nervous breakdown.
While de Givry has only acted in three further features since “Eden” (and one of those was a voice-performance part), no one can suggest that his breakthrough role proved to be a case of life imitating art. A multihyphenate swing in the past few years has seen him co-produce works by major auteurs (Bertrand Bonello) and aspiring ones (a music video for The Weeknd), while also bagging himself Oscar and BAFTA nominations and a César win for producing the animated film “Arco,” which he additionally co-wrote with director Ugo Bienvenu — whose own lone acting credit, funnily enough, was in “Eden.”
Fresh off the awards success of “Arco,” de Givry’s own (live-action) feature directing debut marks a considerable shift away from that sci-fi film’s tone, though it is still peppered with a few light touches of the fantastical. A twist on a coming-of-age romance, “Goodbye Cruel World” recalls certain works by François Truffaut and Maurice Pialat via some apparent visual and scripting nods, though the film’s particular examination of teen malaise and connection, plus the ways in which we can and can’t control narratives about ourselves, feels very much rooted in the modern era.
In the movie’s closing credits, Hansen-Løve is among the names singled out for a thank you from the director. Beyond just their earlier collaboration, you can see a bit of how “Eden” may have rubbed off on de Givry for “Goodbye Cruel World” — co-written with Marie-Stéphane Imbert — in its vague approach to just how much time actually passes between scenes depicting progression for its protagonists. Here, a story of a teenage runaway and the girl he befriends could well last a couple of weeks, several months, or only a few days. All are plausible within the dreamy approach to the timeline, reflecting adolescent perception where time can feel blurred. But additionally, time is distorted for the central boy because the current circumstances of his life are fully unexpected — they are happening after he wanted to die.
Following an opening sequence in which 14-year-old Otto (“Anatomy of a Fall” breakout Milo Machado-Graner) is pursued across town at night by bullies, we learn through an omniscient narrator (French screen legend Françoise Lebrun, giving proceedings a fairytale air that avoids being cloying) that the teenager plans to end his life. Before doing so, he writes and photocopies a letter to be posted to all of his Catholic-school classmates, explaining his decision and implicating the vast majority of them. “Because death is just once,” the letter says. “Whereas life is every day. If there’s an investigation, this was murder, not suicide. The police can arrest every member of my class.” He makes an exception for two specific students, who presumably never bothered him.
After skipping school and setting his pet rodent free in the woods outside his town of Lisieux, Normandy, Otto jumps from a high bridge into the river below. The backpack that was presumably meant to help him drown is quickly separated from him, and instead of continuing with his death wish, the poor, drenched lad gets back up at the rocky shore, contemplating his next move. What does a brutally lonely boy do now that he’s already ensured super-fast confirmation of his suicide has been communicated to a significant portion of the local population?
Taking refuge in an abandoned religious home on the outskirts of town, Otto uses the radio to keep track of the police search triggered by his mother (his estranged father lives far away), and of the school populace’s response to his letter. Throughout the film, Otto is exposed to further TV broadcasts and newspaper reports that present a very different picture of his life as he knew it, and of those he views as his tormentors. In one of many effective moments where Machado-Graner is given room to convey so much about Otto through silent movements and the slightest facial changes, we see him watch a TV reporter interview three boys about how they’d see Otto alone at recess and now wish they had tried speaking to him. Lebrun’s narration has established before this point that a specific trio of boys helped make Otto’s life a living hell. It’s not made explicitly clear if these seemingly sympathetic kids are actually his worst bullies, but Machado-Graner’s eyes, lip twitch, and throat gulp in this short sequence tell a whole story in themselves.
A teenager who does actually talk to Otto is Léna (Jane Beever, magnetic in her first onscreen film role), who’s from the same school but wasn’t one of his classmates. While walking her dog, she spots Otto on one of his nightly bin raids for food, tracking him to the abandoned house with barely working facilities. She offers him a night’s stay in a long-unused room at the hotel where she lives and works with her mother, which turns into an extended stay, with food and drink brought to him in secret. Léna’s bedroom is directly above where Otto now resides; calling his hotel room’s phone, she sweetly describes moving around her bedroom, making the floorboards lightly creak, as though she’s walking on his head.
This friendship between two lonely youngsters gradually blossoms into a romance; their plan to hide out inevitably turns into one in which they both escape across the country, never revealing the truth behind Otto’s disappearance. As hopeful prospects emerge for the characters, the somewhat bleached colors of the film’s early stretches give way to more popping, almost blinding shades. Cinematographer Tara-Jay Bangalter’s frequently gorgeous 16mm photography is particularly effective with Beever’s ginger hair in sunlit sequences, and when pale-skinned Otto attempts a blonde makeover, as vacating the hotel for new pastures becomes a nearing target.
Once there’s some significant progress on the cross-country escape plan, the film falters a bit. The aftermath of one of Otto’s decisions gives Beever as Léna some rich material to work through, but strands Machado-Graner to an extent, including in a short subplot that feels like it was plucked from an entirely different screenplay. But even though the back 20 minutes of the barely 93-minute feature veer into wheel-spinning, “Goodbye Cruel World” is a remarkably assured debut feature overall, ending on an especially beautiful note both visually and aurally — composer Arnaud Toulo’s melodies, it should be noted, are a consistent highlight of the film’s texture.
Like his key early collaborator Mia Hansen-Løve, de Givry shows great promise as a maker of intimate, humanist works, where troubled souls are swept along by the currents of time as they try to make sense of themselves and their world.
Grade: B
“Goodbye Cruel World” premiered at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
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