Well, the French coming of age comedy Jumbo is not one we have seen before. Jeanne (Noémie Merlant) is a painfully shy girl who is embarrassed by every human interaction, but especially by her single mother, who seems to be insisting “Have your sexual awakening, already!”. The mom encourages Jeanne to take a nighttime cleaning job at the amusement park on the outskirts of their provincial town, hoping that she’ll take up with a guy. The mom, who has very modest aspirations for her daughter’s romantic life, is thinking of someone like the supervisor Marc (Basten Bouillion), who is willing, but doesn’t ring Jeanne’s chimes.
Indeed, Jeanne does meet someone (or something) – the amusement ride Jumbo – and she falls in love with a not-really-inanimate object. Yes, here we have an unusual love that is passionate and obsessive, and, yes, consummated. (I told you that you haven’t seen this before.)
In the US, we know the titular amusement ride as the Tilt-a-whirl.
The director Emanuelle Bercot, who is so good in her occasional acting turns (Polisse, My King), plays Jeanne’s mom Margarette. Bercot’s Margarette is a voracious and vulgar force of nature – and she’s not familiar with social boundaries. Hilarious.
Jumbo is the first feature for writer-director Zoé Wittock, and it’s a helluva super-imaginative calling card. Ever bouncing between the sweet and the outre, Jumbo worked for me. I screened it at the 2020 Mill Valley Film Festival, and it’s now available to stream at Laemmle.