French director Antoine Chevrollier, most well-known for the television miniseries Oussekine, makes his feature film debut at Cannes Critics’ Week with Block Pass (La Pampa). Taking a deep dive into macho motocross subculture in small-town France, Chevrollier crafts an affecting tale about the enduring bonds of friendship, the devastating effects of toxic masculinity, and the transformative power of tragedy.
Willy (Oussekine star Sayyid El Alami) and Jojo (newcomer Amaury Foucher), on the cusp of adulthood, are childhood friends with a seemingly unbreakable bond. Turning their attention away from the looming responsibilities of grownup life, they spend their days talking trash with their immature friends and staging reckless stunts on the backroads of their provincial town. Jojo is a local motocross star, and poised to win a big competition in a few weeks. Following in the footsteps of his critical and demanding father (Damien Bonnard), his future has been decided for him.
At a BBQ celebrating Jojo’s latest victory, we’re treated to a vivid demonstration of the chauvinist culture that the boys have grown up with. Jojo’s father holds court, reveling in the adulation garnered by his son’s success. The wives in town swap petty jealousies and keep a watchful eye on the competition. When a high school classmate shows up with her cousin Marina (Léonie Dahan-Lamort), they attract a great deal of attention. An artist and an outsider in this small town, Jojo and Willy’s friends try to take her down a peg, slut-shaming and repeating rumours they’ve heard about her. Marina is unimpressed, however, shaming them right back for their regressive attitudes. The boys bristle, but the sensitive Willy is smitten.
Later that night, running an errand at the track for his mother, Willy catches Jojo and his coach Teddy in flagrante. Teddy freaks out and chases after him, threatening violence if he doesn’t keep quiet. He doesn’t understand just how deep the bond between the boys runs. Ride or die to the core, Willy doesn’t care that Jojo is gay. He’s only upset because he thought they had the kind of friendship where they didn’t hide things from each other. He’ll do anything he can to safeguard his friend’s happiness in their narrow-minded hometown… as long as he spills the juicy details.
As the days go by, Willy’s connection with Marina grows. Bonding over the pain of their family lives, he takes her to the abandoned hospital where his father passed away, and she takes him to see as medieval tapestry that serves as inspiration for her own artwork. The piece is called The Apocalypse, and as she portentously explains it, the apocalypse doesn’t represent the end of the world, as most people think – it represents the end of a world, making way for the discovery of a new one. For a moment, life feels sweet and promising for our gentle protagonist.
Eventually, however, Teddy’s heavily pregnant girlfriend catches him and Jojo in the act, setting off a chain of events resulting in a horrible tragedy. In this stretch of the story, Faucher delivers an impressively defiant debut performance as a young man abandoned by most of the central figures in his life. While the eventual outcome seems painfully inevitable – despite Willy’s best efforts – we keep hoping for a different ending for this promising young man, rather than the minor key apocalypse that comes to pass.
In the wake of that tragedy, guilt-stricken and seeking redemption, Jojo’s father begs Willy to finish the motocross season in his place. For a while, Willy lets himself get swept away by the current of his grief, driving forwards towards a future that doesn’t belong to him. When the big day finally arrives, culminating in a dynamically innovative final race sequence (kudos to cinematographer Benjamin Roux), Willy experiences his own revelation, driving off and away from that world and that life, Jojo’s father left screaming soundlessly in the distance.
Flashing forward a few months, Willy’s family sees him off at the train station, off to discover a new world beyond the borders of the one he grew up in. We don’t know where he’s headed, but the future looks bright.
Block Pass premieres in competition at Cannes Critics’ Week.
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