Continue (2018)

Directed by: Joachim Lafosse | 84 minutes | drama | Actors: Virginie Efira, Kacey Mottet Klein, Diego Martín, Mairambek Kozhoev, Damira Ripert, Belek Mamatkoulov, Mukhit Raikulov, Assel Kuanbayeva

Suppose your relationship as a single mother with your adult son is not good. You long to bond with him, but his teenage years don’t seem over and you are constantly fighting each other. Would it be a good idea to go horseback riding with him through the vast landscape of Kyrgyzstan? Sybille (Virginie Efra) thinks so in the Franco-Belgian production ‘Continuer’. And that question “Is it a smart move or is the couple going deeper into misery” is strangely enough long enough to keep following this drama by Joachim Lafosse with interest.

Lafosse does not immediately reveal the whole picture. And even if we get more background information, the puzzle is incomplete. There is a lot of old pain, that’s clear, but the viewer can guess how and why. Sympathy initially lies with Sybille, interestingly portrayed by the talented Efra. Samuel (Kacey Mottet Klein) doesn’t just get the blood under her nails. This annoyance is entirely due to Kacey, born in 1998, whose films have been released almost unanimously in art houses in the Netherlands. If we put ourselves in Samuel it is partly understandable, because although he lives for horses, months of seclusion from friends and WiFi may be a bit too much to ask. A well-stocked iPod and breathtaking landscapes don’t help much.

Well, the photography is beautiful and the tensions in the mother-son relationship are running high, but something is missing in the conflict. The dialogues often do not fit with the underlying explosive threat: the viewer now knows that Samuel has a highly flammable character, but apparently he can also have a normal conversation. That unpredictability doesn’t really make the character believable. ‘Continuer’ is mainly about the atmosphere and the images, as a character sketch the story falls slightly short.