Jumbo (2020)

Directed by: Zoé Wittock | 93 minutes | drama | Actors: Noémie Merlant, Emmanuelle Bercot, Bastien Bouillon, Sam Louwyck, Tracy Dossou, Jonathan Bartholmé, Eduard Nemcsenko, Noah Daccrissio, Idao Daccrissio, Stephen Rohde, Chris Caligo, Jimmy Raphaël, Barbara Hellemans

It abounds in cultural history. The Greek supreme god Zeus once seduced the classical beauty Europa in the guise of a bull. A few millennia later, King Kong lost his ape heart to a human woman and human woman Martine had a relationship with a gorilla (in ‘Le tout nouveau testament’). And it could be worse. In ‘Ex Machina’, programmer Caleb fell head over heels in love with a Cyborg, while in ‘Her’ the lonely Theodore had an affair with an operating system. Can it always get crazier? Of course!

In the French-language drama ‘Jumbo’, young Jeanne earns her money as a cleaning lady in an amusement park. When the visitors have left the park in the evening, Jeanne springs into action. Apart from her young boss Marc, she has no direct colleagues. One day there will be a new attraction at that amusement park, a cool device that makes you nauseous just looking at it. And Jeanne, poor Jeanne, falls head over heels in love with that device.

This idiotic premise makes for a surprisingly normal movie. The whole love story may be bizarre, but the context in which it takes place remains mundane. It soon becomes clear that Jeanne has some psychological troubles, which partly explains her strange behavior. Jeanne’s fluttery mother initially has a hard time with her upcoming cleaning device, but recovers surprisingly quickly. In addition, chef Marc is charmed by Jeanne, whose approaches follow all known paths.

Opposite this everyday is the depiction of the love affair. It is of great beauty. Debut director Zoé Wittock pulls out all the stops to portray the cautious (mutual!) attempts at rapprochement and the eventual affair. We won’t tell you how she does that, because the inventive solutions and clever twists are too special to give away.

Noémie Merlant (whom we hardly recognized from her role in ‘Portrait de la jeune fille en feu’) does her very best to portray a credible Jeanne. Visually it is also good and of course the subject is original. Yet this ‘Jumbo’ is too conventional and too humorless to continue to fascinate. As a short film or as a separate episode in a longer film, the love between girl and fairground attraction could have been just fine. As a longer film, it is simply not special enough.