JUMBO

France/Belgium, 2020, 93 minutes, Colour.

Noemie Merland, Emmanuelle Bercot, Bastien Bouillon, Sam Louwyck.

Directed by Zoe Wittock.

An arresting title for an unusual film. Audiences generally associate Jumbo with elephants. This time, not exactly.

This is very much a women’s film, female writer-director, focus on female characters and their issues. While there are some male characters, they are not at the centre.

However, at the centre, is a young woman, Jeanne, living with her mother, who serves in a bar, and flirts with all and sundry. But she does bond strongly with her daughter. Jeanne is scoffed at by some of the young men of the town.

Jeanne goes to work at a theme park which is about to close down for the season, doing all kinds of cleaning and maintenance jobs. She becomes absorbed with the giant wheel that is core to the park, attracted to it, its size, its power, cleaning the various knobs and polishing them, seeing the lights come on. The giant wheel is called Jumbo. And she becomes more and more preoccupied.

For those coming upon Jumbo without any background, surprised, taken aback, discovering that Jeanne falls in love with Jumbo, the screenplay elaborating the language of love, visits, embraces, spending more and more time, the erotic aspects. The screenplay also focuses on the response of her mother, the manager of the fair, a young man the mother wants to set up with Jeanne, the attempts, his being rejected. The other male character in the film is a customer at the bar, a wanderer, who takes up with the mother, he is the one who has the most sympathy and understanding for Jeanne.

There are not many films about obsessions like this, many audiences being puzzled, fascinated, wondering about Jeanne and her emotions, her mental health, the consequences of the passion of love for Jumbo.