Having premiered over a year ago at Sundance 2020, Jumbo arrives at the Virgin Media Dublin International Film Festival the subject of a politely warm reception and no small amount of intrigue. It is, after all, the story of a woman who falls passionately in love with a fairground ride. Oh yes.
Based very approximately on the story of an American woman who married the Eiffel Tower, Belgian writer-director Zoé Wittock’s feature directorial début follows Jeanne (Noémie Merlant, last seen in Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Céline Sciamma, 2019)), a caretaker at a local fairground. Like many movie oddballs before her, Jeanne suffers the dual curse of social isolation and an overbearing mother (Emmanuelle Bercot). Uninterested in the romantic relationship her mother foresees for her with boss Marc (Bastien Bouillon), her eye is instead caught by the newest attraction at the park, ‘Move It’ (or in French, delightfully, ‘Le Move It’), who Jeanne rechristens Jumbo. What’s more, ‘he’ appears to reciprocate her attention.
Wittock borrows cleverly from the sci-fi playbook to convey this strangest of love affairs. Her first image is a beautiful one of Jeanne, facing and almost melting into Jumbo’s blinding, colourful lights. Jumbo himself communicates in lights that pulse or flicker suggestively and strange otherworldly noises. The scene in which he and Jeanne consummate their love is one of the film’s standout moments. Shot slickly in a pared back monochrome palette, it is trippy and erotic and, well, oily. Merlant does the rest of the heavy lifting, never once letting you doubt her commitment to her pneumatic paramour. Wittock shoots her tender vulnerability assuredly, and occasionally gorgeously.
What lets Jumbo down is a rickety story that particularly struggles with tone and pace. The first third is the strongest but seeds the problems that are to come. Jeanne is seduced too quickly. Jumbo flashes his lights, clicks and whirrs a bit and she’s off to the fair, as it were. We don’t spend enough time with Jumbo, or get a strong sense of his personality; a tall order with a huge, clanking theme-park attraction, but the absence of this development is a fatal flaw in a film that’s all about loving the machine. Jeanne doesn’t fully bring the viewer along with her in falling in love, leaving us as likely to sympathise with the friends and family seriously concerned about her mental wellbeing as Jeanne’s own desperate pleas for acceptance. The middle third consequently meanders, before discovering a sense of urgency at the eleventh hour that culminates in an ending that is both too neat and fails to satisfactorily resolve outstanding issues.
Jumbo often feels like three films forced discordantly into an hour and a half running time. One is an offbeat love story breathless with innocence and wonder. One is an affair of surreal eroticism, vaguely disturbing but compelling. One is a more serious, drab plea for acceptance, featuring a young woman who may or may not be in complete control of her mental faculties. Wittock fails to make these cohere in a fully satisfying fashion. The film is also hampered by a series of narrative devices that muscle their way into the story to clunkily achieve their purpose. Marc confides that his mother sent him off to sleep every night with the mantra ‘Inanimate objects, do you have a soul, which sticks to our soul and forces it to love?’ (as you do). A group of teenage boys with a vendetta against Jeanne are an inexplicably constant presence, even finagling their way into the fairground’s annual party for its employees. Jeanne’s mother’s new boyfriend ambles about in the background until he suddenly discovers his purpose is to intervene and proclaim that love is, after all, love.
Wittock’s ambition is admirable, even if here it isn’t fully realised. While it has its charms, the appeal of Jumbo for DIFF patrons perhaps lies more so in its glimpse of burgeoning talents than as an achievement in and of itself.
Jumbo is available to watch on March 5 at the Virgin Media Dublin International Film Festival.
