A door opens: shouting matches, a story of a broken threshold and a missing bike. Julia, with wavy hair, springs furiously from a cramped apartment overlooking the corridor of a suburban building. From the first seconds of the film Rodeo by Lola Quivoron, presented at the Cannes Film Festival in the Un certain regard selection and in theaters on September 7, the fiery character of the young woman bursts onto the screen. Badass, she decides to integrate a gang of guys addicted to cross-bitumen, a practice often associated with “urban rodeo” or “wild”.
An association which has also cost a lively controversy to Lola Quivoron – whose Rodeo is the first achievement – following the screening of the film at the Cannes Film Festival. In an interview conducted by Konbinione of the filmmaker’s sentences, cut and highlighted at the start of the edit, suggests that the police are solely responsible for accidents that take place during rodeos.
However, through the lens of his camera, the police never appear. And when the filmmaker is criticized for advocating “urban rodeos”, she responds in the columns of the Parisian that she only filmed the riders on long straight lines in the middle of the countryside, with no pedestrian crossings or cars. Nothing was shot on the city asphalt. The subject of the film is definitely elsewhere.
About ten minutes after the start of the feature film, Julia is already spinning, hair in the wind, on the roads. She has just stolen a bike using a strategy of her own. In the soundtrack, a hovering electro music gives the viewer a strange feeling of power. The boss dares, is not afraid of anything. Full of audacity, she arrives on a huge road where a ballet of riders, posted on their rear wheel, unfolds.
The shots are linked to the almost deafening roar of racing cars. After finding fuel here and there, the feisty one sets out too, surrounded by the big guys in the middle. Hand-held camera, Lola Quivoron follows each figure for an adrenaline-filled, ultra-dynamic rendering. An accident occurs. And now Julia has become the replacement for one of the deceased riders in a gang of young, mostly male bikers. It arouses both attraction and repulsion. Enamored eye or glare.
The young director seems to have a weakness for close-ups, even very close-ups. She films the faces until she sees the grains of skin on the screen. Every facial expression and lip quiver is recorded. Impossible for the actors to lie in front of the lens. Everything is fair. A feat for the apprentice actress who plays the main character, Julie Ledru, whose Rodeo is the very first cinematic experience. It was through Instagram that she was spotted by Lola Quivoron.
Passionate about motorcycling since the age of 10, she herself went to the main lines frequented by riders when she started out in cross-bitumen. She landed in C3, her two-wheeler in the trunk. The bikers were flabbergasted to see a girl on the tarmac. Her story inspired the screenplay by Lola Quivoron. Originally, the director imagined a man as the main character. After meeting Julie, she changed her mind and refined the role in her image. More anger.
With his gruff talk and his irreverence, the character integrates this masculine universe and tries as best he can to make his place there. His dream ? A giant robbery with his clique. While she is believed to be invincible, her new relationships also reveal an unexpected and touching fragility in Julia. A perfect balance, which makes it even more endearing. Shocking even. Just like the end of the film, violent and terrible, which leaves the viewer stunned, completely flushed by this fury of living.
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Gender : Drama
Director: Lola Quivoron
Duration : 1h45
Distributer : Diamond Films
Exit : September 7, 2022
Summary: Julia lives off small tricks and devotes an all-consuming, almost animal passion to motorcycling. One summer day, she meets a gang of cross-bitumen bikers and infiltrates this clandestine environment, made up mostly of young men. Before an accident weakens his position within the gang…