with “La Pampa”, Antoine Chevrollier explores the frantic race through adolescence

Presented in the Critics’ Week selection, the first feature film by French director Antoine Chevrollier shocked the Cannes audience. “La Pampa” keeps the spectators in suspense thanks to a very beautiful production carried by a formidable team of actors, in particular the two young actors, breathtaking in their truth.

There are films that touch your heart. This is the case of The Pampas, the first feature film directed by Antoine Chevrollier. After having been at the helm of several series (The Legends Office, Oussekine Or Black Baron), he signs here a personal film, powerful and magnificently performed by very committed actors. The film was screened on Monday May 20 as part of Critics’ Week.

The room has barely gone dark when voices invade the black screen. Young boys insult each other, challenge each other, taunt each other nicely, rev the engines. Then the light floods. “Go ahead Jojo, we only have one life!”, says a teenager. Yellow t-shirt, peroxide blonde hair, the Jojo in question is afraid of nothing. He gets on his motorbike and goes headlong against the advice of Willy, his best friend. Purpose of the challenge: run the stop sign which crosses a busy departmental road.

The tone is set. The entire film by Antoine Chevrollier follows destinies that intersect in a village in Maine-et-Loire. So there is this famous Jojo (a leading role played brilliantly by Amaury Foucher) and then, there is Willy (Sayyid el Alami discovered in the series Oussekine).

The first prepares under the guidance of his father (Damien Bonnard) and his trainer (Artus à contre-emploi) the French motocross championship on the village grounds: La Pampa. The second is revising the baccalaureately. If one is sunny and go-getter, the second, marked by the death of his father, is darker and reserved. But these two are united by childhood. An unshakeable friendship, even the day Willy discovers Jojo’s secret. A secret which will nevertheless burst into public view and turn everything upside down.

In this small, typically French town, all the people rub shoulders, all the houses look the same, all social classes are represented. If Antoine Chevrollier’s story follows the journey of these two young boys, it does not diminish the place of the other characters.

“I like that in the narration there is something taciturn around the characters and that an attitude, a look, a piece of clothing can say a lot.”

Antoine Chevrollier

Director of “La Pampa”

There’s Willy’s mother struggling with her two children, spending time with the elderly, and then there’s Marina. A young fine arts student (Léonie Dahan Lamort) visiting her father, but who only wants one thing: to escape from this setting.stuck in the 1950s with rumors, reputations, you have to open your mind”, she says to the boys who question her about her sexual freedom. An innocuous reflection which constitutes the breaking point of the scenario. Because in this world in which virility, patriarchy and conventional patterns are the norm, homosexuality is still taboo.

It was in his childhood village, Longué-Jumelles in Maine-et-Loire, that Antoine Chevrollier chose to set the plot of his first film. “I remembered this place buried in my memory, it was a collection of sensations, noises, sound and visual swarms. I then imagined a story that could be born from this very particular place, a kind of arena motocross”, he says.

However, The Pampas is not an autobiographical film, but rather a life story close to reality. “Originally, although today things have changed, The Pampas is a film that I wanted to dedicate to the people of my childhood, my adolescence and that I wanted to be generous. Generosity is sometimes accused of bad taste. I think we can tie things up.” confides the director.

The magic of The Pampas also lies in the sequences which alternate silences and moments of intense dramaturgy. Thanks to long tracking shots on the Loire, in the countryside, through a train window or in the frenzy of the motocross field, Antoine Chevrollier makes us experience very strong emotions. Filming on its land in the gentleness of Angevin turns out to be a wonderful cinematographic idea.

Gender : Drama

Director: Antoine Chevrollier

Scenario : Antoine Chevrollier, Bérénice Bocquillon

With : Sayyid El Alami, Amaury Foucher, Damien Bonnard, Artus, Léonie Dahan-Lamort, Florence Jarnas

Country : France

Duration : 1h43

Exit : Current 2024

Synopsis: Willy and Jojo are childhood friends and never leave each other’s side. To kill boredom, they train at La Pampa, a motocross field. One evening, Willy discovers Jojo’s secret.