Juste moi et toi
2019 · 22m · Canada
Directed by Sandrine Brodeur-Desrosiers
Genres: coming-of-age, drama
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
Told entirely from her perspective, eight-year-old Eva's demand for a trip to the beach with her father becomes a slow-paced dramatization of the end of her childhood.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A coming-of-age film told from a child's POV that actually *resists* the sentimental epiphany — instead it just sits in the ordinary weight of wanting your parent's attention. It's quietly subversive in refusing to resolve anything, which is either brilliant or glacial depending on your patience for French pacing.
Brodeur-Desrosiers stakes this film entirely on the formal discipline of sustained subjective perspective and the editing restraint that allows small moments to accumulate into genuine melancholy; it's a film conscious of its debt to the Dardenne tradition while finding its own register in childhood ennui.
The entire emotional architecture hangs on the decision to hold Eva's face in medium shots without reaction shots of her father—we only get what she sees, which means his indifference becomes a presence through absence, and that single structural choice is what makes this sting.
Reviews
All she wanted was to go to the beach. As innocent as that demand might seem, it was set to change her life forever.