My Friend Gourdon

The scouts

A film built on festival constraints shouldn't work—therapist, mandated line, pumpkin—but Boulton's refusal to wink at the absurdity is exactly the move that makes it land; most directors would've buried the seams, and that's precisely why they wouldn't've gotten it right.

Boulton demonstrates formal restraint in threading mandatory elements into emotional coherence, placing this modest piece in lineage with constraint-based cinema that trusts the viewer's intelligence—the pumpkin becomes an object of tender specificity rather than contrivance.

The decision to let the therapist's presence recede into the margins while keeping the relationship at the story's core—that's the small choice that transforms what could've been a checklist into something that actually breathes.