It feels both banal and inevitable to draw a comparison between Félix de Givry’s directorial feature debut “Goodbye Cruel World,” which closes Critics’ Week at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, and Mia Hansen-Løve’s “Eden.” Back in 2014, that anticlimactic epic about an unassuming young man whose early promise as a DJ comes to virtually nothing—the Llewyn Davis to Daft Punk’s Bob Dylan—introduced de Givry, actor, to the international film world in a quietly powerful fashion. To this day, the mere evocation of his name is enough to stir up feelings of heartbreak; somewhere in the distance, the sad French robots are still singing. That de Givry all but disappeared from our screens after this immaculately soundtracked turn has only added to the film’s poignancy in the intervening years. It is particularly moving, then, to find that this lingering sensation of loss and regret echoes through de Givry’s own directorial effort, which also marks his return to our radar.
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To be clear, de Givry has not been absent from cinema for 12 years: besides roles as unnamed characters in a handful of French productions, he has been working as a producer, most notably on last year’s “Arco,” nominated for the 2025 Best Animated Feature Oscar. But “Eden” might have suggested a more visible presence, and the fact remains that “Goodbye Cruel World” is about a teenager who wants to disappear. Early on, 14-year-old Otto (Milo Machado-Graner) is seen posting dozens of copies of a letter he wrote, explaining why he is going away: he is being bullied at school and has had enough. The film’s 16mm cinematography by Tara-Jay Bangalter—son of Thomas Bangalter, himself one half of Daft Punk—gives the film a sense of unvarnished realism suited to this somber situation. Still, it is also warm and tactile, invitingly textured rather than coarse. And though Otto’s village is nestled in a harsh, mountainous landscape, its small size and picturesque beauty also evoke the spirit of fairy tales.
“Goodbye Cruel World” opens on a dreamy, slow pan over the town at night, house lights twinkling in the distance like so many stars as Arnaud Toulon’s lullaby-like theme emerges on the delicate soundtrack. After a while, though, the camera breaks its calm movement to zoom in on poor Otto as he stumbles through the dark, just about outrunning his bullies. Fairytales, de Givry knows, are often stories of violence, too.
Softening the blow and kindly keeping us at some gentle remove from the protagonist’s distress are the dulcet tones of Françoise Lebrun’s voiceover narration. From the outset, she reassures us that she will tell this story starting from the end, meaning from Otto’s despair. Better things, the honey-voiced storyteller tells us, are yet to come.
It is a delicate dance that de Givry and co-writer Marie-Stéphane Imbert thus initiate, balancing at all times between suggestions of bottomless sadness—of a kind unfathomable to most—and an appealing, at times almost swoon-worthy lightness. That Otto’s pain is never dismissed, or even patronizingly minimized, is moving in itself. Since he tells no one about his ordeal, no character bothers him with useless platitudes about how things will surely get better. Neither does Lebrun’s narration: embodying the film’s formal and narrative approach, she observes, without moralizing or any pretense of understanding what the young protagonist is going through. That patience and trust likewise make us viewers feel in safe hands.
We are never shown the violence and humiliation Otto has endured; here, Machado-Graner’s performance does all the talking. Revealed in Justine Triet’s Palme d’Or-winner “Anatomy of a Fall” in 2023, the young actor communicates Otto’s despair largely through the slightly awkward and uncertain way he occupies the very town where he grew up, and which should feel to him like home. Indeed, after a failed and immediately regretted suicide attempt by drowning, Otto ends up hiding just at the edge of town, a few miles away from the loved ones and strangers now desperately searching for him. Discovered by Lena (Jane Beever), a girl from school, one night while he is foraging through bins for food, he camps out in an empty room inside her mother’s humble motel.
There, the film momentarily treads more familiar terrain as Otto and Lena, united by his secret, soon grow fond of one another. For a time, it seems their relationship might devolve into a miniature version of a conventional, patriarchal marriage, with Lena settling a little too comfortably into her caring role. But the film does not ultimately turn their idyll into a metaphor for what grown-ups have to go through; and while this could have been a more original direction, what de Givry offers instead is altogether more sincere and touching. The film turns toward Lena, who finds in Otto a purpose, an outlet for all the love and attention she has to give.
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Even as his two young protagonists go through this unusual experience, de Givry resists the temptation to make them larger than life: their emotions and longings are touchingly simple. Though they exist in a bubble away from the rest of the world, that reality never truly leaves the frame, and their happiness is of an ordinary kind. When the bubble bursts, it doesn’t feel tragic or even unfair, but logical—even Otto and Lena knew that moment was coming. But there is also a feeling that, by the time it happens, the two teenagers will be able to endure whatever life throws their way. The watchful and respectful eye that de Givry’s camera has cast over them from the start, they’ve now cast upon one another. [A]
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