Pierfrancesco Favino stars in 'Enzo', a coming-of-age film opening Cannes Quinzaine

The film 'Enzo', directed by Robin Campillo and posthumously completing Laurent Cantet's project, opened the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs at Cannes 78. A France-Italy co-production involving Lucky Red, it stars Pierfrancesco Favino as the father of the teenage protagonist. The film explores adolescent love, parent-child relationships, the art of drawing, and subtly references the war in Ukraine. Favino describes the film as lucid and necessary, questioning progressivism and bourgeois identity. The story follows Enzo, a practical boy who works as a bricklayer and loves drawing, contrasting with his university professor father, engineer mother, and model-student brother. Enzo's silent attraction to an older heterosexual coworker, Vlad, drives the narrative. Campillo noted a creative disagreement with Cantet on the nature of Enzo's desire: Cantet saw fluid sexuality, while Campillo viewed it as discovering a new libidinal side through the fantasy of a foreign worker. The film deliberately avoids a coming-out narrative, focusing instead on a desire for a comrade in the face of present uncertainty.