Cannes Review: Felix Van Groeningen & Charlotte Vandermeesch’s ‘The Eight Mountains’
deadline.comAfter breaking out internationally in 2012 with his Oscar-nominated drama The Broken Circle Breakdown, and making his Hollywood debut in 2018 with Beautiful Boy, Felix van Groeningen makes his Competition debut in Cannes with The Eight Mountains, perhaps the most understated film of his career so far.
This is a gentle tale of a decades-spanning friendship that seems a little out of its depth in such a heavyweight showcase. With terrific cinematography and two engaging leads, it’s easy on the eye — as well it should be at two hours and 27 minutes — but it’s lackluster in its telling and pales next to Paolo Sorrentino’s The Hand of God, which covered similar themes of adolescence and young adulthood last awards season.
A French-Italian-Belgian co-production, Eight Mountains (Le Otto Montagne) might have been placed more sensitively at Venice, where it would arguably have faced less scrutiny.
Regardless of festival play, however, it comes with a ready-made audience, being adapted from the 2016 bestseller by Paolo Cognetti.
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