Spring Blossom (Suzanne Lindon, 2020)

One of the films that apparently would have been featured in Un Certain Regard if Cannes 2020 had actually happened, Spring Blossom (aka Seize printemps) is an impressive enough debut film from 20-year-old Suzanne Lindon. The director has talent, and some good ideas, and is likely to go on to much more impressive things from here. But there are significant problems in Spring Blossom, and it's a bit too early to proclaim wunderkind status regarding this filmmaker. One doesn't want to grade on a curve, mind you, but Lindon is a young woman who has virtually every cinematic tool at her disposal, given that she's the daughter of Vincent Lindon and Sandrine Kiberlain. Even Xavier Dolan, one could argue, had a tougher time getting his nascent career off the ground than she does.

If this seems unfair, it's worth considering that Lindon, being the scion she is, goes into the business with considerably more filmic knowledge than other directors her age. In the bedroom of her character, Suzanne, Lindon has placed a prominent poster from Pialat's À nos amours, which functions as the sort of name-check we're used to seeing from Tarantino and Gaspar Noé. There are certain aspects of Spring Blossom that mirror Pialat's masterwork -- Suzanne is a young girl of 16 who is forming her own identity, and her relationship with her father (Frédéric Pierrot), while not particularly contentious, is not providing Suzanne with something she clearly needs.

If there is a somewhat straightforward cinematic approach in Spring Blossom that carries slight hints of Pialat, Lindon is not content to leave it strictly within that realm. Once Suzanne meets the 35-year-old actor Raphaël (BPM's Arnaud Valois) and begins a tentative relationship with him, Lindon introduces incongruous touches of the fantastic, mostly having to do with coordinated, dancerly movements inside otherwise realistic scenes. Hal Hartley's Godard homages come to mind, although it's more likely Lindon's immediate point of reference is Leos Carax.

Unfortunately, these breaks into expressive movement are the only idea Lindon has, and she leans heavily on this idea throughout Spring Blossom's brief running time.  Obviously Lindon understands that her film, which is basically a short character sketch, requires some cinematic elements to balance its essentially literary tenor. But even for such a short feature, she's quickly stuck in a rut. Her decision to depict this morally ambiguous semi-relationship with no judgment is admirable, but it also leaves Spring Blossom with a bit too much negative space. Lindon does not yet know quite how to fill it. Nevertheless, this is a very promising first outing, and unlike so many young filmmakers, Lindon will have no problem moving on from this debut into a substantial career.