La Gradiva follows the culmination of a group of French students’ time in high school as they mentally prepare for their next steps during a trip to Pompeii and Naples, Italy. The film explores multiple students’ inner lives, their desires, and how those desires shape the way they view their own particular futures.
This first aspect of the film is executed very well on the page, as the film does a good job of giving us details about these characters, often through action, motivated choices, and interesting scenes that move the plot forward and increase the dramatic tension that seems to be brewing between different pairs of characters.
The film is very nicely shot, giving you the impression that it is the work of a film camera looking at people from the past. It is a fitting choice, given how the film explores each character’s recent or more distant family past to inform who they are and the choices they make.
Some moments are quite clearly scenes included and written simply to give us more information about a character, but they feel honest enough that you can accept what they are doing. One character in particular is very sad, and I wish the film gave him some moments of joy or hope, but it rarely seems to give him even one. The entire time, the things he experiences just seem to beat him down. While that journey is interesting, it would have been interesting to add more dimension to a key protagonist, or even to see him built up before being brought down.
The film features some excellent, academically inclined dialogue scenes in group settings, where the most dramatic statements are made by key characters as tensions boil over and reveal their true frustrations, frustrations they have to air out in front of their classmates.
La Gradiva is playing at TIFF ’26. For more information, click here.
