Alternative Therapies
This could be the most European at-risk youth rehabilitation drama to ever European.
Santiago: The Camino Therapy
Director: Yann Samuell • Writer: Yann Samuell, based on the book by Bernard Ollivier
Starring: Alexandra Lamy, Julien Le Berre, Maëlle Vidou, Eric Métayer
France • 1hr 53mins
Opens Hong Kong August 27 • IIB
Grade: B
Fred (Alexandra Lamy) is one of those messy women whose life is utter chaos. She’s in the midst of a divorce she doesn’t seem to want, her daughter Nina (Eve Naya) hates her and can’t wait to get the hell away to university. La pièce de résistance is a suspension from work as a public school teacher when, in a fit of rage, she slapped a pain-in-the-ass student. Meanwhile, aspiring rapper Adam (relative newcomer Julien Le Berre) copes with his fears of abandonment and isolation by being a total dick and petty thug from the comfort of a group home. His acting out lands him in a young offenders courtroom, where he’s given the choice of real jail time – or completing the 800-kilometre Camino de Santiago, a trek from his home in southern France to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. He opts for the hike, and is told he’ll be escorted by Fred, who’s latched onto the alternative youth rehab organisation that runs the walk as a way to rehab herself.
Such is the entirety of writer-director Yann Samuell’s Santiago: The Camino Therapy (Compostelle), an optimistic rendering of the tried and true, redemption and renewal through physical exertion drama: Wild, Tracks, Apex. True, Samuell helmed the American remake of My Sassy Girl, but he’s also waded into trauma on more than one occasion, with a particular affinity for orphans. Jamais sans toi, Louna was about a couple fighting the state to regain custody of their abused infant, Sauver Lisa was about a teacher who kidnapped one of her abused students, and La guerre des Lulus followed four First World War orphans running from the German army.
Next up, Dune Messiah
Samuell’s tooth-shattering earnestness is what makes him the perfect technician for material like Santiago’s. Based on the book by veteran French journalist and founder of the Seuil Association – which runs a hiking programme just like this – Bernard Ollivier the film is first and foremost a nearly two-hander about Fred and Adam’s personal growth, reckonings and resets. They walk, they bristle, he calls her awful names, she ignores him (she’s a borderline terrible chaperone), they argue like mad, storm off and reunite. Kudos to Samuell for letting each of them be imperfect and occasionally petty over the course of the three months they’re supposedly on this road (more on that in a bit). Fred’s believable DGAF middle-age resignation get the better of her sometimes, which is matched by Adam’s confidence she’ll be just like every other “wise” elder that left him to flounder alone – which he papers over with hostile bluster. He does it to Estella (Maëlle Vidou) too, a pretty (duh) amputee they meet on the road. Fortunately Lamy and Le Berre – who gives off massive Timothée Chalament energy with the added frisson of actually being French – pull off a nice dynamic; it’s great to see her give as good as she gets, and they end up comfortable inter-generational friends rather than rote surrogate mother and son. Does the walk cure society’s ills? Probably not, no matter how Samuell and Ollivier might want it to, but the fantasy it may help these two people is better than the alternative.
Now, I have to say it. Three months on this road would probably make me a better person with a brighter worldview too. A lot of the heavy narrative lifting, especially from a simple watchability standpoint, is done by Santiago’s location shooting and the widescreen images – the action starts in Academy ratio before going cinemascope when they hit the road – DOP Vincent Gallot would have to be totally inept to fuck up. One of the world’s great pilgrimages, the Camino de Santiago/the Way of St James/la Compostelle runs from various parts of Europe over breathtaking, sun- and vineyard-dappled land and through medieval villages to its final destination (not that kind in Galicia, and its 13th century cathedral. Supposedly the burial spot of one of Jesus’s boys, apostle Saint James the Great. Nonetheless Samuell does manage to make Fred and Adam’s trek spiritual without being Catholic, even if he can’t quite shake the travelogue vibe. Just as well, because without the eye candy Santiago: The Camino Therapy is a TV movie about a mopey white boy who raps. This way it’s at least engaging enough to make some of us ponder how to address at-risk youth, justice reform emotional maturity. That, and next year’s vacation.