Tragedy unites us in a way that maybe it shouldn’t. When you’ve lost someone, it forces you to take stock of what’s left. Those who have passed are on a different journey, while those who remain are left to pick up the pieces.
Eternal Playground simultaneously, is tragic and joyful. Gaspard (Andranic Manet) has recently lost his twin sister Louise in a car accident. Reeling from grief, he reunites with five friends to give Louise a final remembrance in accordance with her last wishes. The group, who had all been excised from each other’s lives, fall back into their familiar pattern.
Think The Big Chill, just with less incestuousness and more hopefulness. From the very beginning of Eternal Playground, we know that these friends, beyond their estrangement, love each other. Emotions will rush over the audience within the first 10 minutes of the film — it presses the emote button hard! With love comes conflict, and we see our group wrestling with the loss of Louise but also the loss of their kinship to each other.
Directors Joseph Rozé and Pablo Cotten, friends who grew up with each other in Paris, put magnificent work into crafting Eternal Playground. The film is primarily set in a middle school with only a handful of characters, but this contained story pulls deep and complex emotions. In one scene, we can be teary as Gaspard and, in the next, we can find humor in the group’s playfulness (after all, these are grown adults that take over a school). By the end of the journey, we are left to wonder about the state of our friends. After a bombshell revelation, will they go their separate ways once and for all or work their way back to each other?
The warmth of Eternal Playground is transmitted through rich photography saturated in sunlight and darkness, as well as beautiful performances. Andranic Manet does an exquisite job of filling Gaspard with wonder and grief until the latter can no longer be contained.
For those looking for a film to tug at the heartstrings, look no further than Eternal Playground.
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