Film Review - Jumbo (2020)

There’s a word for the ion at the centre of Zoe Wittock’s feature debut, Jumbo. And that word is objectophilia – a form of sexual or romantic attraction where the focus is an inanimate object. For the solitary Jeanne (Noemie Merlant), who has a menial job at the local fairground, it’s the latest ride – the main attraction, a mechanical beast covered with neon lights but which hasn’t gone down a storm with the customers. Officially its name is Move It, but for Jeanne it’s Jumbo.

Inspired by Married To The Eiffel Tower, the 2008 documentary which followed a series of women who were in love with large objects, Wittock paints a picture of a shy young woman whose turbulent home life with her mother affects how she reacts to the world outside. The two are polar opposites: the reticent Jeanne, fascinated by neon lights and mechanical objects but who finds it hard to connect with anybody, male or female, and the brassy Margarette (Emmanuelle Bercot), with her constant jokes about orgasms and vibrators and her never-ending search for love after the departure of Jeanne’s father. But all she finds is casual sex – until the arrival of new boyfriend Hubert (Sam Louwyck). At the fairground, Jeanne attracts the attention of her boss, Marc (Bastien Bouillon), who is willing to take things at her snail-like pace but is less accommodating when he discovers her secret love.

It’s an intriguing and offbeat premise and one that Wittock has developed into a concise narrative. Yet it’s all done in the broadest of brush strokes: the essential story is thin and cries out for development, while there’s little sense of any of the characters having a past of any description that would give us more of an insight. There’s a reference to Jeanne “not being normal” well before she worked at the fairground and a momentary discussion about her father, but we need more. The result is that Bercot, while clearly enjoying herself as the mother, is limited to being pushy and vulgar, while Merlant valiantly manages to breathe some life into Jeanne, despite being weighed down by a dodgy wig, baggy clothes and a pseudo-sexual fantasy with little sense of direction. Anybody who saw her in Portrait Of A Lady On Fire will know exactly what she’s capable of and, while this demonstrates her versatility, it doesn’t make the most of her extensive talents.

The majority of the film feels like it’s trapped in a ferris wheel of its own – the lonely young woman in love with the fairground ride, much to the horror her mother and the dismay of her boss, leaving us wondering if they can ever accept her for who she is. We get something close to an answer in a moment that suddenly holds out the promise of the film is going somewhere after all. Jeanne gets some understanding from the most unlikely of sources: Hubert who, despite being of few, gruff words, readily accepts her infatuation. It’s not hurting her, it makes her happy, so what’s the problem? Sadly, the problem is that the scene comes far too late in the film to make any difference, even if the final moments are surprisingly uplifting.

Jumbo has plenty of visual appeal – its flashing neon lights and Jumbo’s sounds immediately hark back to Close Encounters Of The Third Kind – and its underlying “love is where you find it” message will strike a familiar and sympathetic chord. Much of its appeal comes from its intriguing, unconventional premise but it’s continually undermined by the need for something more substantial in its story telling.