Picture of the movie La croisade (The crusade) © Shanna Besson / Why Not Productions
Louis Garrel dreams up a youth-led crusade to counter climate change
Following on from A Faithful Man (L’Homme fidèle, 2018), Louis Garrel’s third feature film reunites Laetitia Casta and Joseph Engel in a comedy that draws on dreamscapes and utopia to tackle one of the most pressing issues of our times: young people’s fight for climate change.
Abel (Louis Garrel) and Marianne (Laetitia Casta) are parents to thirteen-year-old Joseph (Joseph Engel). One day, they discover their son has been selling some of the family’s belongings to fund a mysterious project – and he isn’t working alone. Hundreds of other children like him have secretly come together with a single mission in mind: saving the planet.
The starting point for La Croisade (The Crusade) came from writer and screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière who brought the idea to Louis Garrel’s attention. The pair had already collaborated on A Faithful Man (L’Homme Fidèle). Louis Garrel was hesitant at first, feeling the idea lacked weight. Three months later, he changed his mind after seeing the hunger strike against governments’ passivity in the face of climate change, led by teen activist Greta Thunberg in Sweden.
As in A Faithful Man (L’Homme fidèle), Louis Garrel shares the screen with Laetitia Casta and Joseph Engel, serving up a light-hearted, dialectical and uplifting comedy that he pointedly keeps away from any sense of activism. Visually, the filmmaker draws the camera in, getting up close and personal with both the narrative and characters to take on the perspective of an adult gaining awareness of the scale of the situation.
