"Departure" is another of those precious coming-of-age films that the British or the French, in particular, tend to do rather well, this one being British but set in France where Juliet Stevenson and her teenage son Alex Lawther have come to sell the family's holiday home. Young Lawther, (twenty when the film was made but looking much younger), is also discovering his sexuality and it isn't girls he appears to be interested in, so when he spies a slightly older French boy on a bridge, his hormones start working overtime. Rather awkwardly, when Juliet meets him she, too, is drawn to him.
Beautifully photographed, intelligently written and directed by Andrew Steggall, whose first feature this is, and very nicely acted, "Departure" is one of those films you feel churlish criticizing, rather like throwing stones at a nun and I suppose you could say that in its own way it is absolutely perfect, perfect and lifeless and more than a little contrived. Since young Alex wants to be a writer you wonder how much of it may be autobiographical but if it is, what a dull coming-of-age Steggall must have had; you keep waiting and waiting for something to happen and when it does, it's a case of so-what. This is the kind of art-house film Joanna Hogg makes, which may be a recommendation to some and an anathema to others. As I said, it's 'precious'.
