Farewell cruel world: A marvel of initiatory story (review)

With this story of the escape of a harassed schoolboy, Félix de Givry, the co-writer of Arco signs a beautiful and intelligent first film at the height of an adolescence in need of guidance and affection.

Sibylline title of Félix de Givry’s first feature. With these three words charged with death, evocation of a romantic renunciation, of a deadly spleen, the young director – revealed as an actor in Mia Hansen-Løve (Eden) and rediscovered as a screenwriter and producer in the credits of Arco – makes the manifesto of a life drive. It is in reality rather in the name of its protagonist that the program of the film is found: “Otto”, “prosperity”; “Vidal”, “which is linked to life”.

Otto Vidal was 14 years old when he sent a suicide letter to his tormentors, classmates who, under cover of night, tracked their prey to the point of exhaustion. The boy who spends his time running prefers to jump off a bridge. When he emerges from the river, leather jacket dripping, he is unharmed. Divine intervention, baptism by immersion, Christ rebirth. Here begins his flight, from one hiding place to another; drifts to the margins of a world in which he no longer believes – and which, however, personified by a grieving mother and by the fierce red-headed Léna with whom he is infatuated, absolutely seeks to bring him back to his shore.

A diversion from the film-testament, an initiatory story whose universality shines through in a film grain blurring temporal boundaries and in the almost absence of modern technologies, Farewell Cruel World resonates with the burning news of a suffering adolescence. We read it in the melancholy of the big blue eyes of the young and brilliant Milo Machado-Graner (Anatomy of a Fall), in the abrupt, almost primitive manners of the revelation Jane Beever, too. And the two lovers discover, through a look whose candor remains somewhat preserved, that in this world of brutes and disappointments, there is still a little hope.

By Félix de Givry. With Milo Machado Grader, Jane Beever, Emmanuelle Destremau… Duration: 1h33. Released September 9, 2026