“Morlaix”: a teenage love triangle set against a backdrop of mourning in Brittany

With Morlaix, in theaters April 15, Spanish filmmaker Jaime Rosales sets his story amidst grief, desire, and memories on the coast of Finistère. The film follows Gwen, a high school student still reeling from her mother's death, whose equilibrium is shaken by the arrival of Jean-Luc, a young Parisian who disrupts her relationship with Thomas, her lifelong love. Starring Aminthe Audiard and Samuel Kircher, this romantic drama portrays adolescence as a territory of uncertainty, where emotions take center stage.

A story of love and loss set in Brittany.

The film initially centers on a love triangle, but it quickly transcends this single motif. Around Gwen, it also explores themes of coming of age, the attachment to a city one sometimes dreams of leaving, the weight of grief, and the fear of future choices. Morlaix views these pivotal years as a time when everything seems decisive, yet nothing is truly settled.

Jaime Rosales films this story like a memory returning in fragments. The narrative unfolds through the memories of adult Gwen, played by Mélanie Thierry, progressing in discontinuous bursts, sometimes blurry, sometimes clearer. This structure lends the film a melancholic tone, as if all that youth now exists only through incomplete images, reworked by time.

A film of sensations, somewhere between experimentation and nostalgia.

Morlaix also stands out for its highly stylized form. The director alternates between black and white, color, film, and different image formats, as if to vary the very texture of memories. This aesthetic choice reinforces the idea of ​​a fragmented past, marked by emotional states rather than certainties. The Breton town, its beaches, cliffs, streets, and silences, become much more than a backdrop: it is the film's mental space.

This film may be as captivating as it is disconcerting. Highly dialogue-driven and often contemplative, it favors hesitation, conversation, and inner reflection over pure action. It claims a kinship with a certain sentimental and literary cinema, where romance is conveyed through words as much as through glances. At over two hours long, Morlaix requires viewers to enter into its rhythm, but it also establishes a truly unique and immersive atmosphere, brought to life by two young actors who imbue this love story with a perfectly balanced fragility.