Just like people, contraptions can be a lot more beautiful and complicated than they seem on the surface. But have you heard of anyone who has literally fallen in love with a Tilt-A-Whirl attraction before? Starring one of world cinema’s newest breakout stars, Noémie Merlant, who gave one of the finest performances of 2019 in Céline Sciamma’s ephemeral romance, “Portrait of a Lady on Fire,” Zoé Wittock’s debut film “Jumbo,” and its revolving rings of neon color, bringing new meaning to the term “toxic relationship.”
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Jeanne (a meek and timid Merlant) is barely comfortable in her own skin, overwhelmed by everyday anxieties, fearful that everyone around is always staring at her like a freakshow. Her sex-positive mother (Emmanuelle Bercot) endearingly calls her “sugar puss,” when shuttling her to work, picking up garbage with a tonged pincher at a theme park by day, and scrubbing the grease off the rickety rides when the sun goes down at night. One of her co-workers jests that talking to Jeanne is like calling an answering machine, she seems so removed from reality.
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Shinning the dirty bulbs of the park’s newest machine one night, the attraction seemingly comes to life. The lights turn on automatically, the ride beckoning at Jeanne with some luminosity Morse code alongside the soulful rust of a mechanized whale call (which we’re never given express evidence that anyone can hear but her). Deliriously drawn to a thrill-seeker’s apparatus, Jeanne sits inside of one of the arm pods, receiving an intimate experience, naming her soon-to-be significant other, Jumbo.
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Jeanne has always had a closer connection with gizmos and gadgets than actual human beings, retreating to her safe space and tinkering together mini versions of theme park attractions to muffle out all the sounds of moaning and banging coming from her mother’s bedroom. These sexual hiccups point to a dark event in her past, something she’s long been repressing, something that the living room strobe lights, and her mother’s late-night hook-ups, continually remind her of. When Jeanne decides to bravely tell her mom about the close connection she’s sparked with Jumbo, she reacts as you might expect, maintaining that something must be wrong with her daughter’s ability to love.
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And so begins 2020’s first art house, fairy tale romance, that of a damaged girl and a rusty theme park ride. Wittock’s well-meaning movie works as a metaphor for perceived standards of sexual normalcy, and many of the intimate struggles faced by those who don’t subscribe to heteronormative behavior. You desperately want to have sympathy for Jeanne, but that becomes a tad difficult when such a silly concept is treated so self-seriously. Viewers don’t learn much about her character outside vague traumatic backstory, which is slowly parsed out over the course of the movie. The film never really justifies the strangeness of its love angle with any kind of real-world believability, and it doesn’t have the B-movie genre bend that benefited the ludicrous nature of a project like “The Shape of Water.”
Not having a dialog forward script, “Jumbo” relies mostly on film form, Wittock using the undeniable strength of ethereal audio/visual synergy to possess the audience into an altered state in which sensory pleasure is all that matters. The score and cinematography are uniformly outstanding, synth notes and piano percussion swaying between atmospheres: soothing, ominous, and euphorically orgasmic. The bucket of bolts sound mix paired with the enraptured cinematography — coming to life every time Jumbo lights up at night — forms a cacophony of splendor, but does so without ever earning it, like going straight to great sex before getting to know much about the person you’ve brought to bed.
With such stirring imagery, it’s hard to not get caught up in the claws of “Jumbo’s” arms during these “romantic” sequences, but like the exciting beginning to any relationship, sweeping the audience’s physical senses off their feet only sustains the magic for so long. Frankly, outside these scenic outliers, the movie is just not weird enough, considering the goofy grimy conceit, and its approach to tackling serious mental health issues has similar problems as “Swiss Army Man” — undaunted by judgment but valuing saccharine acceptance above genuine communication, putting minor effort into correcting the dismissive assumptions that may be made by certain audience members due to the drab humor. One abstract sequence teeters on turning into actual body horror, a scene which feels like a pulsating inverse of “Under the Skin’s” surrealist tar pit trappings, Jeanne being engulfed by the blinding white light of a subjective, celestial temple, finding herself slathered in black oil. Where is the rest of that movie?!
But thrill rides are only scary to some people, just like striking out when checking out a romantic prospect. Merlant completely commits to a role that might produce little empathy in lesser hands, but “Jumbo” doesn’t have enough narrative substance, supernatural or otherwise, to function as a humanitarian genre slice, and it’s too withdrawn to impress regular indie filmgoers with its oddly rugged demeanor. Wittock’s movie can seem devoid of meaning as it wrenches for resonance through a wraith-like vision that only comes alive in a vacuum. As an embodiment of existential anxiety, it’s often effective, but other than stunning composition work and a few blips of vibrant harmony, it’s largely empty as a romance. [C]
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