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La Gradiva Movie Trailer HD - Plot synopsis: A Film by Marine Atlan
In Theaters December 18th

In the shadow of Vesuvius, a group of French teenagers on a class trip to Naples grapple with the anxiety and exhilaration of their upcoming high school graduation amid the ancient ruins of Pompeii. Toni (Colas Quignard), adrift and impulsive; his best friend, James (Mitia Capellier-Audat), popular, alluring, and self-possessed; and Suzanne (Suzanne Gerin), an aspiring artist who feels rejected by her peers, contemplate faded frescoes and debate their generation’s aspirations and shortcomings. While their exhausted but motivated teacher Mme. Mercier (Antonia Buresi) attempts to direct their attention to their breathtaking surroundings, the students’ passions and insecurities lead them toward an irreversible fracture.

Winner of the Cannes Critics’ Week Grand Prize, Marine Atlan’s revelatory debut feature imbues the coming-of-age story with a sense of mythic grandeur in this work of classical beauty and overwhelming emotion. Working as her own co-cinematographer, Atlan captures the dizzying contradictions of youth with an almost documentary-like precision.
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Transcript
00:02I really want you to let you act
00:06by the emotion that it gives you,
00:08by looking at your face,
00:14your bodies...
00:23He's a Napolitano.
00:26Can you see it on his face?
00:29Uh...
00:30Oh la la, in Italy, there are three sisters.
00:33But Maurizio, he's not bad.
00:34A little bourré, that's right.
00:43Imagine if a person with you,
00:45you don't respond to me.
00:47I wouldn't say that.
00:49How long have you been teaching?
00:51Less than 20 years.
00:53I'm very tired.
00:55Tony, you can stop there,
00:57to seize all the occasions.
01:04It was also this mystic,
01:07this enthusiasm,
01:08here.
01:08It's something that you...
01:09you're too fibrille.
01:11You don't know how to say it.
01:16Tell me why you're not feeling it.
01:20You don't feel it.
01:30You're alone?
01:31Yes, but it's okay for me.
01:34What do you understand? You're alone in the pool, but today...
01:37Oh no, there's my colleague, she didn't see it.
01:43I'm afraid of you.
01:45You're alone.

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