Motorbikes are the new horses and not exactly legal motocross races and stunts are the new rodeos. In this film, Julie Ledru is Julia, a woman with a hard shell and no fear, marked by her passion for motorcycles, their speed, and the feeling of freedom they provide. But the ultra-masculine world of the Paris suburbs that Julia wants to inhabit requires increasingly risky tests and her place in this community is not an easy one to secure.
Rodeo is Lola Quivoron’s first feature film made in a universe that she is totally familiar with, a continuation of her short film Au Loin Baltimore (IndieLisboa 2017), influenced among others by De bruit et de fureur by Jean-Claude Brisseau. Awarded at the last Cannes Film Festival, being the favourite of the Un certain regard selection, Rodeo is a whole vocabulary, poetry, but above all, it’s a slap in the face. A burst of cinematic instinct, of a reel moment, that smells of gasoline the whole time and sharpens the senses. It smells like fire, and it’s the incandescent camera that burns with the bitumen, filmed for real, like never before, in CinemaScope urban western style. Inflamed cinema madness, incendiary madness of emotions. True radical bias from a formal point of view, it is also deep down an immense audacity, never provocative or complacent to make our anti-heroes that are part of this gang beautiful. They are raw, fire in their eyes, oil in their veins. (Mickaël Gaspar)
