Departure

Andrew Steggall’s deft and delicate drama about a teenage dreamer who falls for the rough beauty of a local boy while staying in France.

Elliot (Alex Lawther) is a wispy dreamer who, with his mother Beatrice (Juliet Stevenson), is packing up their French country house in preparation to sell it. At the local village car where he writes poetry, he eyes up the rough beauty of local boy Clément, who works on his motorbike. Clément is as natural as Elliot is awkward and they strike up an unlikely friendship.

Longing, loneliness, nostalgia for a sense of family that may have never existed permeate this delicate first feature from British debut director Andrew Steggall. It’s a fine, elegantly crafted debut with Alex Lawther (X+Y, The Imitation Game) impressing as a major British star in the making.