52 Films by Women Vol 7. 36. RODEO (Director: Lola Quivoron)
Contains spoilers. French director Lola Quiviron’s debut feature, Rodeo , is four-fifths social realist drama, complete with drab lighting and tight camera work, and one-fifth genre movie, climaxing in a heist that the protagonist dreams of pulling off. It is unsatisfying on both counts, introducing for good measure some moments of magic realism – bikers see things that ordinary people do not. Almost held together by a committed lead performance by Julie Ledru as sympathy-testing, cadge everything if I can, bike-stealing, adrenaline-addicted Julia, the film points a sympathetic lens at a road-hogging group of wheelie-spinning first or second-generation immigrant dirt bike riders, known collectively as the B-Mores. Julia, we discover, is a whirlwind of trouble, fleeing a couple of men in an early scene, having broken a door, following the theft of her bike. We aren’t told the full story, but we guess that she thought she knew who stole her bike, kicked a door down to retrieve ...