From writer-director Lola Quivoron comes Rodeo, the story of a tough young woman whose passion for riding motorbikes leads her into a world of criminality and danger. Bringing an authentically-captured French motorbiking subculture to the big screen, Rodeo is both a gritty character study and crime movie that plays like Emily the Criminal, The Place Beyond the Pines, and Fast & Furious.
If life is a rodeo, then Julia (Julie Ledru) is a wild bronco, unable to be tamed. The movie opens with her shooting out of her home as if a starting gun has just been fired. She’s intent on doing just one thing: testing out a new motorbike. After inspecting it from an unsuspecting male seller, she asks for a test drive. Which, she subsequently races off with, her middle finger blazing behind.
This says exactly what we need to know about her. That she’s unstoppable, and only lives life in one direction: forward, and fast. With her oversized shirts and unkept hair, Julia’s clearly not interested in the typical girly world. We soon enough see where she feels most at home: on a motorbike speeding down an open road.
Julia takes her new possession to the local dragstrip, where young bikers fly past her, popping wheelies and tricks that amaze and wrack the nerves. Noticeably, she’s the only woman in this mostly male world. However, the insults that the aggressive crowd of bros hurls her way bounce off of her like a steel engine. When the cops come to bust it up, she scatters away with a new group, taken in by one boy Kaïs (Yannis Lafki). Without a place to sleep, she asks Kaïs and his crew if she can sleep in their garage (like a bike herself).
She soon learns that the crew steals and flips bikes. And it’s under the direction of the ringleader, Domino (Sébastien Schroeder). Fearless and looking for refuge and the opportunity to ride, Julia offers to lend her services of stealing bikes. And so, she does what she does best: tries out bikes, then speeds off leaving unsuspecting men in the dust. The closer she gets to the crew and begins to establish trust, the more she feels like family. It all leads up to a heist, the climax of the movie, that has deadly results.
Rodeo throttles in and out of exhilarating moments, as well as narrative consistency. Particularly the riding sequences, when bikers rev engines that roar and pop wheelies, feel exhilarating. The film also downshifts, into a slower more emotional story. We see that Julia gets closer to her new makeshift criminal family, making for strong emotional moments.
Writer-director Lola Quivoron creates a world that feels real, raw, beautiful, and dangerous. Julia’s world is most compelling when it juxtaposes the dualities mirroring “throttling” and “braking” of riding itself: balancing the fast with the slow; the loud with the quiet; the male with the female; and the peace and danger.
Her relationship with Kaïs has a hint of romance, but it’s the bond that Julia develops with Domino’s wife, Ophélie (Antonia Buresi), and her young son, that is the more compelling, heartfelt relationship. We see how Ophélie is similarly trapped in a world of oppressive males, which Julia notices and bonds over (in a familial, but also suggestively intimate way).
There’s also the storyline of Julia being haunted by a tragic death that takes place earlier on in the film, as well. Nightmares begin to plague her (though to the film’s detriment, not much adds beyond that). With no exposition, Julia’s backstory is a mystery (she literally asks to be called “Unknown” in her heists). It’s as if she herself is a bike without any identifying plates, made of different parts she replaces along her hard-lived journey of life.
As Julia, Julie Ledru is perfect for the role. She’s tough and unafraid to get physical when needed. But she also plays the slower, quieter, emotionally affected moments that the film demands of her as well. It’s here where her face betrays how haunted she is. She can more than hold her own in a world where everyone’s edging her out, but it will soon take its toll.
Raphaël Vandenbussche’s cinematography is beautiful and evocative. Gritty handheld cinematography, composed in ultra-wide format captures the wide frames that the motorbike sequences and film need.
While Rodeo falls into a familiar crime story that didn’t leave me particularly thrilled or roused, the riding sequences themselves are quite exciting. Blazing fast shots take on an ethereal, transcendent feeling. At its fiery end, we understand that for some, riding fast is the only speed that people can live.
1h 45m
