Caravan (2025) Movie Drinking Game
Take a Drink: for hands
Take a Drink: for evidence of concerning behavioral issues
Take a Drink: for prejudice
Do a Shot: for water
By: Henry J. Fromage (Two Beers) –
One thing you’ll never see a shortage of across Cannes’ various competition slates are films assaying the current state of the European continent, often via portraits of people living on its societal margins.
Caravan is one such film, following a Czech mother who decides to travel Italy in a dilapidated camper with her teenaged son with Down’s Syndrome after they are asked to leave by friends they’d been staying with due to his often violent outbursts. On the road, however, they meet a fellow countrywoman drifter who brings something missing in both of their lives.
A Toast
Zuzana Kirchnerova demonstrates an eye for small details and a gift for capturing a tactile quality of the world on film in her feature-length directorial debut. Ester (Anna Geislerová) is the center of the film, a woman used to denying herself to care for her child’s all-consuming needs. Kirchnerova doesn’t coddle the audience- dealing with her son is no easy task, especially as he gets older and stronger.
The younger female hitchhiker brings some new facets to this mother/son relationship, a bright ray of light for them both, who each need a perspective and a listening ear outside of their long-established dynamic. She allows Ester to venture out on her own, perhaps for the first time in years. She finds work, but this being modern Europe, with blighted economics like much of the world, it’s a job ferrying immigrants to fields alongside a younger man who wakes something else up in her- sensuality from and particularly for a woman who’s gone too long without.
Beer Two
This is a film that takes its sweet time developing its plot and characters. Arguably it never quite does for the young man that propels much of it. He’s essentially non-verbal (but he can whistle!), and his arc is pretty much just ‘he gets less violent’. While no two people are of course the same, there’s no dearth of films that show actors with Downs are capable of so much more.
Verdict
Caravan is a film about a mother and son trekking Italy’s backroads, an elongated vacation that will likely be the last of its kind for them.
