Drifting Laurent (2025) Movie Drinking Game
Take a Drink: for every strange interpersonal interaction
Take a Drink: for photographs
Take a Drink: for goats and talk of goats
Do a Shot: for each call by his sister
By: Henry J. Fromage (Two Beers) –
Cannes may be where many of, if not most of the biggest titles in the Awards season conversation debut, but it hasn’t ceded its place as the premiere festival for all the domestic film France has to offer.
Drifting Laurent follows the titular Laurent as he, well, drifts through life, and eventually to a bucolic French mountain town populated with a real cast of characters.
A Toast
From the beginning, director Anton Balekdjian’s very tongue in cheek tone is apparent. He bolsters the halting speech and long silences of his cast as they feel each other out with idiosyncratic, often quite wide framing, creating an environment of droll oddity for his characters to navigate and interact with each other in.
The gorgeous setting is an interesting contrast to the tone, but it’s a mix that’s strangely enrapturing. In many ways Balekdjian’s work here reminded me of Alain Guiraudie, and not just the fluid sexuality of Laurent. This is a story of youthful ennui; it soon becomes clear nobody really has any idea of what they’re doing- his seemingly more put together older sister is just as directionless, and those he encounters in the town also struggle to communicate what they want. Perhaps this is why the connections he does start to make with them become so heartwarming, especially as they build to a strong ending that leaves you on a beautifully humanistic note.
A last shoutout to the soundtrack in general, and the usage of Manu Chao in particular.
Beer Two
More than once I had to think to myself, “where is this going?” Like Laurent, the plot drifts along, and it sometimes feels like it’s being weird for weird’s sake.
Verdict
Drifting Laurent is an oddly comedic film about a young man drifting his way across a mountain town and finding unexpected community there.
