Lola and the Sea (2019)

“Lola”, or “Lionel” as her dad would have it, has returned home uninvited for the wake of her late mother. Bluntly, “Philippe” (Benoît Magimel) wants nothing to do with his offspring and so sends her packing. Despondent, she (Mya Boolaers) waits until he has gone out and then breaks in to take one last look around her home and also, more incidentally, acquires the urn with her mum’s ashes in it. Of course it doesn’t take long for him to realise where they are but after a tussle he agrees that she can accompany him to the familial seaside home where they can spread the ashes over the water. What now ensues sees us take a road trip with a difference with both starting out despising the other, but then beginning a realisation that neither of their entrenched positions are going to help one or the other. No, this isn’t a predicable effort that all ends in cuddles and champagne as both of these actors and some pithy writing invite us to consider just what our priorities might be in the face of grief, when the relationship is already well cemented into quite a toxic bedrock of misunderstanding and loathing. The fact that “Lola” is about to undergo her transitional surgery adds an extra layer of complexity to the story, but even without that this is still quite a resonating tale of a father/child relationship that has festered and been neglected because for both parties, that might actually have been the easier short-term solution. It’s not just “Lola” who is having issues with identity here and both Magimel and the impressive Bollaers deliver something more substantial than soapy here.