Ari Film Review: A Dissection of Empathy

Léonor Serraille’s Ari lets us tag along with the titular character as he experiences life and comes into himself through human connection.

Andranic Manet breathes life into Ari, the protagonist of Serraille’s coming-of-age drama about a young man developing a better understanding of adulthood and his place in the world. The film drops us into Ari’s life in the middle of a primary school class, where he is a teacher in training. After collapsing during a class inspector’s visit, Ari leaves his job and gets kicked out of the house by his disappointed father. With his future uncertain and nowhere to sleep, Ari has no other option but to reach out to old friends, most of whom he has lost touch with. As he revives the relationships in his life, Ari learns a thing or two about who he is and who he wants to be.

Ari is a film that can easily be classified under the mumblecore genre. An entire chunk of moviegoers somewhere out there will not hesitate to say that this is a movie in which nothing really happens. However, if you know where to look, there’s a lot bubbling up under the surface. A specific kind of refined artistry is required to realize a piece of realism that knows it doesn’t need to be anything more. With confidence and warmth, Serraille delivers a character-driven story by carefully handling its fragile emotional core and preserving it between the lines of the naturally flowing dialogue.

The free-roaming structure of Ari is dictated by the protagonist’s aimless day-to-day as he alternates between traveling places and catching up with forgotten friends. The organic conversations are impressively snappy, clever, spitting existential truths at high velocities. Ari shares a sort of individual intimacy with each person he meets. Despite his lostness and shortcomings, he has his own way with people. With every dialogue-heavy sequence, you learn a little more about Ari’s compassionate worldview and values, which brings you closer to him and to uncovering what he’s been right and wrong about. 

Ari is not a traditional leading man, in the sense that he never lets go of his softness and vulnerability for the sake of abiding by more conventional standards of masculinity. You see the protagonist’s resilience through his conflicts with his father or with his childhood buddy Jonas (Théo Delezenne), who suppresses plenty of issues behind his facade. In a more classic narrative, the character’s journey would involve them breaking out of the hard shell the world has forced them into. In Ari, the focus is entirely elsewhere: on reconnecting with yourself through shared experiences. The character’s quest is for a meaningful existence that doesn’t just boil down to survival or holding on.

The tools of cinema are utilized to emphasize this curiosity and thirst for life in a way that gives more freedom to the actors to explore their characters. At no point does Serraille’s choice of shooting with a 16mm film camera feel like it’s weighing the film down. On the contrary, it further enhances the rawness of the experience; we watch from up close and personal as the actors are present and infuse their performances with an improvisational tone. 

The lack of anchoring in the French coming-of-age story gives the audience, along with Ari, space to reach their own personal epiphany to take home after the credits roll. There’s a clear message diligently embedded throughout this comforting compilation of conversations between young people, who are all looking for their own salvation: life always has a way of granting you the time you need to learn whatever it is you need to learn, how to navigate humanity, and how to find your way.

Ari (2025) premiered at the Berlin Film Festival on February 15-22, 2025. Read our Berlin Film Festival reviews!