Enzo Film Review: Adolescent Soul Searching

While Enzo is an impactful story about a young outsider’s coming of age, its resolution leaves audiences just as lost as its titular character.

At 16 years old, Enzo (Eloy Pohu) has dropped out of the education system to take part in a masonry apprenticeship. He works by day as a bricklayer, assisting a weathered construction crew in building a new house. After working his blue-collar job all day, he returns to his parents’ house, a chic villa overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. 

Enzo’s older brother is studying to get into one of the top universities in Paris while his parents enjoy the fruits of their labor in the form of lazy days hanging around their pool and spur-of-the-moment parties with friends. While given all the comforts a young man could dream of, Enzo feels unsettled, which is why he is seeking out an entirely different way of life through his work. 

However, this brings him no closer to a firm sense of who he is, as he can’t relate to the lives of his coworkers and has always felt like an outsider within his own family. But when Enzo develops a friendship with his coworker Vlad (Maksym Slivinskyi), a 24-year-old Ukrainian immigrant who has been moving around since he turned eighteen, he finally feels like he has found an anchor after being adrift for so long. 

Enzo becomes infatuated with Vlad, finally finding a model for the type of person he wants to be. But as their relationship deepens, Enzo begins to realize Vlad may also be the type of person he wants to be with. Through their relationship, a sense of desire is finally awoken in Enzo. 

Enzo is a story about trying to navigate the world when you haven’t quite figured out who you are. Enzo has decided he does not fit in with the bourgeoisie class his family is a part of, but because of the circumstances he was born into, he can’t quite fit into the blue-collar class his coworkers are a part of. 

He was driven to masonry to try and escape the material life he believes his parents value too highly. Enzo says he wanted to be a bricklayer because he wanted to make something that lasts. No matter what happens, natural disasters and come what may, the houses he helped build would be left standing. He doesn’t find the work of his parents or a life following traditional academia, would have results that outlast those of honest manual work. He wants a career that validates his existence, something that will be left standing when he is long gone. 

When Enzo looks at Vlad, he sees someone who has lived. Vlad knows exactly who he is and is confident in all the things that make Enzo self-conscious. Vlad doesn’t have to try to validate his existence; he doesn’t struggle with the same questions of identity that haunt Enzo. His confidence in himself and assurance in his character make him someone Enzo admires, and consequently stir up a passion within Enzo that he doesn’t quite understand.

While Enzo is a nuanced and sensitive look at a character struggling to validate their burgeoning identity, the movie ultimately succumbs to the same confused issue of identity, as its resolution leaves it feeling as conflicted as its main character.

Enzo spends the entire film idolizing and desiring not only Vlad, but also the hardships and difficulties in Vlad’s life that have shaped him into the man he is today. He believes he needs to face a great struggle in his life in order to find out who he really is. This results in Enzo developing a fascination with the war in Ukraine; he constantly draws the ruins of the cities and looks up pictures of the soldiers online. 

While this can be seen as a commentary on young people waking up to ongoing political issues and their importance, this aspect of Enzo’s self-discovery feels surfaced. Enzo’s fixation on Ukraine breeds more vitriol towards his family and further divides him from them, which, while aids the progression of his character development, reduces a very real and ongoing war down to a plot device. 

By the end of the film, there’s an understanding that while Vlad and his best friend Miroslav forever leave an impact on Enzo, their struggles, which are the struggles real people are currently having to face in the midst of a years long war in their home country, are footnotes in the main character’s plot development.

Maybe it would feel less superficial if there was an undeniable change in Enzo by the end of the film, one specifically having to do with his understanding of class disparity and his own privilege. However, the note the movie leaves off on makes you believe that, while Enzo may have learned to make peace with his family’s wealth, he hasn’t quite found himself yet. 

He knows the answers to his questions about his identity aren’t in bricklaying, nor Vlad, nor Ukraine, so he must soldier on his quest and now knows he can with the full support of his family. It’s not that all of Enzo’s questions about identity and his place within his family need to be answered by the film’s end to make it impactful, but the culmination of the journey he endures feels lackluster in a way that undermines what the story is trying to say.

Enzo is a beautifully shot character study of a young man’s search to find himself. It succeeds in capturing the confusion adolescence entails, the growing pains every young person endures and the desperate desire to find community. However, by the end of the film’s runtime, Enzo’s search seems to be ongoing in a way that can leave you skeptical about how much he has really changed after all.

Enzo, the opening film of the Quinzaine des Cinéastes, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on May 14-16, 2025. The film will be released in French cinemas on June 18, 2025. Read our list of 20 movies to watch at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival below!