Jumbo Film Review: Offbeat Love Story Joins Woman and Park Attraction For an Unusual Ride TheWrap 2/18/2021
love your car? And what if it loved you back? Jumbo, a movie inspired by the real-life woman who married the Eiffel Tower, claiming she d fallen passionately in love with it, is Belgian writer-director Zoé Wittock s fractured fairy tale of a feature debut about a withdrawn young woman played by Portrait of a Lady on Fire star Noémie Merlant, who develops deep emotional feelings for her local park s newest passenger-spinning, brightly illuminated ride.
While it s easy to imagine filmmakers from all parts of the outcast-fantasy firmament responding with glee at the cinematic doorways waiting to be opened if Jumbo shows post-festival life Spielberg, Cronenberg, start your human-loves-thing engines! Wittock s film is ultimately more of a well-intended melodramatic experiment than a fully realized love story about one of the more curious corners of humanity s se