EIFF 2025: In Transit
This drama concerned with the bubbling attraction between two women – one a celebrated painter, one a bartender in a small town – feels too muted, too detached and ultimatly a little underwhelming
An understated, naturalistic coming-of-young-adulthood film starring its writer and centring around a relationship of slipping and blurred boundaries and moralities, In Transit is a captivating and thought-provoking but ultimately underwhelming character study. Art and life are uneasy bedfellows, as bartender Lucy (Alex Sarrigeorgiou) discovers. Somewhat adrift and aimless, as the world threatens to move on without her and close down her place of work, Lucy only has her partner Tom (François Arnaud) to lean on. That is until she meets Isle (Jennifer Ehle), a painter who's come to town on an artistic retreat in search of a new inspiration. The two women are drawn to each other in an obtuse arrangement that threatens to upset – or expand – their stymied life paths. But the cost of new lives, new loves, and even new selves can be high – not least for those they have loved.
Sarrigeorgiou’s script and the film's well-matched performances are wholly cognisant of the wreckage of selfishness, and In Transit does not sugarcoat the fallout and interpersonal collateral damage. Director Jaclyn Bethany’s camera is almost too detached, however, and holds its protagonists, notably Lucy, at a frosty remove. Some may be attracted to the deliberate restraint, where composed images and characters, all bathed in cool earth tones, replace inarticulate outbursts of passion, but Lucy’s and Ilse’s emotional transformations and revelations feel muted. Indeed, Tom – left out of the women's journey – is the most demonstrative character and consequently the most moving. In Transit is thus cerebral, touching minds but not quite reaching hearts.
In Transit has its world premiere at Edinburgh International Film Festival on 17 Aug, and also screens 18 and 19 Aug