Looking at how my Letterboxd friends have responded to this film, it appears that nobody has rated it above four stars. And yes, I know my rating is also a four, but I also haven't rated any films from the 2020's over four stars yet (a few rewatches are in order though). This isn't the most subtle film around and I can see someone walking away with "it's just a lesser Au Hasard Balthazar", but I was really enamored with it and figured I'd make a few points in defense of it. I was initially curious if it would be a poor man's version of Bresson's film, but I like how it found its own unique voice, as opposed to following in its footsteps. Bresson's film is largely characterized by mirroring Balthazar's life with Marie, while EO takes a different unique approach with the characters. EO is (almost) always at the center of the film. The camera stays by his side from beginning to end and, even when he's not in the frame, it finds various ways for his presence to loom in the background or hang over the shot to keep him at the forefront. For instance, a recurring style of subjective camerawork which captures the somewhat blurry motion of other figures (a group of horses running through a field and a soccer match) appears to be occurring from EO's point of view given the shooting style. Or take another lengthy scene of a truck driver transporting a group of animals which is bathed heavily in a bright red, a color which is associated with EO due to its prominence in some recurring hallucinatory sequences. The human characters in the film fall somewhere between secondary characters and background scenery (granted, a late film sequence with Huppert and Zurzolo briefly ruins the tone). The decision to zero in on EO makes this film a highly subjective experience. EO wandering through the landscape by himself is truly something else due to how the alien photography feels reminiscent, as a few other reviewers I've come across have noted, of Under the Skin. The film also turns transcendental when it bathes certain sequences in the aforementioned bright red color or includes a couple scenes which feel caught between fantasy and reality. And at the heart of all the technical craft lies the emotional core of EO's desire for freedom and perhaps to be reunited with his original owner. It's not the most complex of messages, but the film takes it in so many interesting places along the way I couldn't help but be fascinated.
Anyways, now I'm more eager to revisit Au Hasard Balthazar.
Anyways, now I'm more eager to revisit Au Hasard Balthazar.