Metamorphoses

Director: Christophe Honoré
Year Released: 2014
Rating: 1.0

It's Ovid-in-21st-Century-France: teen Europa (Amira Akili) ditches school to hang with Jupiter (Sébastian Hirel), aggressive Bacchus (Damien Chapelle) and manic Orpheus (George Babluani) and hear their tales of love (and physical transformation ... men with boobs!). Generally speaking, transporting classic texts to the present day is tricky (and generally unsuccessful) and this accomplishes almost nothing: Honoré is hardly an intellectual heavyweight, and it feels like little more than a few PowerPoint slides "summarizing" selected bits of the great Roman's massive poem than a unified narrative (I suspect a lot of footage was removed in the editing process). What it does have, however, is a pleasingly earthy texture, capturing magical days spent wandering around the countryside or swimming stark naked, absorbing the sun's full glow and savoring physical delight.