‘Milo’ review: Marion Cotillard and Théodore Pellerin head moody, dramatically inert French thriller

Dir. Nicole Garcia. France/Belgium 2026. 114mins

The enigmatic fragility of Marion Cotillard is at the centre of Milo, a moody, stately but dramatically inert character-led thriller from respected French actor and director Nicole Garcia. Reuniting with Garcia a decade after period melodrama From The Land Of The Moon, here Cotillard stars as a woman who arrives in a small French town in search of answers. She is joined by a distinguished if underused cast including Laure Calamy – although Canadian up-and-comer Théodore Pellerin, who recently won acclaim for French drama Nino and US thriller Lurker, manages to generate a distinctive presence as the eponymous Milo. 

A complicated narrative ultimately diffuses the energy

Premiering in San Sebastian competition, Milo (whose original French title is 7h40 Ce Matin-Là, meaning That Morning at 7h40) should perform reasonably well with older mainstream audiences on its French release in January, but even Cotillard’s prestige is unlikely to bring a significant international boost. 

Co-scripted by Garcia, the downbeat drama begins with Cotillard as a mystery woman on a night bus, disembarking in southeastern France. Checking in at a low-cost hotel, she lands a waitressing job at a roadside diner run by gruff but friendly Luc (comedian/actor Artus. Her story: her name is Alice, she has catering experience, and she’s making a fresh start after time away in Quebec. But her strange behaviour – notably intentionally screwing up her moped purely to make contact with young mechanic Milo – tells us that here’s a woman with her share of secrets.

Milo, the adopted son of local woman Valérie (Calamy), is set on opening his own garage. He also has free run of a manor house belonging to a wealthy family whose black sheep cousin Joseph (Alexis Manenti, compellingly snake-like) has Milo embroiled in his criminal activities. As for Alice, it shouldn’t be too much of a spoiler – given that the cat is out of the bag after some 40 minutes– to reveal she has actually been in prison following her involvement with a gang of radical activists. She’s also Milo’s birth mother, and once she meets him, her protective instincts come to the fore, as she tries to pull him out of his current dangerous spin.

But once Alice’s former militancy has been established, the script takes little interest in the potentially fascinating relationship between a manifestly complex personality and an unconditional political stance. Meetings with an old comrade (Anne Brochet) and the circle’s academic guru (a very convincing Eric Elmosnino) rather suggest that Alice was simply an impressionable youth led astray by big ideas recklessly promoted by privileged people. The legacy of French radicalism is clearly too hot a potato to just throw away casually – it was recently re-examined to urgent and thoughtful effect in Cédric Kahn’s The Goldman Case – but here, it never seems more than a convenient device to establish Alice as an outsider with principles. 

Often associated with airy, otherworldly glamour, Cotillard has nevertheless successfully incarnated tough working women, notably in Jacques Audiard’s Rust and Bone and the Dardennes’ Two Days, One Night (not to mention her compellingly rough-edged Piaf in La Vie en Rose). Here, she doesn’t pull off that dimension nearly as successfully, and, while she interestingly chooses to play a potentially hyper-emotive role in a very restrained downbeat register, she never quite convinces us of the psychological hell that Alice has endured. 

A complicated narrative ultimately diffuses the energy, the thriller element never quite working as a sustaining thread. Some character roles feel decorative rather than fully integrated – notably Charles Berling’s role as the blowhard, Baudelaire-quoting incumbent of the manor – while one significant, wordless blazing glare from Calamy proves the film’s single most powerful moment, albeit from a character with otherwise too little to do. Yet Pellerin makes a strong impression as Milo – a candid, likeable young man with vision but a confused moral compass. Relaxed, quizzical and with a distinctive deep voice, the actor makes the most of a strong showcase.