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“A Place to Heal” is an unduly sentimental English-language title title for French writer-director Cédric Kahn’s new feature, which goes internationally by the more prosaic (if outwardly cryptic) “15/18” — referring,
simply, to the age bracket of the teenage residents in the psychiatric ward where most of the drama is confined. It’s a place to be treated, certainly, but for many of these nervy, damaged adolescents, healing is hard to come by, and the film does little to soften or idealize their plight. Following the 2023 double-shot of his taut legal drama “The Goldman Case” and playful industry satire “Making Of,” Kahn’s latest finds him working in the unfussily humane mode of 2017’s “The Prayer,” keeping the filmmaking simple while counting on the vibrant spontaneity of his mostly inexperienced young ensemble for fireworks.
The result recalls Laurent Cantet’s comparably documentary-styled, youth-focused “The Class,” or the more rigorous work of Belgium’s Dardenne brothers — at least until a final act that briefly and rather poignantly makes a break for more romanticized fiction. That unexpected swerve may divide audiences, though it’s a welcome rogue instinct in a film that, while greatly affecting, isn’t altogether unfamiliar. A competition berth at Venice — Kahn’s first at one of the European majors since 2018 — will aid the profile of a low-key work with raw emotional impact; the film should secure specialist theatrical distribution outside France, though it would fit well on arthouse streaming platforms too.
It begins on a note of clattering, disruptive angst, much of it courtesy of actress Malou Khebizi — one of the few pros in the young cast, having previously brought that same brash, feral energy to Agathe Riedinger’s 2024 Cannes competition entry “Wild Diamond.” She plays 17-year-old Lucia, a recurring patient at this closed ward in a public hospital in an unspecified French town, introduced being readmitted for another stint, but not without a fight.
Lashing out in fury as her phone and lighters are confiscated — she knows the drill, but is still loath to submit to it — she’s back after the latest in a series of suicide attempts, all of which, she says, were “because of boys.” The staff greet her with jaded, none-too-welcoming recognition: In this job, reunions are never happy occasions. She has one friend to welcome her back, however: Eloïse (Zoé Monpart), a slight, frail longtime resident perhaps more quietly serious than Lucia about wanting to die. “Why don’t they respect my wishes?” she asks, as her suicidal ideations are once again brushed off by tough-loving nurse Carole (Sophie Guillemin, wonderful), who’s trained not to indulge such sentiments.
Not that callousness is the default approach on this ward: Led by experienced head psychiatrist Etienne (played with a creased air of authority by Kahn himself), the staff are characterized with as much care and detail as their charges, as we see the daily toll that the kids’ anguish takes on them in turn. New intern Jules (Antoine De Foucauld) frequently acts as the audience’s proxy in this intense, sometimes frightening hothouse of rage and vulnerability: After he weathers a physical assault at his first patient assessment, he’s not sure he can hack it, and it’s hard to blame him.
Co-written with Kahina Le Querrec — previously a costumer on “The Prayer,” where she and Kahn met — the loosely structured script was developed through extensive first-hand observation in equivalent psychiatric wards, though all characters and events have been fictionalized. For its first half, especially, “A Place to Heal” threads together casually sequenced vignettes that collectively capture the rough and tumble of everybody life on the ward, alternating between garrulous group scenes — a mealtime argument over the background music that devolves into an aggressive food fight — and more intimate dialogues between patients and supervisors: In one heartbreaking exchange, junior psychiatrist Paola (Jennifer Decker), whose approach is rather less formal than Etienne’s, gently but firmly counters the insistence of shy domestic abuse survivor Yasmine (Ahleme Sahraoui) that her family’s intent was to protect her rather than hurt her.
With the arrival of volatile new patient Enzo (an electrifying Kenji Peyran), who swiftly forms romantic attachments to both Lucia and Eloïse, the film takes on a more streamlined narrative shape, toward a propulsive finale that surprisingly abandons the ensemble dynamic to focus on one character’s cathartic change in routine — one that leads at least to the precipice of recovery.
It’s a sharp shift from the jittery, chattering communal rhythm that characterizes most of the film. The tight, interrogative framing and keenly responsive movement of DP Patrick Ghiringhelli’s cinematography — often using multiple cameras for maximal docu-style candor in any given scenes — gives way, at least briefly, to lung-filling wide shots. You don’t notice quite how claustrophobic the ward is until you’re outside of it: Kahn’s tender but incisive film makes it both a necessary sanctuary and an airless purgatory, safe from the outside world but not from inner demons.
