Writer-director Cédric Kahn is perhaps best known outside France for helming tense, extremely bleak thrillers — Red Lights, Roberto Succo and L’Ennui — bathed in both film noir and existential angst. But he’s also tried his hand at several other genres, including a supernatural kids flick (The Plane), a gritty tale of rehab and religion (The Prayer), an engrossing courtroom drama (The Goldman Case) and, for his memorable second feature from 1994, a striking coming-of-age story called Too Much Happiness.
It’s that last movie that most comes to mind when watching A Place to Heal, which marks another impressively performed youth ensemble piece from the French auteur, albeit one set in a rather unusual location: the psychiatric wing of a public hospital in which teenagers between the ages of 15 and 18 are kept as in-patients for a stretch of time. (The film’s French-language title, 15/18, is the nickname given to the ward.)
A Place to Heal
The Bottom Line
Compelling if not altogether convincing.
