The Wanderings of Ivan [La balade d’Ivan] *** (2018, Aram Arakelyan) – Classic Movie Review 13,886

Director Claude Chamis’s 2018 The Wanderings of Ivan is a dreamy and poetic French film starring Aram Arakelyan as a young Russian immigrant navigating homelessness and human relationships in Paris.

Director Claude Chamis’s 2018 The Wanderings of Ivan [La balade d’Ivan] is a dreamy and poetic offbeat French film about a young Russian immigrant navigating homelessness and human relationships in the city and woods of Paris. Why is he homeless and friendless, down and out in Paris? He looks too handsome and clean to be a down and out. Even his fingernails are clean. Ah it’s not realism we’re after, it’s poetic cinema. Admittedly at a stretch you could say poetic realism.

Ivan is a young Russian newly arrived in Paris, who wanders aimlessly through the city streets and later the woods of Vincennes. Homeless and rejected by society, he struggles to survive and becomes mixed up with the rent boys working the woods. Ivan encounters enigmatic young men and women, until an encounter with a young father called Pierre leads to tragic consequences, as Ivan walks away, looking forward to his 18th birthday, still wandering. Ivan doesn’t seem to care that much that he has brought about this tragedy. He pockets some money and wanders on. Mmm, Ivan the terrible.

The wandering star is Aram Arakelyan, an Armenian-born actor lives in France and fluent in French and Russian, in his first feature film role after short films and commercials. Directed by Claude Chamis, the movie runs smoothly for just 75 minutes. Look for visual beauty and contemplative style, but not for action, excitement and pace, because, if you do, you will be sorely disappointed. There is a place for poetry in cinema, of course, but maybe this isn’t quite it. Poetry in the woods of Vincennes? Well, maybe not. On the other hand, Claude Chamis does find some poetry here and delivers it enigmatically in a film of ambiguous, cryptic messages. The hero is straight, definitely straight, or is he? What’s he seeking in the woods? Everybody knows that if you go down to the woods today you’re sure of a big surprise. It is not a gay film, or a sex film. There is no sex, and no nudity, but it manages to tease a little. More ambiguity, then, or maybe subtlety?

The Wanderings of Ivan is truly odd and arty, poetic, yes certainly, and also rather pointless maybe, but it has a certain something, a certain fascination, but that might be because the star is fascinating, an object of beauty to be gazed upon, like the nature around him that he and the cameras are gazing upon. It’s a love poem to him mostly. Hardly anything happens and then very slowly. But that’s okay in poetic cinema. It’s okay to be patient. Yet, quite gloomy and depressing, it feels more than a little sad, and then tragic, and maybe quite homophobic. Is it actually pointless or homophobic, though? It is so enigmatic it is hard to tell.

[Spoiler alert) Ivan goes street begging (buddy can you spare a euro?) gives up busy central city Paris after being refused help and being kicked out of a cafe, then heads for the gay gardens in the woods of Vincennes, where he seems surprised to find tacky and grungy looking rent boys and tacky and grungy looking customers. He is not tempted to join in, but carries on wandering around the area till he steals the wallet of a persistent customer following him, but then meets a young girl who brushes him off with a romantic kiss and a poetic attitude, and later an older woman, with whom he has sex in the rain and is rewarded with a bunch of cash. He still hasn’t left the area. Well, things are going pretty good for him, when another persistent customer agrees to pay him a bunch of cash for sex but they end up in a tussle on the ground and Ivan ends up grabbing a rock and smashing the man fatally on the head, making sure he steals his money before leaving the scene. He has some feelings about this, looking miserable and crying, but these are feelings about himself and his situation. He doesn’t seem to give a damn about the man or what he’s done. (Nor does the film.) Ivan looks like an angel but he’s a bit of a demon. In voiceover, we have heard he was a teenage tearaway, part of a gang of pals he now says he’s missing. On the other hand, he kills the man in the heat of the moment, kind of accidentally, and gives him a ritual burial, the same one he gave to a dead bird he found. Maybe he has inner remorse, or perhaps is just embracing the manslaughter as part of the world’s sadness.

Does he love to go a-wandering? Is that it? He misses his mum and his childhood in Russia, and his old teenage gang, certainly, maybe his father, and hasn’t found anyone or anything of significance in Paris. Maybe he never will.

The Wanderings of Ivan sets out to explore the themes of masculinity, vulnerability, isolation, and the search for belonging, though its success is limited, unsurprisingly as these are huge themes and there is only 75 minutes. Ivan’s voice-over recounts his early life in Russia, his family, and his memories, which is the film’s strong point. The narrative is teasingly vague, leaving many, if not all questions unanswered, which is the film’s weak point, quite irritating.

The film attempts to be both poetic and realistic, with mixed results, unsurprisingly as this is tricky to pull off. The poetic works, not so much the realistic. The slow pace and minimal plot are off-putting and frustrating, but the film’s meditative and artistic style is fascinating and eye-catching. It gets high marks for effort and style, but fewer for being moving or overall achievement, though the best parts of it are quite haunting, and it is not a negligible achievement.

The screenplay is by Claude Chamis and Sylvain Maugens based on an original idea by producer Sylvain Maugens and freely adapted from La Folie du jour by Maurice Blanchot and incorporating fragments of the text.

 © Derek Winnert 2026 – Classic Movie Review 13,886

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