Insufferable quirks and tone-deaf tropes undermine the social concerns of this wannabe New Wave love story
Here is a French New Wave pastiche that, like many others, emulates the style but retains none of the charm. The Drifters tries hard to blend the aesthetics of those 1960s classics with pressing issues of migration and
racism. Alas, the poorly sketched characters render the film’s social concerns superficial at best and tone-deaf at worst.
The Drifters follows a whirlwind romance between Fanny (Lucie Bourdeu), a French waitress, and Kofi (Jonathan Ajayi), an undocumented Senegalese migrant. After a meet-cute in an English class in
London, Kofi sweeps Fanny away on a half romantic, half literal getaway trip to the seaside. Kofi has committed a robbery in exchange for an
Irish passport – a better option than a
British one in a post-Brexit world – and he is now on the run from both his boss Doog (Joey Akubeze) and the
police.