A Place To Heal (15/18) | 2026 Venice Film Festival Review

Teenage Wasteland: Kahn Gets Clinical with Familiar Procedural

Picture this: A bustling medical ward in a top performing French facility with specialized treatment protocols where the staff is systematically overwhelmed by the burden of dealing with those in need of their services while ultimately remaining good natured and exhibiting efficient levels of camaraderie to keep spirits up. Next, a revolving door of larger than life personalities representing the clientele, a teeming horde of incoming and outgoing guests needing medical attention. Some will benefit from care, some need more time than expected, while others remain hopeless cases resistant to the offerings of the establishment (but will still, more than likely, live to see another day. Et voila! The séries médicales formula runs its course, a subgenre so ingrained in annual French cinematic offerings they can become difficult to differentiate if the maladies are too pedestrian. Like a classic soufflé, the success of this narrative format is a delicate balance, and can easily collapse with too much white knighting, handwringing, or grossly hyperstylized portraits of dysfunction. For his latest feature, A Place to Heal, director Cédric Kahn does not succeed with his soufflé (and its alternative title, 15/18, which is the name of the teen psych ward in which its set, overtly suggests the level of generalization we’re dealing with). A revolving door of one-dimensional characters shout, snarl, bite and claw their way around this merry-go-round of misery, and despite the usual level of thespian professionalism on display, both from notable French character actors and teenage newcomers, Kahn’s well-intentioned desire to impart empathy and compassion for his subjects more often feels rote and artificial.

Lucia (Malou Khebizi) has been brought back to the psychiatric ward by the police after having run away from home again. With a history of suicide attempts and uncontrollable bouts of violence, this seems to be her ongoing pattern, and she’s reunited with several ‘friends’ who have not been released by the facility. Etienne (Kahn), the head doctor, and Carole (Sophie Guillemin), the head nurse, are all too accustomed with her behavior, and they attempt to fill in newly minted intern Jules (Antoine de Foucauld) about what to expect from Lucia and several others as be gets used to his six-month stint with them. As we drift in and out of various issues being experienced by the others teens, which includes psychotic breaks, gender dysmorphia, bullying, sexual assault, homophobic parents, etc., seventeen-year-old Enzo (Kenji Peyran) arrives on their doorstep. Faking a mental health issue to avoid juvenile detention (and adult prison, as he’s three weeks away from his eighteenth birthday), Etienne sees through Enzo’s ploys and allows him to stay on the ward. Lucia, who has issues with courting external validation from men, develops an intense crush on Enzo. But when he instead chooses to romantically pursue the chronically depressed Eloise (Zoe Monpart), the tenuous balance of their environment snaps.

Kahn is a jack-of-all trades as actor/writer/director, his earlier filmography behind the camera often prizing gritty true crime (Roberto Succo, 2001) or chilly psychological thrills (Red Lights, 2004). More recently, he’s prized less sensational parameters with heavily controlled scopes, such as 2018’s The Prayer, or the more captivating The Goldman Case (2023). With A Place to Heal, Kahn seems to be delving into a popularized trend of scattershot vignettes connected to and defined by a specific environment, resembling works by Maiwenn or Emmanuelle Bercot, specifically. Except almost everything about Kahn’s exercise feels diluted, as if Laurent Cantet’s The Class (2008) were welded to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) and then completely lobotomized in the characterization department. Something like Destin Daniel Cretton’s Short Term 12 (2013) seems to be the wavelength Kahn was aiming for, until he became utterly bored with differentiating his staff members (including a character played by himself). In this year’s All of a Sudden from Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Virginie Efira plays the director of a nursing home who painstakingly outlines a care method called “Humanitude.” Maybe they need to try that in the 15/18 ward.

Among the adults, we learn the most about Antoine de Foucauld’s intern (who seemingly didn’t receive too much training) as if by default, while the narrative darts between focusing on Malou Khebizi (who played a similarly troubled and overly sexualized child in Agathe Riedinger’s Wild Diamond, 2024) and the emotionally paralyzed Zoe Monpart (in her debut role). Exposition delivered by the staff sets up the infantile love triangle involving wild child Enzo, who skulks about like a fox in the henhouse. Filmmaker sometimes actress Lina Soualem is also present as one of the staffers.

Since we only really learn about the disturbing occurrences inflicted on a handful of teenagers, the balance of this otherwise customary narrative formula feels off, which could have been a unique angle for Kahn to explore. Instead, it’s almost as if the film is holding its breath for someone, anyone, to utter a line similar to Wolfgang Bodison’s detective in the gloriously sleazy 1996 film Freeway – “These are some of the most fucked up kids I’ve seen in my life.” Ultimately, that’s also not really a statement A Place to Heal earns, either.

Reviewed on September 4th at the 2026 Venice Film Festival (83rd edition) – In Competition. 105 Minutes.

★★/☆☆☆☆☆

“A revolving door of one-dimensional characters shout, snarl, bite and claw their way around this merry-go-round of misery, and despite the usual level of thespian professionalism on display, both from notable French character actors and teenage newcomers, Kahn’s well-intentioned desire to impart empathy and compassion for his subjects more often feels rote and artificial.”