‘Gagarine’ is a magical motion picture established in a operate-down French housing job.

Gagarine, as the structure was frequently acknowledged, held wonderful promise when it opened in 1963 in Ivry-sur-Seine. A pre-credit sequence displays footage of the dedication, with Gagarin himself in attendance and 1000’s cheering the prospect of cost-effective housing. But 50 percent a century later, the facade was pockmarked and strewn with graffiti, and the immigrant citizens for the most component complained about the unfit problems.

Not so for 16-year-outdated resident Youri (Alseni Bathily), who goals of pursuing in his namesake’s orbit. Youri’s mom has taken up with a new boyfriend and remaining her son to fend for himself. But he’s delighted on his individual, wanting as a result of a telescope at the moon — and seeing what his close friends Diana (Lyna Khoudri of “The French Dispatch”) and Houssam (Jamil McCraven) are up to. With their aid, Youri attempts to provide the crumbling dinosaur up to code. They rewire faulty elevators and replace burned-out lights, scavenging for elements from junkman Gérard (Denis Lavant). Even with all their tough operate, Gagarine fails inspection, but Youri programs to stay driving as extensive as attainable.

If the junkyard implies a low-finances version of the “Star Wars” trash-compactor scene, the industrial location evokes David Lynch’s “Eraserhead,” which is not so unlikely a resonance: Lynch’s feature debut was also about an imaginative youthful guy caught in a bleak landscape.

In this dilapidated planet, Youri and his close friends come across joy just by driving a bicycle. But Youri has larger ambitions. With Gagarine’s sky-high elevator shafts previously suggesting a huge spaceship, the teenager improbably starts to develop his have craft. But can he seriously acquire off?

The to start with fifty percent of “Gagarine” plays like a neorealist drama, and Victor Seguin’s beautiful cinematography swoops around the broken home with a bird’s-eye view, gracefully pursuing Youri and his crew as they battle with their quixotic job. The same camerawork that captures residents’ gritty life prepares the viewer for the magic realism of its last act. But there is just as a lot enchantment in what for most individuals would be a dreary placing. The most haunting scene may perhaps be of Youri and Diana sending Morse code messages to each individual other a single lonely night time.

Liatard and Trouilh, who co-wrote the script with Benjamin Charbit, had been commissioned to make documentary portraits of Gagarine citizens in 2014, when the premises were being 1st qualified for demolition, and spent many many years having to know the folks and their goals. (I suspect a considerably for a longer time version of this movie — in which we received to know Youri’s neighbors superior — wouldn’t have been amiss.) The filmmakers ended up inspired by the forbidding Brutalist architecture, whose prolonged corridors and cramped residences Youri navigates like an explorer striving to obtain his way out of a maze.

When the directors give “Gagarine” a properly understood sense of place, its ensemble forged provides it the sensation of actual everyday living. In his initial movie purpose, Bathily (whose father grew up in the eponymous housing intricate) was an not likely option the section of Youri would appear to be to call for a nerdy, 98-pound weakling, staring passively at the stars. But Bathily is created of more robust things. Athletic nonetheless delicate, he successfully conveys both equally youthful alienation and a identified, Diy competence.

On a single level, “Gagarine” is a story about desires of a superior lifestyle. At the identical time, its spirited hero poignantly demonstrates a seemingly trite but time-tested truism: Be it at any time so humble, there is no spot like household.

Unrated. At Landmark’s E Street Cinema and the Cinema Arts Theatre. Consists of sturdy language. In French with subtitles. 97 minutes.