Été 85

I've seen a lot of 'gay' movies and a lot of coming of age movies and a lot of movies that combine both, but it is rare to see this in such great quality. The story hasn't many surprising twists, but the movie doesn't need those. It is a story of all times, metoculously set in one specific time and told in a very skillfull and loving fashion.

The casting, acting, art-direction, all are superb and enticing. The young actors seem to have great carriers ahead.

In the title summer, on a beach town, two teenage boys meet while sailing and fall in love. The story is told mostly by way of an essay that recounts the events of the summer, which allows for selective disclosures (or not). Right at the start of the film, we know something bad has happened, but it takes most of the movie to find out what and why.

The young actors are natural, and the cinematography is gorgeous. Being set in 1985, I suppose it can't end in "getting married and living happily ever after", but there is maturity and hope.

Thanks to Ozon for making something that leaves typical McHollywood LA tropes in the dirt. Most gay films pals in comparison. Why? A story, well written story, dedicate visionaries, and actors. This is what cereative cinema is all about. Sure, we've seen the summer romances, and this film certainly does not do anything new in that respect - however that is the point, The skill to present this as an acceptable love affair, with a good twist, is why it's stronger than most. Summer of 85 brings in everything but the kitchen sink from literate queerdom: young romance, Verlaine, Rimbaud, eager French-isms in tragedy, and steamy sensuality. But it's also what Ozon left out: tired politics, rah-rah Pink parade tropes, and endless rants on victimhood. These are boys, who fell in love, and there's a reasonably believable story about them - apparently rooted in a real life saga of a similar situation, found in British newspapers decades ago. My only criticism is, the film could have used a deeper delve into New Romanticism of the 80s - if you're going to do The Cure - go deeper. Rimbaud was a very bad boy, Alex is not 'bad' he's consumed with passion. Slightly more stylized and slightly less topical. That said, this movie is a great watch, I'll see it in cinema post-covid, and highly recommend. Thank God someone is making things like this! "Never run with the masses, there's danger in numbers" - Quentin Crisp

Normandy, 1985. Alexis and David begin an unlikely friendship after an incident at sea. The story telling is interesting, François Ozon style, the typical plot to appeal for feelings and emotions, but that sometimes (as is the case in this film) falls too much into the melodramatic. There's nothing mind blowing, or double-sided characters, it is a simple summer love story, where there's a side of innocence and illusion about the first love to contrast with a rebellious and non-conformist side, of fleeting relationships. The aesthetics and sonority perfectly captures the 80's vibe, in a fantastic 16mm film. Those who liked 'Call Me by Your Name' will certainly like 'Été 85', given the similarities and inspirations that the director sought after Luca Guadagnino's great success. The protagonists have talent, and above all, chemistry, essential for a film of this kind to work. It's a nice way to end the (strange) summer of 2020.

Summary

This film about a passionate youthful gay romance (un amor fou) once again shows us Ozon's ability to combine genres and his proverbial narrative fluidity and addresses one of his most frequent topics: the insurmountable distance mediated by the point of view between the story and the elusive reality and between the perception we have of others and their true nature.

Review

Alexis (Félix Lefebvre) is a 16-year-old boy who has recently lived with his family in a seaside resort on the Normandy coast. When he goes sailing with a sailboat, he meets David (Benjamin Voisin), a young man who lives with his mother (Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi) in the area. The meeting gives rise to a romance between the two.

As with many François Ozon films, talking about them implies much more than referring to his anecdote. But we can start there.

Right from its introduction, Summer of 85 shows us Alexis at a point after the romance, engaged in a situation that could lead to prosecution linked to David's death. This time will alternate with that of romance, which turns the film partially into a police enigma that as such sustains his interest.

But it is love fou that is the main object of the narration, which proceeds with Ozon's usual fluidity, with its fair doses of dialogues and images, and with a colorful summer palette of eighties texture, delivered to the beauty and charisma of the protagonists, with that ease of French cinema when it comes to showing bodies and desire.

But we said that Summer of 85 is much more than his anecdote about a passionate coming of age: it is an essay on the story itself and its relationship with reality. Because, as happened in Dans la maison and other films by the director, the point of view takes on fundamental relevance. And the point of view is that of Alexis, since the voiceover and what the film shows correspond to the story he makes of his romance; it is his version of the facts and his subjectivity that are brought into play and staged. It is love fou, with his passion, his idealizations, his pacts, his asymmetries, his projections, his ways of processing loss and mourning, his perverse elements, in the voice of Alexis; the loving object/subject as salvation and as condemnation. And this also determines what fatally remains off screen (and out of narrative control), plunging Alexis and the viewer into impotence and despair. There is in Alexis's story a component of nostalgia that the director places in the abyss with nostalgia about an entire era.

In this way, a frequent topic in Ozon's cinema is staged - the elusive nature of reality and its insurmountable distance from the story - and with French cinema in general: the literary (in this case Alexis's notes) as articulator of a cinematographic story. The subjectivity permeating the story, but also and fundamentally, the perception of the loved one.

There is something joyous and fresh about this film that reminds us of Call Me By Your Name and the We Are Who We Are series, both by Luca Guadagnino (even Voisin seems like a more protean version of Chalamet) and also Chabrolian in the way he articulates the drama with the thriller.