Summer of 85

I have never read or heard of the book this was based on so I didn't really no what to expect.

I was really impressed. Especially with the romance aspect of this movie. It was really whirlwind-y and you felt wrapped up in it and along for the ride with the characters. I think this was in part to the actors. They were fantastic and really emotive.

I think the film lets its self down right at the start by showing a flash forward. I really hate this troupe in movies and I think it undercuts the story. You are waiting for the penny to drop. I get that this can add tension and a sombreness to the movie but I think that I would have been much more invested if I didn't know what was going to happen.

It didn't ruin the movie for me because like I said the romance is done so well and the costuming and filmmaking are incredible. It really feels like an 80's movie.

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.

The boys meet while separately out boating and sixteen year old Alexis falls in love immediately with eighteen year old David. We know from the start that the relationship is doomed but we obviously don't know how and why. Hints and fragments emerge from the text - and it is a text. Alex is writing the events of the six week romance as a way of explaining his criminal actions to a social worker.

The running length of the film whirls past just as the summer romance between the lads does. During the affair, things are revealed that start to show that all is not well - David goes back to the drunk guy they rescued, he hints at a deeper relationship with the literature teacher, mum is clearly worried about him and asks his younger friend to keep an eye on him, it turns out the boat was not dealt with.

Alex is blind to it all and is blissfully happy in his first proper love affair. They do things young besotted teenagers do - drink, go to fairgrounds, have punch ups with rival guys, drive dangerously on the Suzuki. They exchange kisses and embraces and make love while David's mum is doped up on sleeping pills.

It all comes crashing down and when it does, the events take a gruesome and tragic turn of events. Alex is in trouble. He had made David a promise he thought he would not have to keep either at all or for many years but is now obliged to carry it out. On the way to this, he's helped by his English acquaintance who offers the apercu that he was in love with an idea and not the person. It's the definition of puppy love.

Frantic typing feverishly results in clarity both for David and the court and his story ends as far as the film is concerned but carries on beyond its ending with another boat ride; our imaginations can envisage the course of his life now that he's learnt a lesson and is a bit wiser to the ways of the world.

As always, Ozon's storytelling is masterful as is the cinematography. The choice of music was perfect. "In between days" by The Cure framed the film and I can't imagine anything more apt especially once the film was complete.

The two leads played their parts fantastically. The supporting cast were not fleshed out but didn't need to be. Their characters were recognisable cliches that could be found in a French provincial town nearly forty years ago and simply drove the plot along.

I do recommend this film.

Fine French filmmaker Francois Ozon (SWIMMING POOL) in a lower gear but still not without interest. As the title and poster may indicate, this is a memory film. A story about a fateful summer and a relationship that changes everything in a young person's life. Looks can be a bit deceiving, however, as there is more than hazy lazy nostalgia at play.

Based on a novel by Aidan Chambers ('Dance on my Grave') the couple are Alexis (Felix Lefebvre) and David (Benjamin Voisin) two handsome teens who meet by accident in a Normandy seaside village. David's mother (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi) also takes a liking to Alexis and invites him to work at her marine shop alongside her own son. The pair also meet up with a sprightly British au pair who strikes up a friendship with the two boys in order to improve her French!

Despite the sunny resort setting, the wistful period tunes by The Cure and Rod Stewart and the dreamy graininess of the 16mm film photography, Ozon (who also wrote the adaptation) never lets his film drift from it's serious themes of sexuality and responsibility. The small cast is very capable and the tone is consistent. Some of the writing isn't as sharp as it could have been and the flashback structure does keep it from fully building any story momentum. While there is darkness, there is always a promise of optimism that that fateful summer will lead to something to look back on with a certain fondness.

I decided to watch the movie with mixed feelings. The plot seemed not intriguing enough, but Ozon's name is (or at least was) a certain guarantee. Alas, the disappointment prevailed. In 8 femmes, Ozon managed to keep an unforgiving and at the same time uncommenting eye into the human behavior. The behavior itself developed the characters, and brought them together into a whole. Eté 85 is a mixture of Ozon and a try to mimic Almadóvar's way of looking into tragedy, which unfortunately fails completely. The scenes are great, the actors true to their characters, but what comes out is a story swaying between a kitsch gay teenagers' love affair and a family drama. The ending is weird (I am referring to the court sentence), taking into account the fact that the subject of homosexuality was at the time socially unacceptable was extremely poorly part of the story to that point, with the exception of a vague reference to an uncle). None of the three main characters (Alexis, David and the mother, Mme Gorman) develop and their reactions throughout the film are irrational, somewhere between funny and stupid, in a combination which simply does not work. Kate's acting is miserable, same as Alexis' parents. The only convincing character, if any, is probably the social worker.

Concluding, this is a mediocre film to watch if you are into gay dramas and have nothing better to do. Matches up the standards of east asian gay drama series, but not the ones of main stream cinematography, and is definitely not Ozon's most brilliant accomplishment.