After a trio of films that saw François Ozon feeling out the far extremes of his interest and ability — 2016’s monochrome interwar melodrama “Frantz,” the winking De Palma-esque mindfuck “Double Lover,” and last year’s journalistic Catholic priest exposé “By the Grace of God” — the precocious and pétillant “Summer of 85” finds the prolific French auteur circling back to the kind of lurid, playful, and unapologetically queer psychodramas that first made him famous in the late ’90s. But it wouldn’t be right to characterize this stormy coming-of-age story as a return to form, as that would imply some kind of desperate scramble back to the safety of the shore.
In truth, Ozon was never off his game so much as he was simply testing the outer limits of the board. And his 19th feature isn’t a retreat back to the Patricia Highsmith-inflected likes of “See the Sea,...
In truth, Ozon was never off his game so much as he was simply testing the outer limits of the board. And his 19th feature isn’t a retreat back to the Patricia Highsmith-inflected likes of “See the Sea,...
- 9/14/2020
- by David Ehrlich
- Indiewire
Not since the summer of 2003, when François Ozon unveiled Sapphic sizzler “Swimming Pool” at the Cannes Film Festival, has the French director seduced audiences quite as brazenly as he does in “Summer of 85,” which was also set to premiere at Cannes, before the global coronavirus outbreak forced the cancellation of the 2020 edition. Undaunted, the film opened July 14 in French theaters, which have rebounded faster than those of the U.S., with a festival premiere planned for San Sebastián in the fall.
(HIV was already ravaging the gay community, but it wasn’t till the death of Rock Hudson in October 1985, a few months after the film is set, that many acknowledged the crisis). The nostalgia here is undercut by tragedy, though no virus is to blame in what feels like Ozon’s response to “Call Me by Your Name” — his own effervescent account of two souls who found one another for a single season,...
(HIV was already ravaging the gay community, but it wasn’t till the death of Rock Hudson in October 1985, a few months after the film is set, that many acknowledged the crisis). The nostalgia here is undercut by tragedy, though no virus is to blame in what feels like Ozon’s response to “Call Me by Your Name” — his own effervescent account of two souls who found one another for a single season,...
- 7/14/2020
- by Peter Debruge
- Variety Film + TV
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