Verão de 85

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.

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.

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.

Such a pity this movie is released during corona. Été 85 deserves worldwide recognition and rewards like Call Me By Your Name. It is said director Francois Ozon was inspired by this movie to make his own version, set in 1985, when he turned 18 in France.

This movie is typically Ozon, he's a master in story telling, stirs up our emotions, appeals to our hormones. The cast is wonderful. The male lead (Alex) is a brooding 16 year old student, who goes down the rabbit hole in his passion for his flamboyant lover (David) an 18 year old unstable character who lost his father a year ago.

Almost from the start we know their love is doomed, but the story unfolds like a sweet gay summer romance. We watch the boys sailing, dancing, driving to the sea, watching the sunset, exchanging sloppy kisses, making out at every opportunity. All scenes are filmed in 16 mm tinted in light colors to remind us of the eighties.

The boys fling lasts only 6 weeks, but makes a life long impression on Alex with life lessons about seduction, passion, jealousy and death. Later on he asks himself questions about real love, and the ideal of love, two different things, like we all know, but difficult to discern when you're intensely in love for the very first time.

All in all I loved this sexy, nostalgic Gloom & Doom boys love that seems fitting for the eighties. Go watch it.

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.