Summer of 85 (2020)

Film: Summer of 85 (2020)

Stars: Felix Lefebvre, Benjamin Voisin, Phillippine Velge, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi

Director: Francois Ozon

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

I have weirdly only seen one film directed by Francois Ozon (Potiche, which I saw at the now-defunct Paris Theater in Manhattan), and so I don't really know his cadences well.  But in 2020, where I have been struggling to find connections with movies in the way that I normally do (I can't tell if it's because the year has been a bad one for film or because without movies in theaters, the movies don't have the same inherent sparkle), I didn't want to turn down the chance to see a gay coming-of-age film (usually a genre I gravitate toward), but perhaps in part due to my lack-of-familiarity with Ozon, I left more confused than enamored with the film's disjointed narration & plot.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Alex (Lefebvre), a baby-faced young (closeted) gay teenager, who has his first taste of love when he's rescued in a boating accident by David (Voisin), a bisexual man a few years older than him who introduces him to sex, but also a sense of danger & excitement.  David & Alex begin working together in David's mother's (Tedeschi) shop, but after a while David begins to lose interest, even sleeping with Alex's friend Kate (Velge), which leads to them breaking up.  At this point in the movie, Alex smashes up the shop, and David (chasing after him, for reasons we never fully understand) gets into a motorcycle accident, and dies.  The rest of the movie we see Alex try to come-to-terms with his first love dying, frequently acting out in an irrational manner, attracting the attention of his parents, teachers, and even the police.  In the end Alex moves on, potentially to a romance with a different boy, but forever changed by the experience.

The movie is less conventional than what I just described.  For starters, it's told in partial flashback, with us knowing that David is going to die in the film's opening moments, and is brimming with expositional narration.  This is, for my money, the biggest flaw in the film.  The narration is lazy, underlining points that the acting isn't really getting across, and trying to mend gaps in the plot that the actual story isn't able to achieve.  David, as written, is far too complex & Voisin's performance doesn't give us enough layers underneath the character to understand why he cruelly turns on Alex, or given the remotest hint of what he was trying to achieve with the young man other than taking his virginity.  Should we hate David?  Should Alex?  And if so, what does that mean for the tender love story of the film's opening chapters?  The movie visually recalls Call Me By Your Name in its costuming, music, & cinematography, but we are able to understand the complicated emotions and stakes of Elio & Oliver's relationship in a way that we can never become fully vested in with Alex & David.

The best parts of the film, honestly, are the women.  Tedeschi's manic mother is the character that I most wanted to spend time with as the film progresses.  I couldn't really tell on occasions if her acting was teetering into theatrical or not, but most of it feels like someone who did mountains of backstory for their small part & it actually comes across in the way she's written as someone who doesn't know where life should take her.  Velge is also good, if a bit too manic pixie dream girl, but if there's a winner in the cast it's Tedeschi, giving us the complicated movie that the narration keeps trying to achieve, but fails to accomplish.