Every day, AlloCiné recommends a film to (re)watch on TV. Tonight: a wonderful film about adolescence by François Ozon.
The summer he turned 16, during a sea trip on the Normandy coast, Alexis was heroically saved from shipwreck by 18-year-old David. Alexis has just met the friend of her dreams. But will the dream last more than one summer? The summer of 85…
This pitch is that of the magnificent Summer of 85 by François Ozon, a poetic work about adolescence and first love that reveals a formidable actor in the person of Benjamin Voisin (César for Most Promising Actor for his role in Lost Illusions). This formidable film, superbly directed, which addresses subjects such as homosexuality, guilt and mourning, will not leave you indifferent.
Summer 85presented in the Official Selection of the 2020 Cannes Film Festival, is freely adapted from the novel by Aidan Chambers, The Cuckoo Dancewhat François Ozon read in 1985 when he was seventeen. “He spoke intimately to the teenager that I was,” he said. recalls the director. “The book is very fun and inventive in its language and its construction. It includes drawings, extracts from press articles, changes in points of view, replays of sequences from another perspective. I had experienced great pleasure in reading and as I began to make short films, I said to myself: “If one day I make a feature film, my first film will be an adaptation of this novel.”
A “universal” love story
François Ozon has been faithful to the book, which never problematizes homosexuality or makes it an issue. “Alex and David love each other and the fact that they are two boys is never really the point”declares the filmmaker. “That’s why, as a teenager, I dreamed of seeing this film, because the representations of homosexuality in the cinema of the 80s were very dark, painful, even before the arrival of AIDS. film, I wanted to adopt the codes of a teen movie. I filmed a romance between boys in a very classic way and without irony, to make this love story universal.
Summer 85, above which hovers the shadow of Call Me by Your Name and the cinema of Éric Rohmer, is a film to quickly discover. Don’t miss this opportunity!
Tonight on Arte at 8:55 p.m.
François Ozon, Benjamin Voisin and Félix Lefebvre talk about the film “Summer 85”
