Wideshot Reviews: Summer of ‘85 (2020)
The film ultimately asks why we love when we are young. Is it because of the person? Is it because of the feeling the person emits? Do we love just for the fun of it?
Review by: Eric Jabagat
Edited By: Robbie Claravall
Director: François Ozon
Cast: Félix Lefebvre, Benjamin Voisin, Philippine Velge
Genre: Coming-of-Age, Drama
When you are sixteen and the universe hands you a ticket to experience romance, you do not let it pass. You receive it, palms open and arms wide, caring less for how or when it may end (because it will, sooner or later). If you need to remember how this must have felt, allow Alexis (Félix Lefebvre) from Normandy to refresh your memory. Summer of ’85 is a passionate retelling of the romance between Alexis and David (Benjamin Voisin) which, true to the fleeting nature of the season, saw its beginning and end only under six short weeks — or more aptly, 3,627,800 seconds.
Examining Summer of ‘85’s source material, Aidan Chamber’s 1982 novel Dance On My Grave, it is evident that Ozon wasn’t out to remain faithful to the book. While this commonly poses a problem for readers now turned audience in the cinema, Ozon still manages to capture the almost obsessive, electrically-charged, and dramatic essence of young love, perhaps even better than the novel did.
He achieves this by setting his film apart in terms of tone from the text, squashing the comedic attitude of Alexis and putting in its place a more brooding and sensitive voice for the character. In doing so, he further magnifies the romantic nature and the gravity of the eventual repercussions of Alexis and David’s entire fling, which were often tempered and perhaps even clouded by the acidic sarcasm that punctuated the pages of the novel. Though the omission of the youthful and taunting verve of the story rendered some of the film’s scenes disjointed and awkward at times, you find that Ozon’s vision for the narrative ultimately trumps any tonal discrepancies which attempt to weaken its message, especially as the comedic irony becomes too blatant and difficult to ignore.
In telling this story, Ozon remains as subtle as possible, veering away from the explicit confessions Alexis makes in the book. He expunges Alexis’ sporadic reminders of how he has wanted a “bosom buddy” for the longest time and replaces them instead with moving, heartfelt, and, at times, hallucinatory and convulsive images that were not extant in the text. Instead of allowing Alexis full diegetic power to reveal his intent, Ozon gives us Alexis and David laughing on bumper cars, the couple screaming and flailing their arms in a rollercoaster ride, and perhaps the most striking and most painful image of them all — Alexis slowly moving to the beat of Rod Stewart’s “Sailing” which he listens to through David’s headphones in a packed neon-consumed night club. His lover is right beside him, sweat-drenched and energetically dancing to a beat drowned out by the voice of Rod Stewart asking in raspy tenor timbres, “Can you hear me?” Such acting is complemented by synth tunes and the music of the 80s, which not only root the viewer to the temporal, but also effectively compound the effects of Ozon’s dizzying imagery.
The effect of Ozon’s inventive imagery heightens at the layered portrayal of the characters. Lefebvre conveys the immense longing and denial that is often paired with grief so painfully and poignantly that it is imperative to sympathize and connect with Alexis. To do otherwise would seem like a failure in part of the viewer. Voisin, too, gives the playful David justice. He tempts, teases, and flirts as you would expect David to — always with an air of coolness and spontaneity but not without sweetness, without delicate genuineness. When Alexis confronts David towards the end of the film, David is angry, and yet you see in him, through Voisin’s eyes, the kind of assurance that is telling of the purity in David’s feelings towards Alexis that is almost surprising for his character.
All the elements of the film work towards fulfilling the requirements of the romance genre. While it does tell a love story, Summer of ‘85’s charm is rooted in the teenage need to identify, to connect, and to please — a need intensified by the all-familiar tumultuous and hormonally-charged character of youth. The disconnect in David’s and Alexis’ intentions presents the dichotomy of love and youthhood: on one end, you would like to explore and to take things less seriously, and on the other, seeing as everyone your age has been falling in love and falling rather hard, you would like to cling on to your partner for dear life and give him your all, no matter how premature it may be and regardless that you actually run the risk of becoming dependent and losing yourself entirely. The film ultimately asks why we love when we are young. Is it because of the person? Is it because of the feeling the person emits? Do we love just for the fun of it? Or do we love when we are young because we are in a time where huge holes still mar our identities, and it is through other people that we find them filled?
Summer of ’85 is a memorabilia of an electrifying era and a token of the intoxicating years of youthhood.
It is a film that situates itself in a time where most youth, especially queer youth, saw love as illness and death. Telling Alexis and David’s story as one that is free from outside prejudice and the fatalistic outcome of tragedy then is important. Summer of ’85 demands that you feel and remember, and Deeply at that — with a capital D.
August 12, 2021
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