Writer / director François Ozon, now surely deserving the French term ‘Auteur’, has had a truly varied career from his debut feature, Sitcom in 1998, delving into a number of very different genres, ranging from awkward comedy (Water Drops On Burning Rocks - 2000 / Potiche - ’10), mysterious dramas (Under The Sand - ’00 / Swimming Pool - ’03) and a camp musical (8 Women - ’02), to unsettling thrillers (In The House - ’12 / L’Amant Double - ’17), harrowing drama (Young & Beautiful - ’17) and an impassioned cri de cœur in his fact-based Catholic Church abuse drama By The Grace Of God (’18), and even if the results haven’t always been entirely successful, such as his first English language production, Angel (’07), or the black-and-white post-Great War drama Frantz (’16), his ambition and enthusiasm has been clearly evident, but with Summer Of ’85, his nineteenth feature in twenty-three years, he also managing to find the time to produce a large number of shorts and documentaries, many critics noted a return to the carefree, celebratory spirit of his early work, almost marking a cinematic full circle.

Shot on Super 16mm celluloid by Hichame Alaiouie (Last Winter / Mother’s Interest), and ‘freely adapted’ according to the credits from the 1982 YA novel Dance On My Grave by Aiden Chambers, the second book in the author’s Dance Sequence series, Summer Of ’85 was set to be one of the major titles at the 2020 Cannes Film Festival before various viruses had their say, and in in many ways one of the filmmaker’s more direct and least complex films in many years, which is in no way an insult.

Filmed on the coast of Normandy in idyllic weather, all the more enticing after months of various lockdowns for most audiences, Ozon’s film is a teen love story of sorts, set over six weeks of summer, as 16-year-old Alex (Félix Lefebvre - School’s Out / Une Nuit, Á Travers Champs), a new and lonely arrival in the town, having moved with his parents, played by Isabelle Nanty (Les Visiteurs / Amélie) and Laurent Fernandez (22 Bullets / Les Lyonnais), and being literally rescued in dramatic fashion by the older David (Benjamin Voisin - The Happy Prince / Man Up!) when he gets into trouble in his sailboat. The two become involved with each other, the title of the book coming from the friends’ shared oath that should anything happen the survivor will dance on the other one’s grave, but their relationship is interrupted by the arrival of a young attractive English tomboy, Kate (the wonderfully named Philippine Veige - TV’s Station Eleven), leading to a tragedy which brings the boy’s oath all the more poignant and makes the film suffer from the removal of a major character.

Although the focus is obviously on the three teens, Ozon also gives strong roles to Valeria Bruni Tedeschi (Human Capital / Saint Laurent) as David’s loquacious mother, and Melvil Poupaud (Mysteries Of Lisbon / An Officer And A Spy) as Monsieur Lefevre, Alex’s sympathetic teacher, and the film continues Ozon’s penchant for adapting lesser-known English authors, following ’07’s Angel, based on a book by Elizabeth Taylor (not that one) and ’09’s Ricky, from a work by Rose Tremain, with The New Girlfriend (’14), adapted from a short story by the rather better-known Ruth Rendell.

Ozon’s film found some strong proponents, The Hollywood Reporter advising ‘Here, the story and the characters' supposed naiveté and the almost-too-obvious stylistic flourishes aren't just nods to [Ozon’s] younger, less-refined m.o. They are actually part of a master storyteller's tools to seduce a grown-up audience into considering how youngsters not only experience their own lives but also how they process and talk about them, and Screen Daily believing ‘An intense and touching tale of first love set over a six-week period, Summer Of 85 blends the energy of youth with the curveballs of fate in a pleasant, keenly acted package that, despite a tragic core, will send all but the most strait-laced curmudgeon out of the cinema smiling’. The Wrap noted ‘For as prolific a filmmaker as Ozon continues to be, his occasional misses are far outweighed by his offbeat and insightful forays, particularly in the realm of sexuality — the best parts and the crazy-making parts. For audiences equally interested in his insights about loss and about love, there’s plenty to ponder in Summer of ’85’, The Playlist adding that the film ‘… is ultimately not entirely successful, because its disparate tones don’t always mesh. But more than that, the carefree, romantic stuff is so enjoyable, and so sincere, that in retrospect, one wishes the entire film had lived there – both in that flush of first love (or at least lust), and in reckoning afterward with the complexities of that emotion’. The Guardian, however, thought ‘Unlike the woozy love at its centre, Summer of 85 doesn’t haunt in the way that it should. It fades when it should burn’, and one has to suspect The Film Stage had already written the pun and were determined to use it when they wrote ‘It is utterly so-so, but it is also, undeniably, so-Ozon’.

Ozon also obviously decided that Été 85 / Summer Of ’85 was a better and more fitting title than that of the novel, the full title of which is (takes deep breath) Dance on My Grave: a life and a death in four parts, one hundred and seventeen bits, six running reports and two press clippings, with a few jokes, a puzzle or three, some footnotes and a fiasco now and then to help the story along, which isn’t quite as catchy.