A seaside summer fling between Alexis and David lasts just six weeks, but casts a shadow over a lifetime in François Ozon’s sexy, nostalgic reverie of first love and its consequences.
When Alexis’ (Félix Lefebvre) boat capsizes off the coast of Normandy, David (Benjamin Voisin) comes to the rescue and soon opens the younger boy’s eyes to a new horizon of friendship, art, and sexual bliss.
David’s worldly demeanor and Jewish heritage deliver an ardent jolt to Alexis’s traditional, working-class upbringing. After Alexis begins working at the seaside shop owned by David’s mother (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi), the two lovers steal every possible moment for a fugitive kiss, a motorcycle ride, or a trip to the cinema.
Their relationship is soon rocked by a host of challenges, including an unexpected sexual rival (Philippine Velge) and a romantic oath that transcends life itself.
“Summer of 85” was adapted by François Ozon from Aidan Chambers’s groundbreaking young adult novel "Dance on My Grave".
“I read the novel in 1985, when I was seventeen years old, and I loved it. It spoke to me personally,” said Ozon. “The book is playful and inventive. It has drawings, press clippings, changing points of view. I so much enjoyed reading it that, when I started directing short films, I thought: ‘If one day I make a feature film, my first will be an adaptation of this novel’.”
“Films are made when they're supposed to be made. This story needed time for me to mature so that I would know how to tell it. In the end, I remained faithful to the novel's narrative structure. I adapted the story's background to make it French and I transposed it to the time period when I first read the book. The movie encompasses both the book's reality and my memories of what I felt when first reading it,” added Ozon.
“A sexy, nostalgic and very French love story.” — A.O. Scott, The New York Times