How François Ozon nav­i­gates queer romance

As he’s being dragged through the halls of a police sta­tion, the young man at the cen­tre of François Ozon’s Sum­mer of 85 issues a warn­ing right at the out­set: ​“If death doesn’t inter­est you, if you don’t want to hear about a corpse I knew when it was alive, if you don’t want to know what hap­pened to him and me, and how he became a corpse, you’d bet­ter stop right here. This is no sto­ry for you.”

There’s a jolt­ing sen­sa­tion to being told not to watch a queer film from the get-go, espe­cial­ly one mar­ket­ed with two boys, seem­ing­ly in love, hold­ing each oth­er as they ride a motor­cy­cle off into the sun­set. But as soon as Alex (Félix Lefeb­vre) fin­ish­es his state­ment, Ozon launch­es us into a more opti­mistic por­trait of the 1980s, play­ing The Cure’s ​‘In Between Days’ over a sun­ny coastal town.

As with so much of Ozon’s fil­mog­ra­phy, Sum­mer of 85 is designed to pull the view­er back and forth between vast­ly dif­fer­ent tonal expe­ri­ences with­out ever feel­ing like they’re dis­con­nect­ed from one anoth­er. This is, after all, the direc­tor who deliv­ered a Bergman-esque dra­ma with Under the Sand, piv­ot­ed to a camp musi­cal mur­der mys­tery with 8 Women, and then segued into cre­at­ing a sub­tle erot­ic thriller with Swim­ming Pool back to back.

Adapt­ed from Aidan Cham­bers’ ​‘Dance on My Grave’ – one of the first YA nov­els to depict homo­sex­u­al­i­ty with­out judg­ment – Ozon’s film nav­i­gates two sto­ries at once: that of first love and that of first loss. There is mys­tery to the way the film and nov­el frame the sto­ry with its pro­tag­o­nist reflect­ing on his past rela­tion­ship and all its volatil­i­ty while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly show­ing us how the romance blos­somed in the first place.

Upon find­ing him­self res­cued after cap­siz­ing, Alex­is (Félix Lefeb­vre) falls head over heels for his sav­iour David Gor­man (Ben­jamin Voisin), a young man who’s as charm­ing as he is dan­ger­ous. The mag­net­ism between them (both the actors and char­ac­ters) is unde­ni­able, result­ing in them doing every­thing one might expect them to do togeth­er, from hit­ting the amuse­ment park to work­ing at the same store (that David’s off­beat moth­er runs after his father’s death), if only to be togeth­er for yet anoth­er moment.

We see Alex­is expe­ri­ence these things with hind­sight, embroiled in a police inves­ti­ga­tion involv­ing a dead body, heav­i­ly implied to be David’s. He process­es this with help from his lit­er­a­ture pro­fes­sor (Melvil Poupaud), who encour­ages him to write his sto­ry (casu­al­ly rein­forc­ing the joke among queer peo­ple that their best friend in high school is their lit­er­a­ture pro­fes­sor). But the film’s Patri­cia High­smith-esque prox­im­i­ty to crime is some­thing more of a red her­ring, as Sum­mer of 85 is rather lov­ing­ly pre­oc­cu­pied with the highs and lows of an uncon­ven­tion­al, or queer, relationship.

This is some­thing Ozon has played with in the past through var­i­ous lens­es: writer and sub­ject in Swim­ming Pool; read­er and writer in In the House; ther­a­pist and patient in Dou­ble Lover; cap­tor and vic­tim in Crim­i­nal Lovers; the list goes on. But despite the rela­tion­ship between Alex­is and David com­ing across as more tra­di­tion­al than those, pre­sent­ing the beats of sum­mer love with real ten­der­ness, the film out­right rejects the more melo­dra­mat­ic beats of many a con­tem­po­rary gay romance.

Ozon’s fix­a­tion on the way rela­tion­ships trans­form us is as evi­dent here as else­where. The last decade in par­tic­u­lar has found him fas­ci­nat­ed with death’s impact on them, each film its own unique dive into it. The New Girl­friend explores gen­der iden­ti­ty through this lens, with one’s death being the cat­a­lyst for another’s trans­for­ma­tion, while Frantz allows its pro­tag­o­nists to find ful­fil­ment beyond the bag­gage of mem­o­ry while also acknowl­edg­ing that not every­one has a chance to tru­ly move on.

When you’re queer, every rela­tion­ship comes with extra bag­gage, but the first one has a cer­tain weight; an uncer­tain­ty to every action. You’re always cau­tious of what the expec­ta­tions of those around you might be, of the impli­ca­tion that you’re doing some­thing abnor­mal in the eyes of soci­ety. Alex­is’ par­ents talk around his uncle, seem­ing­ly shunned by the fam­i­ly for his queer­ness, while David’s moth­er piv­ots from dot­ing to mon­strous when she dis­cov­ers the romance between the boys is what led to her son being tak­en from her.

The film always jux­ta­pos­es these highs and lows: hold­ing hands on an amuse­ment park ride is fol­lowed by a fight and accu­sa­tion of fag­gotry and a pas­sion­ate dance togeth­er in a club is mir­rored by fever­ish move­ments to the same song on someone’s grave. Its most absurd moment takes a scoff at the idea of wear­ing a dress while on an upbeat date (with the out­fit in ques­tion being a direct ref­er­ence to his 1996 short film A Sum­mer Dress) and turns it into an extend­ed sequence in which Alex­is must dress in drag and pass as a woman to mere­ly see his lover one last time.

These are young men who are expect­ed to fol­low in the foot­steps of their work­ing class fathers, liv­ing out the exis­tence pre­de­ter­mined for them by soci­ety and their fam­i­lies. But Cham­bers’ nov­el and Ozon’s film are well aware that to be queer is to escape these pre-drawn maps, and though the lives of queer lovers are often coat­ed in tragedy, end­ing with tears in front of a fire­place, Sum­mer of 85 offers true hope beyond loss.

Sum­mer of 85 is released 23 Octo­ber via Cur­zon. Read the LWLies Rec­om­mends review.