19/05/2011

When a director makes a debut feature after the age of 40, as Jean-Jacques Jauffret (who previously collaborated with the late director Cyril Collard, to whom the movie is dedicated and whose unfiltered way of depicting his characters' bodies finds several echoes here) pointed out before the evening screening of the Directors' Fortnight title Heat Wave [+see also:
trailer
interview: Adèle Haenel
film profile], in Cannes, it certainly implies that said debut has been carefully elaborated, and indeed, the result is a cleanly written, perfectly structured story inspired by true events.

Heat Wave, shot on the French Riviera during a hot summer, intertwines four small personal dramas which finally converge towards a truly tragic, heartbreaking ending. Young Amélie (Adele Haenel), who is working as a supermarket cashier for the summer, suspects she might be pregnant by her boyfriend Luigi (Ulysse Grosjean), a kind teenager whose father treats him violently is about to go back to his mother's in Italy.

Anne’s mother Anne (Sylvie Lachat) secretly considers having a gastric-band surgically placed in her stomach in order to lose weight. Lastly, Georges (Yves Ruellan) is a lonely old man who lives in the same neighbourhood as Amélie and her mum and only wants to enjoy a bit of Mozart from time to time.

These four touching stories take place on the same day. Each is told separately, from the point of view of a single character at a time, with the images and sounds adjusted accordingly as the chronology repeats itself.

This subjective way of recounting events (as well as the aforementioned attention to characters' bodies) allows us to really penetrate their intimacy, and share the contained emotions on their worried faces. It also never quite severs them from one another – each can still be seen in the background when the focus is on someone else.

In fact, in this movie, things (doors, cash register, etc.) have a tendency to stay half-open, and a number of well thought-out parallels (the attention to the mother and the daughter's bellies, the father/son relationship which counterpoints Amélie and Anne's...) ensure that the four stories communicate.

Yet in no way does the meticulous account of what happens that day justify the awfully arbitrary ending, which unites in one tragic second everything that has passed before. It just makes the final embrace that takes place under the dazzling southern sun incredibly sad.

(Translated from French)