Félix Lefebvre as Alexis and Benjamin Voisin as David in Summer of ’85 (AFFFF)

The 1980s are back in style today among post-millennials, and Ozon’s film has both a nostalgic and strangely contemporary quality. With Ozon, it is all about the details; Summer of ’85 is very precise in its periodisation of the era, right down to shark-tooth necklaces, denim overalls, and the long-forgotten flick-knife comb. Camp elements work against the otherwise serious subject matter, creating a useful tension between the tragic and the comic, so typical of Ozon’s films. There is pathos, too, though Ozon never lets us get too caught up in sentiment. There are wonderful shots of the Normandy coast and the small seaside town and its inhabitants, in a muted 1980s palette of pale pastels interspersed with bright reds and yellows.

The performances are strong. Félix Lefebvre (The Chalet) is perfectly cast as Alex, a wide-eyed teenager inducted into the world of love, death, and betrayal by the charismatic David (Benjamin Voisin). Valeria Bruni Tedeschi gives a fine supporting performance as David’s eccentric and emotionally troubled mother. Ozon has compiled a fitting soundtrack, a mix of 1980s hits and an incidental score by Jean-Benoît Dunckel of French duo Air; and his inspired use of ‘Sailing’ by Rod Stewart makes a lasting impression. 

Tennis films constitute something of a genre in their own right. Since Alfred Hitchcock explored the game as a metaphor in his 1951 classic Strangers on a Train, there have been others, including Match Point, Borg vs McEnroe, and Battle of the Sexes. Final Set (★★★★) by Quentin Reynaud fits neatly into this group with its blend of personal drama and carefully edited match footage. For tennis fans still buzzing from the Australian Open, Final Set comes as a timely reminder of the unglamorous side of professional tennis. Low-ranked and past-it players struggle for little or no pay, without sponsorship or expenses, their bodies often prematurely worn out through repetitive injury or just plain ‘old’ age (in tennis, thirty-seven is ancient). Not that this film is out to illicit sympathy for these players, but it does show a side of pro tennis that many of us don’t see when watching a grand slam.

Final Set is about a more universal theme of the struggle against the odds, against the naysayers, and against oneself both physically and psychologically. Thomas Edison (Alex Lutz) is a former French tennis prodigy who ‘choked’ during match point of a semi-final at the French Open eighteen years earlier and never recovered psychologically. Add to this several knee reconstructions, a mother-coach (played by the ever-chilly Kristin Scott Thomas) who never forgave him for losing, a wife who wants to put tennis behind them, and a pack of sports journalists bent on constantly reminding Thomas of his failure and the impossibility of a comeback at his age. All Thomas has is his iron will.

Lutz’s performance captures the mad resolve of a driven individual who seems hell-bent on destroying everything around him in pursuit of a goal – even himself. Reynaud’s film owes a debt to the Werner Herzog/Klaus Kinski collaborations of the 1970s, in particular Aguirre: Wrath of God (1972). Lutz even looks remarkably like Kinski’s Aguirre, the iron helmet replaced with a reversed cap à la Lleyton Hewitt (who incidentally staged a comeback in his early thirties after surgery and a massive drop in the rankings). The film is tightly framed, emphasising the brutal physical and mental aspects of top-level tennis. Reynaud also uses visual tropes from le cinema du procès and cinema verité to take us into the minutiae of Thomas’s world. We see him pack his own bag, fill his own water bottles, shop for his own match clothing – things the higher ranked players don’t have to do themselves. Final Set is well paced and builds slowly towards its climax in the biggest match of his life.

Alex Lutz as Thomas in Final Set (AFFFF)

Anne Fontaine likes to ‘get inside’ her subjects. This was particularly the case with two of her previous films, Dry Cleaning (1997) and The Innocents (2016). In The Innocents, she explored the concept of the uniform and, more importantly the people who wear them. Fontaine continues this exploration in Night Shift (★★★★☆), a film about three Parisian police officers, Virginie (Virginie Efira), Aristide (Omar Sy), and Erik (Grégory Gadebois), who face a crisis of conscience when asked to transport an illegal immigrant, Tohirov (played with great pathos by an Asghar Farhadi regular, Payman Maadi), to the airport for deportation. Each character has his or her backstory and life outside the police force or, in Tohirov’s case, in his home country of Tajikistan, where he faces torture or death if he returns.

This is a dark film but also a beautiful one. In what has been called a metaphysical policier, Fontaine has eschewed many of the conventions of the policier or police procedural genre such as a heavy focus on plot twists and action sequences in favour of intense character study and emotional depth. Fontaine herself described the film as a policier as it might have been made by Ingmar Bergman, and much of the camera work is reminiscent of Bergman’s style, particularly the way Fontaine treats the human face. The use of a Bach sonata is strangely apposite. Much hinges on the chemistry between Sy and Efira; it is certainly apparent, as is the mixture of camaraderie and ribbing one expects in this line of work. Ultimately, Night Shift stages to great effect the conflict between law and justice, between duty and conscience, and between the uniform and the people who wear it. It reveals the ways police officers deal with – or do not deal with – the extreme situations they are placed in every day. Though not a sentimental film, Night Shift is full of emotion, much of which is kept simmering just beneath the surface.

Finally, film students, cinephiles, Francophiles – and everyone else – should not miss the opportunity to revisit Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless on the big screen. Sixty years after its original release, Godard’s film début has been painstakingly restored in 4K. The image is sharper, the sound crisper. What really comes into focus is Paris: its streets, its inhabitants, its landmarks, everything that made up the muddy background of the old print. The New Wave broke cinematic codes and revolutionised French cinema by moving film production out of the studio and onto the streets. With this restoration, you really feel like you are there with them, walking the ‘Champs’ with Michel (Jean-Paul Belmondo) and Patricia (Jean Seberg), or taking in the street outside Patricia’s hotel window. While the sexual politics may be questionable, particularly in today’s post-#MeToo climate, with its iconic performances, cool aesthetic, code-breaking editing, and hip jazz score by Martial Solal, Breathless remains a cinematic classic.

The Alliance Française French Film Festival 2021 is currently ongoing. Visit their website to check opening and closing times for your city.