Stéphane Demoustier is one of the directors who knows how to renew himself with talent. After a great Unknown from the Great Arch, released last November. It is inspired by the novel by Victor Gestin, published by Flammarion in 2019. Heata chronicle of a sultry summer that turns into a suffocating thriller. Director Borgo and from Girl with a bracelet as good as ever at juggling genres and creating suspense without even touching it.
The hero, a silent and lonely child, could be any teenager worried about spending the summer camping in the Landes. His life is turned upside down when he inadvertently causes the death of another camper and allows panic to push him into making a stupid decision. In his film, Stéphane Demoustier eschews the detective story to paint a portrait of a boy in our time suddenly faced with adult decisions:
” These youth are developing in a context – environmental, political, economic – that is troubling. I have the impression that these teenagers no longer have the same right to carefree as their predecessors, including me. »
Metaphor of adolescence
The heat evoked by the title is both a sun-drenched landscape and a heatstroke experienced by a 17-year-old boy, wracked with anxiety and terrible feelings of guilt. Debut director Adrian Hussein does a wonderful job of conveying the anguish of a character overwhelmed by a situation beyond his control. The heat wave is all the more unbearable for a silent young man who is in love with an Italian summer resident who considers him entertainment.
” The opening scene is a metaphor for all this: sublime bodies, overflowing with vitality, throwing themselves into the water, in the truest sense of the word. While filming this episode, a certain lyricism is combined with some form of brutality. Each person is asked to follow the group. And run towards inhospitable, cruel and arbitrary waves. Like existence. »
Morality without being a moralist
there is a small side Crime and Punishment Dostoevsky in questions posed by a fascinating script. It is the almost insignificant aspect of the incident that gives rise to the plot that makes it particularly gruesome. Paradoxically, by paying little attention to this twist, the director makes it terrible. It only takes one moment to change your destiny forever.
Our thriller file
The hero’s position is as fascinating as it is questionable. There’s something pretty daring about daring to base your movie around a character you don’t actually like. The director manages to convey the boy’s state of mind, whose reactions range from apathy to bloodshed. This sense of oppression leading to redemption is one of the main ingredients Heat. Moral without being moralistic, the film doesn’t really fit into any box other than cinema that is intellectually exciting because it’s very smart.