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Les Combattants
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| Year: |
2014
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Director: |
Thomas Cailley
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| Stars: |
Adèle Haenel, Kévin Azaïs, Antoine Laurent, Brigitte Roüan, William Lebghil, Thibaut Berducat, Nicolas Wanczycki, Frédéric Pellegeay, Steve Tientcheu, Franc Bruneau, Maxime Mège, Clément Allemand, Barbara Ayse, Coumba Seck, Islam Magomadov
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| Genre: |
Comedy, Drama, Romance |
| Rating: |
  7 (from 1 vote) |
| Review: |
Arnaud (Kévin Azaïs) is at that stage in life where the possibilities seem endless, but paradoxically nothing has really fired up his imagination as something he would want to spend the rest of his days doing. His father died recently, and left the carpentry business he ran to Arnaud and his brother Manu (Antoine Laurent), so while the elder sibling is keen to make a go of it, the younger is simply spending the summer helping out because he doesn't know what else to do. One day on the beach with his friends he somehow gets involved with the recruiting of the Army and finds himself in hand to hand combat with a young woman, Madeleine (Adèle Haenel); humiliatingly, she manages to pin him to the sand and he has to bite her to get her off of him...
The English language title of Les Combattants was Love at First Sight, which was curious since you couldn't really describe that initial meeting as particularly affectionate, and indeed Madeleine remained an aggressively aloof figure for most of the story. There’s a reason for that, she is preparing herself for the end of the world, or the end of civilisation at any rate, and regards the best way to escape perishing in the apocalypse is to train for the worst, then and only then will she survive. As coincidence would have it, her parents want the boys to build a shed for them, so Arnaud ends up hanging around her more than he would have anticipated, which sparks a cautious friendship between them.
One baby ferret rescue later, and Arnaud is, against his better judgement, smitten, though Madeleine is so standoffish that he wouldn't dream of admitting it to her, he just finds more and more excuses to be around her. That the central relationship was such hard work may have you feeling the film was the same, yet director Thomas Cailley, here making his feature debut after penning scripts mostly for other people, obviously found the odd couple quite amusing, and after a while so do you. The girl may be prickly, the boy may be directionless, but they’re good together and help one another realise things about themselves that can only be beneficial, assisted by two nicely delivered and observed performances from the leads.
The plot appears to be geared towards a third act twist when Madeleine is proven correct and Armageddon actually does arrive, so that her skills in the wild will allow her to emerge triumphant, but though a science fiction flavour might have made it distinctive in one way, Cailley was wise not to head down that path and allow his cast to rely on character rather than a more over the top narrative, because Haenel in particular served up the kind of personality not often seen in the movies, and certainly not romantic ones. The film is captivated by her bullishness, her refusal to compromise and general tough, tomboy demeanour, yet every so often we will perceive she is not as self-sufficient as she would care to believe, and though she would not admit it needs other people to assist her sometimes.
There was a key scene later on, once Arnaud has signed up for the same training course his object of desire has and they have spent a few days performing physically demanding tasks all the better to get into the hardest division of the French Army. Madeleine keeps complaining that it's not tough enough for her tastes, and Arnaud finally stops at a roadside bar after an evening in the forest for a non-alcoholic beer, which she reluctantly joins him for. Here he accuses her of really not enjoying life, even ignoring the aspects which would bring her pleasure in the moment instead of grimly planning for a future nobody can be sure of, good or bad, so she glumly refutes that and tries to think of something she likes to prove him wrong, settling on dogs. There we see a sliver of humanity in her automaton façade, and also why Arnaud would persevere with her; there follows a Kings of Summer-style adventure in the woods where they try self-sufficiency, and the message, a positive one, is lucid enough: we're all in this together and that needn't be bad. Just try convincing someone else, mind you.
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| Reviewer: |
Graeme Clark
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