Météors – first-look review | Little White Lies

Boys will be boys. That’s the kind of idiom that would be used to brush off a fleet­ing encounter with Mika (Paul Kircher) and Dan (Idir Azougli), two twen­ty-some­things from sleepy French sub­ur­bia, who are arguably too old for their reck­less habits. After an evening at a bowl­ing alley, drink­ing colour­ful cock­tails made from cheap liquor and shar­ing a few puffs from a pristine­ly rolled joint, the pair jump in Mika’s car and head back to their minor­ly dilap­i­dat­ed shared flat. As they weave through tree-lined coun­try roads, Dan abrupt­ly demands they stop the car, only to return with a mar­malade coloured Maine Coon. Lit­tle do they know that the tem­pera­men­tal crea­ture – which Dan is already bar­gain­ing to sell – is a prized cat apt­ly named Sun­set, whose GPS col­lar tips its own­er off to their cat­nap­ping. Before long, the two boys are appre­hend­ed and faced with sev­er­al charges, fines, and even a poten­tial jail sentence.

In his first fic­tion­al fea­ture for the bet­ter part of a decade, writer-direc­tor Hubert Charu­el uses this intro­duc­to­ry sce­nario as a com­i­cal red her­ring to set in motion the melan­cholic way in which the paths of two best friends, whose lives until that point were on a sim­i­lar tra­jec­to­ry, grad­u­al­ly diverge for good. Where the threat of pun­ish­ment is a wake-up call that Mika uses to clean up his act and get sober, it becomes Dan’s break­ing point and the begin­ning of a down­ward spiral.

It’s unde­ni­able that Dan’s alco­holism stems from the hope­less­ness exud­ed by the waste­land of their small town, which also sti­fles his abil­i­ty to dream of achiev­ing big­ger and bet­ter things. Nei­ther of the two boys seems to have a present fam­i­ly mem­ber, or any wider sup­port sys­tem for that mat­ter, oth­er than their friend Tony (Salif Cis­sé). Though he must be of a sim­i­lar range, Tony appears to have a far stead­ier exis­tence, liv­ing in a gat­ed house and sta­ble work in con­struc­tion at a nuclear waste plant. To no sur­prise, it’s Tony that the duo turn to when they are told to accu­mu­late paper­work prov­ing they have income and employ­ment for their pend­ing tri­al, and so they too spend their days nav­i­gat­ing eerie mazes of con­crete walls ema­nat­ing mild radiation.

A nuclear waste plant seems hyper-spe­cif­ic, but serves its even­tu­al func­tion. Dan and Mika seem­ing­ly begin to expe­ri­ence symp­toms of acute radi­a­tion expo­sure, which begins to wors­en the phys­i­cal ail­ments Dan began to expe­ri­ence in the first act as a result of his exces­sive drink­ing. After a work­place acci­dent, it dawns on Mika that he must take action to safe­guard the per­son who means the most to him. He nego­ti­ates mon­e­tary com­pen­sa­tion to set Dan on a bet­ter course and implores him to enter rehab, but it’s no use; his best friend is too far gone.

Météors rests on the shoul­ders of two youth­ful new­com­ers in French cin­e­ma who are quick­ly ris­ing to promi­nence. Both as a duo and indi­vid­u­al­ly, Kircher and Azougli offer robust per­for­mances that sway between row­dy dis­plays of mas­culin­i­ty and hushed ten­der­ness as these lost fledg­lings on the fringes of soci­ety. As their inter­twined fates unrav­el, we are remind­ed that while the path of life is in part about the invol­un­tary cir­cum­stances you find your­self in, it is equal­ly a mat­ter of what you choose to make of it. Still, no cau­tion­ary mes­sage from Mika and Dan’s para­ble res­onates more deeply than the truth that los­ing a loved one is the harsh­est pun­ish­ment of all.

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