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.
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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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