Love at First Sight (Les Combattants)
Director: Thomas Cailley
Talent: Adèle Haenel, Kévin Azaïs, Antoine Laurent, Brigitte Roüan
Release Date: 19th June 2015
Les Combattants takes the ‘boy meets girl, boy likes girl, boy follows girl obsessively until she likes him back’ set up that’s been a rom-com staple for far too long and tries to wring something new out of it. In this case it’s that the girl is more interested in joining the army than returning her admirer’s affections.
There’s plenty of potential for the subversion of traditional gender roles, but Les Combattants mostly avoids this and remains far closer to typical rom-com territory. Thus the heavier themes – army aspirations are linked to a survivalist preparation for the end of the world – feel a little misplaced. The film stumbles from a well executed (if unoriginal) adolescent romance into an unsubtle comparison between training for adulthood and preparing for the apocalypse. The result is a formulaic movie that is actually at its best when sticking to said formula, and at its worst when it tries to deviate from it.
Words: Bernard O’Rourke
