The pitfalls of life in rural France are haphazardly examined in Meteors (Hubert Charuel, 2025), a kitchen sink drama that promises a heartfelt character exploration but quickly deteriorates due to its sentimental view of friendship, repetitive storyline beats and a nuclear metaphor that initially suggests something profound but ends up going nowhere. It’s a miracle that a film this messy found its way into Un Certain Regard.
The film begins, in its mismatched way, with the soaring sounds of Pamela’s French electro bop “Focused”, matched with sequences of Upper Marne, a region to the east of Paris. Mika (Paul Kircher), Dan (Idir Azougli) and Tony (Salif Cissé) are out in a bowling alley, drinking beers, doing shots, enjoying life. Things quickly go downhill, however, when Mika and Dan drive home and the latter attempts to steal someone’s cat, resulting in their arrest, an impending court trial and the revelation that Dan will die of liver failure if he doesn’t stop drinking.
Together, Mika and Dan represent a kind of Lennie and George situation, with the simple and impulsive Dan pushed around by the more sensitive and intelligent Mika as he tries to save him from his worst impulses. The main issue is that its almost impossible to care for Dan like Mika does, because Dan is neither interesting or likeable — most of the time he comes across as a total moron and a complete drag on Mika’s time. Azougli plays the 30-year-old man like a teenage juvenile, all mumbling reactions and self-pity, with no space for real introspection or the touching spark of humanity within. He’s simply very annoying. To be honest, Mika would do better without Dan in his life at all!
Perhaps I would’ve cared more about their relationship if the film had given me more indication of why the two men are friends. Some jokes? Some anecdotes? A shared history? Instead, Charuel launches into a new scheme involving Mika and Dan getting involved at Tony’s nuclear waste site, skirting official health and safety regulations and exposing Dan to lethal dangers. Again, I didn’t have any reason to like Dan, so when his life is constantly at risk, I had the opposite feeling to what Charuel is trying to achieve. It doesn’t help when the dramaturgy is also so turgid, with endless yelling sequences and a real lack of urgency to the impending court case or Dan’s failed attempts to get his life together, culminating in a deeply cringeworthy finale that luxuriates in its own deeply unearned bathos. I really didn’t like this.
Redmond is the editor-in-chief of Journey Into Cinema.