During your teenage years you always look forward to summer vacation. Over here it’s six weeks of freedom and you know that you are going to have a lot of new experiences. You might hang out with friends, travel abroad and might be lucky enough to find a summerlove (or more). Les Combattants (also known as Love at First Fight) is set during such a summer period and tries to capture that feeling.
At the beginning of the film Arnaud Lebrede (Kevin Asais) and his brother Manu (Antoine Laurent) are picking out the coffin for their deceased father. They have become responsible to keep his carpentering business going. But Arnaud still is a teenager, who is also interested in other things like clubbing. During one summer day he meets Madeleine (Adele Haenel) at a self-defense course. Although he really doesn’t want to fight her she turns out to be strong and succeeds to beat him. With a bruised ego he decides to leave.
When he meets her by accident during his job, they don’t get along well. She tries to sabotage him and he thinks she’s strange (her responses are usually weird and she also has some very dark ideas about the future of the world). The two still spend a lot of time together. Slowly Madeleine starts changing Arnaud and he decides to make choices which could impact his future.
Les Combattants is a French romantic comedy/drama which perfectly captures that summer feeling. Seemingly unimportant moments and meetings could have a huge influence on the future and in this case it is about how the two slowly start growing towards each other. The movie is supported by a great electro soundtrack by Hit+run. With its mix of fun characters, beautifully shot imagery and convincing interaction between Asais and Haenel director Thomas Cailley has made Les Combattants a great summer movie.
