Summer of 85 · reception & legacy

2020 · François Ozon

How Summer of 85 has been received, argued over, and remembered.

The arc

Launched with the 'Cannes 2020' label the year the festival was cancelled, it was received warmly but filed under 'minor Ozon' by many critics — since then it's quietly become a queer-cinema staple, one of the films Letterboxd users actually keep returning to from that lost Cannes year.

What's debated

The perennial fight is whether it's slight, sun-dazed 'minor Ozon' or one of his most personal films — usually tangled up with the inevitable, slightly unfair Call Me by Your Name comparisons.

Its footprint

The nightclub scene — David slipping headphones over Alexis's ears so he's swaying to Rod Stewart's 'Sailing' while the disco pounds on without him — is the film's endlessly gif'd, much-tattooed-on-timelines image, with The Cure's 'In Between Days' needle-drop close behind.

Where it stands

A Letterboxd-era queer canon entry: not top-tier Ozon by critical consensus, but a 'watch this and text me after' film within its fandom.

★ Did you know? Ozon originally set the film in the summer of 1984, but Robert Smith would only license The Cure's 'In Between Days' — released in 1985 — if the year matched, so the title and setting became Summer of 85.

Named by the director

Influences François Ozon has publicly named — the director's own word, distinct from the inferred lines of influence.

My Own Private Idaho (1991) — Ozon had his two leads watch it so their bond would echo River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves, and he even tried (and abandoned) restaging its three-way love scene.
La Boum (1980) — Ozon acknowledged the headphones-at-a-party scene as a nod to La Boum, noting that after that film 'everyone in France listened to their own headphones at parties.'