François Ozon directs Félix Lefebvre, Benjamin Voisin and Valeria Bruni Tedeschi in this French teen romance where two local lads in a seaside town fall hard for each other… but death is on the horizon.

A more down to earth yet heart pounding Call Me By Your Name. That was quite a calculated visual seduction, this lands the heady ups and downs of summer lovin’ and self discovery bang on. From the off, Ozon lets us know this is going to explore darker places than a September break-up. The second half is more grim, less compelling, but has a nice wood grain to it. Much like that heady rush of instant attraction is punctuated by sad flash forwards to the aftermath, the fallout of the midway tragedy has bursts of flashbacks to their warmer memories together. It isn’t a perfect movie… the lead is a little wet, a little creepy and I’m not sure that’s wholly intentional. But the support cast is uniformly strong with both Voisin and Bruni Tedeschi hitting their marks with aplomb as the confident wild boy and his slightly unhinged mum respectively.

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