"Summer of 85" balances intriguingly but a little too murkily on a fulcrum of unreliable narration, and it becomes impossible to tell whether Ozon means us to take the story at face value or undercutting Alex's own melodramatic pronouncements.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 7, 2021

Despite some distracting contrivances, "Summer of 85" transports viewers to a place, time and feeling that feel altogether real, and not nearly as far away as they initially might seem.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 24, 2021

It's all predicated on the strength of [Félix Lefebvre and Benjamin Voisin's] performances, and they're really good.

| Jun 22, 2021

It's recommendable, but I don't think it quite adds up to a full meal.

| Jun 22, 2021

You really do start to wonder where it's all going -- a fine trick of the storytelling on display since, long before the end, you realize: you already know.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 21, 2021

In the end, Summer Of 85 is about the idea of romance more than it is an actual romance, and on that level it succeeds almost too well, leaving one wishing for something more substantial.

| Original Score: C+ | Jun 21, 2021

Summer of 85 delights in romantic excess, ending up as an almost literal evocation of one of the songs on its era-specific soundtrack.

| Jun 19, 2021

I held out hope that Summer of 85, Ozon's latest, would be a return to form, since it concerns themes that the director explored so sharply at the beginning of his career: estival idylls and anarchic adolescent desire. My optimism was sadly misplaced.

| Jun 18, 2021

Summer of 85 plays like a bad parody of movies like Love Story and Summer of '42, stories where some undeserving male learns a valuable lesson from a love affair and death.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Jun 18, 2021

It ultimately stumbles in this balancing act and loses sight of its emotional core, but its efforts remain compelling and delightfully bizarre.

| Jun 17, 2021

"Summer of 85" has the matter-of-fact sensuality and youthful focus of so many of Ozon's earlier films, but it's also a startlingly specific greatest-hits compilation from across the director's tirelessly productive career

| Jun 17, 2021

François Ozon's paean to nostalgia wraps tragedy and obsession in a whimsical bow.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jun 13, 2021

"Summer of '85" isn't vintage Ozon, but it is satisfying with a shrewd screenplay adapted from a French YA novel.

| Jun 10, 2021

Summer of 85 might find Ozon at his briskest and breeziest, but as a specifically gay loss-of-innocence parable, it shoulders an unspoken weight.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 18, 2020

Ozon first read Chambers's novel as a teenager and his adaptation blends the prickly joy of that first encounter with the stylistic confidence of a film-maker revisiting an old flame.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 25, 2020

What follows is a standard teenage romance, stylishly mounted and sensitively played.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 24, 2020

A holiday romance perfect for the dark nights with the added bonus of a flashback structure that builds genuine intrigue into the outcome. It also includes a use of Rod Stewart's 'Sailing' that guarantees its place on your 2020 movie playlist.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 23, 2020

Watchable if not especially profound...

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 23, 2020

The tone is oddly vanilla all round, in the end just one more film ticked off for Ozon.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 21, 2020

An unassuming but potent look at the way young love bruises but forges identity.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 21, 2020