Can friends really rescue each other? That바카라™s the key question looming over Hubert Charuel바카라™s low-key, affecting Meteors. Can an individual restore, salvage a loved one skidding deep into alcoholic ruin? Perhaps to save someone, you really need to step back for a while, let them see how deep they can crash if they don바카라™t wake up. When the film opens, both Mika (Paul Kircher) and Daniel (Idir Azougli) are drifters, jiving through life. Mika works at a burger joint, Dan is jobless. The two share a dream of moving to an island and doing kennel work. How can they afford it? One way is to find a long-missing carp and get hold of prize money. Dan even believes he knows where to look. However plans run aground when the two get embroiled in an accident, an absurd legal trial over kidnapping a cat.
The cat in question is precious since it바카라™s a beauty contest winner. The friends now face several possible years of jail-time, a hefty fine. The only solution their lawyer suggests is building a solid, unimpeachable record of good conduct. The seriousness of the situation quickly exerts on Mika. He cuts down on faffing around, does what바카라™s prescribed. He바카라™s lost his driver바카라™s license too. But Dan dismisses the lawyer바카라™s brief. He remains an inveterate alcoholic, smoking up and being irresponsible. When Dan has a major health scare, Mika is left shaken. Dan suffers epileptic fits. The doctor says if he continues with his drinking routine unchanged, he would be staring at just two more years of life. Yet, it doesn바카라™t terrify Daniel into amending habits.
Charuel바카라™s gaze on this friendship is compassionate yet blistering. There바카라™s no softening of toxic strains in the way it plays out. Genuine care jostles uneasily with flares of bitterness and resentment. This is an unhealthily co-dependent friendship, evident from the early stretch itself. Mika invests too much; Daniel laidback, impetuous, indifferent. Mika desperately wants to save Daniel.
Mika gathers resolve and works hard to turn Daniel around. He insists that Daniel goes to rehab, does something constructive that will get him some dough but not put his health at stake. But Daniel refuses to treat Mika바카라™s worries with any earnestness. He falls back on one path바카라”the one their friend Tony (Salif Cissé) proposes. It바카라™s work at an underground nuclear waste dumping facility. While initially both Mika and Dan sign up, the former distances himself from the work as the scale of health peril dawns on him. Meteors does feel a tad scant in Tony바카라™s weaving into Mika-Dan바카라™s equation. The three go back a long way, but Charuel and Claude Le Pape바카라™s screenplay largely neglects him except for latter, plot-heavier sections.
Dan is too lazy, ignorant, complacent to try other options. There are no expectations he has from life. He just wants to float by as he has done all this while. He바카라™s almost confident of his own hopelessness, whereas Mika reverts to being determined. The little Daniel tries to fix a situation, it only gets worse. He himself confesses with shamed, pained fatigue.
Working at the dumping zone poses serious health hazards. There are radiation-exposure dangers. Even as Tony dials it down, Mika is quick to see potential risks. He calls Tony out on it promptly. But Daniel persistently clasps onto this one gig that can bring steady, substantive money. He바카라™s in denial of his severe health. Mika pleads with him to quit, look for other jobs. But Mika바카라™s tenacity is in vain.
In the Kircher-Azougli dynamic, Meteors lands its emotional punches. Both are instantly persuasive as friends caught between eluding and confronting the swelling distance in between. It바카라™s an emotionally perceptive drama that locks in on a sense of irretrievability pulling friendship back. One of the most arresting young French actors, as testified by his turns in Winter Boy (2022) and And Their Children After Them (2024), Kircher probes great, uncertain emotional depths. Mika represses a lot of anguish about his friend바카라™s steady lapses. Daniel is so absorbed in recklessness, he dodges Mika바카라™s efforts. How long can Mika keep pushing, hoping that Daniel will prioritize what he must? Mika바카라™s sleeplessness escalates. He바카라™s always internally fighting for calm. Wilfully taking Dan바카라™s responsibility exacts a toll. Kircher바카라™s subtle, intuitive performance mines the quietly raging conflicts, the weight of being the one constantly looking out for a heedless friend. Gradually, Meteors wends its way to discomfiting, urgent places of truth바카라”a reconsideration of a friendship that must walk to a different beat.
Meteors premiered in Un Certain Regard at Cannes Film Festival 2025.
