Heat
kills. Just ask Camus’s Meursault. It’s not great for crops either. An unseasonable
warm spell will set in motion a chain of events that culminates in murder. However,
the developmentally challenged Josef Bousou maybe had it coming—or perhaps the
good villagers deliberately misinterpreted his aggressively boorish behavior.
He certainly winds up dead, as we can tell from the in media res opening. How
he got that way will be revealed in the long flashback that forms the core of
Raphaël Jacoulot’s Heatwave (trailer here), which currently
streams as part of the 2016 My French Film Festival.
The
thirty year-old Josef seems to have an elementary school child’s understanding
of life, as well as an equivalent capacity for mischief. Madame Bousou often
gets complaints regarding petty thefts and blasting loud music, but she
steadfastly ignores them all. The ever-indulgent Mayor Daniel Huot-Marchand
often runs interference for the Bousous, but Josef’s latest exploits will test his
patience.
To
help the village’s smaller farmers survive the drought, Huot-Marchand and the
council approved the creation of a mechanized communal well station. Yet, in an
apparently cruel act of sabotage, the pump is stolen and the key to the service
shed is found on Bousou’s person. With sentiment already running against him,
the easily manipulated hulking child sexually accosts a village elder. Of
course, after a day or two of observations, Bousou returns home to his
not-sufficiently-concerned family. When Bousou’s teenaged crush makes similar
but more dubious charges against him, things really start to get ugly.
Frankly,
Jacoulot’s weird attempt to switch gears in last twenty minutes never really
works, because of how assiduously he has stacked the deck against Bousou in the
preceding hour-plus. Despite everything that comes to light, it is hard to
blame the Mayor for requesting professional intervention when Bousou haltingly forces
himself on the old lady. Seriously, that is a totally fair deal-breaker, even
if it technically never escalates to the point of legal criminality. As a
practical matter, Bousou is cast as such an obnoxious trouble-maker, Jacoulot
has no accrued sympathy to draw on when he makes his late pivot.
Still,
it is sort of fascinating to watch Heatwave
play out as a sort of perverse passion play. Karim Leklou is completely
convincing as the socially underdeveloped Bousou—perhaps even too much so. As
usual, the ever-dependable Jean-Pierre Darroussin brings the film instant
salt-of-the-earth credibility as the conflicted Huot-Marchand. It is easy to
understand why people vote for him, especially compared to the preening
ideologue New Yorkers are currently stuck with.
