Coup de chaud (2015)
Directed by Raphaël Jacoulot

Film Review

There's nothing like a long hot spell to bring out the worst in people and in his latest film, Coup de chaud, director Raphaël Jacoulot shows just what an ugly thing human nature can be when the mercury climbs too high in a seemingly idyllic French village.  In his third, most disturbing film yet, Jacoulot combines the social realist aspect of his debut feature Barrage (2006) with the noir-tinted mystery trappings of the glacial thriller that came next, Avant l'aube (2011), the result being a film that resonates as an astute allegory of France's present day 'blame it all on the immigrants' malaise.  It is one of the sorrier aspects of the human condition, this tendency to seek out easy scapegoats and attribute all of society's ills to a visible, widely reviled minority, and it is with a kind of morbid relish that Jacoulot re-examines the theme he broached it in his previous film 

Coup de chaud is a film which, like Avant l'aube, hums with a peculiarly oppressive atmosphere that is more than vaguely reminiscent of what we encounter in Claude Chabrol's darker thrillers.  The gradually escalating sense of hysteria that spreads among the inhabitants of a peaceful rural community, like a forest fire, builds the tension to a suitably grim climax, the hysteria being driven by nothing more than a collective mistrust of an outsider, the idiot son of a gypsy, Josef Bousou.  At first, we are inclined to side with the villagers.  Josef is a frightening individual, a perpetual infant lacking in adult inhibition, made more frightening by the fact that his face is permanently set in a vacuous doll-like expression with the eyes of a demonically possessed child.  Yet, weird though he appears, there is nothing in Josef's behaviour to suggest he is dangerous.  His actions are more childish than malevolent, but the villagers see him as a threat, their prejudice further aggravated when he gets too intimate with a local girl and the community water pump goes missing.

The perspective alters dramatically in the film's second half and we suddenly find ourselves siding with Josef, the misunderstood clown who ends up being cast as the local bogeyman.  The film owes this remarkable turn-around to its central performance from Karim Leklou, impressive in his first lead role after making his presence felt in a smaller part in Rebecca Zlotowski's Grand central (2013).  In what feels like a reworking of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein story, Leklou first unnerves us as the retarded 30-something who develops into a monster, and then genuinely engages our sympathies when the whole village turns against him and deals with him in a far from humane way. At one point, it looks as if the villagers are conspiring to rid the world of an invasion of marrauding aliens, not one mentally handicapped young man.

Intense performances from a strong cast that includes Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Grégory Gadebois and Carole Franck, showing intolerance at its most brazen and repellent, more than adequately complement Leklou's attention-grabbing central turn as the unfortunate who ends up as the sacrificial victim for a community that refuses to look back on itself and see where its real problems lie.  Coup de chaud is not only a supremely well-crafted thriller, it is also a dark and eloquent commentary on our times.

Film Synopsis

At the height of a scorching hot summer, the calm of a small French village is disturbed by Josef Bousou, a mischievous thirty-year old who has the mental age of a small child.  The villagers have long had to endure Josef's infantile antics but, as the temperature sores, their patience is exhausted.  When the community water pump goes missing, Josef is immediately blamed for its disappearance.  It seems inevitable that the disturbed young man should end up being killed, but which of the villagers would be pushed so far as to commit murder...?