There’s a remarkable kind of alchemy at work in Hubert Charuel’s Meteors, an addiction story that transcends the typically staid strictures of the genre to become something altogether more evocative and wonderful. There are traces of a Dardenne aesthetic here, as well as the woozy, somnambulist nighttime reverie of much modern indie cinema. But there’s a real attention to character, too, not just stylish aesthetics. It’s a deeply humane film, burrowing into the difficulties of living in this specific place in time and finding a reason to keep on going.
Mika (Paul Kircher) and Daniel (Idir Azougli) are best friends and roommates, a couple of 20-somethings closing in on 30 who are floating through life in a haze of booze and hash. They live in Saint-Dizier, in northern France, a dying industrial town with ominous symbols of its collapse hovering everywhere in the form of disused, dilapidated factories and smoke stacks. The modern world has left this place behind, and these men with it. Mika is the more level-headed of the duo, holding down a part-time job at a Burger King and picking up occasional freelance journalism work. Daniel is the wild man, the instigator who loves to get drunk and climb things while concocting harebrained get-rich-quick schemes.
Their (relatively) carefree life of hanging with friends, bowling, and staying up all night comes to a halt when their attempt to steal a prize-winning orange cat goes south, landing them in jail. Mika loses his car and his license, and Daniel has a seizure while appearing in court. A doctor explains to him that it’s the result of alcohol withdrawal, and that if he doesn’t get sober, he’ll drink himself to death in a matter of years. This diagnosis gives the film its dramatic structure, but Charuel provides lots of space for his performers to exist as fully fleshed-out characters rather than simple mouthpieces for anti-drug messaging. A montage of the friends cleaning their apartment while singing a song together, for instance, is exceedingly lovely, a perfect encapsulation of a relationship that is full of energy and camaraderie.
Eventually, inevitably, complications must ensue. At the behest of their lawyer, Mika and Daniel enroll in an outpatient substance abuse program, while also getting more stable work with their friend Tony (Salif Cissé), who runs an under-the-table construction business. Their first assignment is building containment cubicles at a nuclear waste disposal site. Mika dedicates himself fully to sobriety, and while it appears that Daniel is trying to do the same, in reality, he has simply begun to hide his drinking from his friend. Meanwhile, the construction job becomes more dangerous, driving a further wedge between the three pals. Charuel and cinematographer Jacques Girault do remarkable work showing the scale and doldrums of the work site; despite their poverty, the men’s shared living space is mostly warm and cozy, if cramped. By contrast, the waste site is all huge concrete slabs, a vast field of personality-less rebar and steel girders, almost like a Brutalist prison. The film smartly recognizes that while society undoubtedly values the gainfully employed more than stoned layabouts, the work on offer is dehumanizing and alienating.
In this sense, Meteors has something in common with Clément Cogitore’s Sons of Ramses and Virgil Vernier’s Cent Mille Milliards, in that poverty and disenfranchisement are part of marginalized life in the globalized 21st century. Meteors isn’t perfect; there’s a late plot development that feels disingenuous, like the filmmakers felt a need to goose the audience. There’s also a bit of heavy-handed symbolism throughout, although by the end it at least feels more earned than not. Still, small blemishes and all, Charuel’s is largely a remarkable film, a genuine attempt to grapple with life in the present tense, a here-and-now survey with all the contradictions that implies.
Published as part of Cannes Film Festival 2025 — Dispatch 3.
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