Myron Clemons
A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.
dbdumonteil
"Tonnerre" means thunder,but it is the name of a town in Morvan where the movie was made on location;it is much to the credit of the director to have taken advantage of his rural snow-clad landscapes .As for the story,it is (roughly) that of a love triangle,but with endearing characters,two of whom are losers .The hero is a rocker down on his luck,broke,who occasionally strums his guitar and mumbles a song (in English),but this side of the character is not convincing.As he is short of the readies,he lives with his dad -played by an amazing Bernard Menez ,a former maths teacher turned comedy actor in the seventies- who still thinks he can seduce women . Maxime ,our failed rock star falls for a journalist,Melodie ,who is much younger than him.But she cannot save him,cause ,as she writes him,I cannot save myself.She has another lover ,a football player called Ivan ,which drives Maxime mad.In the white country ,this is finally a dark story;there is a depressing conversation between the loser and one of his friends,Hervé (played by a non-Professional actor in a very workmanlike way) ,about suicide :although downhearted ,he finds the strength to carry on through his two little girls.As for Maxime,he tries to escape a dead end,but if even at the end of the movie ,love seems to have been good to him (Melodie clears his name),he remains a beautiful loser ,who has found peace of mind but whose future is still bleak.The subject is derivative but the director plays his game well and interest is sustained throughout.NB: for rock fans :while the two couples are dancing to a syrupy tune,you can spot sleeves of Neil Young's "on the beach ,"John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band" ,Bob Dylan's "Nashville skyline" plus two other albums by Santana and Simon and Garfunkel.
