14-year-old best friends Anthony (Jérémy Gillet) and Dylan (Félix Lefebvre) are inseparable and one night they decide to crash an evening at a nightclub. Both fighting their own personal issues, of which they don’t communicate with one another, the night quickly gets out of hand and the friends spiral into a drugs, violence and sex. Over the course of the evening, their lives change forever.
‘A Night in the Fields’ is from writer/director Guillaume Grélardon and it’s a 55-minute film that takes a deep dive on the topic of masculinity. Grélardon presents two very different boys – Anthony who is seemingly shy and more feminine but has an uncontrollable rage simmering beneath the surface and cocky Dylan who treats women as objects and can’t control the words that come out of his mouth. In many ways the two boys are polar opposites but they egg each other on over the course of their wild and quickly escalating evening.
For Anthony, he’s besotted with classmate Océane (Nadia Tereszkiewicz) who is nice to him but otherwise not particularly interested. Part of the event is spent tracking her down and Anthony feeling overly protective of her despite the two not being in any kind of a relationship. Grélardon shows us that Anthony’s protective nature comes from caring for his bed-ridden mother and the general feeling of unfairness that he has about his life is what threatens to destroy him.
Dylan on the other hand is the typical toxic male, at least on the outside, all bravado and behaving like he’s the big man about town. A glimpse at his home life shows that actually he’s bullied by his older brother and his feelings of insecurity lead him to behave as he believes a man should. This comes to a head when the two boys visit prostitutes and Dylan’s behaviour is nothing short of disgraceful. He doesn’t think twice about being abusive, both verbally and physically, when he doesn’t get his way.
The two young leads – Jérémy Gillet and Félix Lefebvre – give themselves completely to their roles and they are very convincing. There’s an underlying sexual tension between the two that’s never explicitly explored but it’s safe to say that Anthony is clearly harbouring more than just feelings of friendship towards Dylan. The two actors have an electric chemistry that keeps you on side with their characters, even when their behaviour is nothing short of appalling.
Grélardon packs a lot into 55-minutes and you could easily file ‘A Night in the Fields’ next to current TV hit ‘Euphoria’. It’s actually a very disturbing exploration of adolescence in the modern age and I came away from it feeling glad I grew up in the 80s and 90s when life was a hell of a lot simpler. Don’t expect this one to be an easy watch.
Cast: Jérémy Gillet, Félix Lefebvre, Nadia Tereszkiewicz Director: Guillaume Grélardon Writer: Guillaume Grélardon Certificate: Released by: NQV Media Release date: 21st February 2022
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