There’s a time period for the sparsely populated swath of France that extends southwest from the borders of Belgium and Luxembourg to the Pyrenees: the “empty diagonal” (“diagonale du vide“). Evocative of rural flight and small-town decline, the phrase was the title of French director Hubert Charuel‘s 2011 brief movie, set in his native Saint-Dizier to which Charuel and writing companion Claude Le Pape now return for his second function. Premiering in Cannes’ Un Sure Regard part, “Meteors” summons reasonably too nicely that vacant, diagonal spirit, following the downward slide of no-hoper characters with nothing a lot occurring, and positively nothing good. 

A briefly buzzy starting throughout a rowdy boys’ evening on the bowling alley introduces us to Mika (Paul Kircher), Daniel (Idir Azougli) and Tony (Salif Cissé), three childhood pals now of their mid-to-late twenties persevering with slacker existence and drunken bonding rituals that apparently haven’t modified a lot since their teenagers. Tony, nevertheless, is establishing a small waste-disposal enterprise and because the most entrepreneurial of the three, is absent for a lot of the movie, which is much extra concerned within the unhealthily co-dependent relationship between besties Mika and Daniel.

Mika is the marginally extra wise one, working a job at Burger King and making an attempt, if to not escape precisely, then not less than to maintain his nostril clear sufficient that he received’t be wholly trapped right here ought to the chance for escape come up. Daniel is one other story, stuffed with drunkenly conceived, hare-brained, get-rich-quick schemes of dodgy legality, the dumbest of which — the spontaneous kidnapping of a neighbor’s pedigree Maine Coon cat — lands each him and reluctant getaway driver Mika in hassle with the native authorities. Throughout the fallout from this inane episode, which just like the duo’s weird scheme of shifting to Madagascar to take care of road canine Charuel performs straight and flat regardless of the potential for a contact of zany, Coen-Brothers vitality, it’s additional found that Daniel is in such a state of superior alcoholism that his liver is on the breaking point. However whereas Mika frets over him, Daniel himself ploughs on heedlessly, and ultimately they each go to work with Tony, who has simply landed a giant job on the close by nuclear waste plant. Having the ailing, unstable, untrained Daniel round a bunch of radioactive trash goes about in addition to you would possibly count on.

Within the absence of robust, forward-thrusting plot mechanics or a setting that, regardless of some good shotmaking and some surreal prospers from DP Jacques Girault, can’t be described as something however dismal, this sort of unfastened buddy-hangout drama actually pivots on the chemistry between the characters. Sadly, whereas the gifted forged are all dedicated to their underdog roles, there may be — once more — an vacancy within the screenplay close to their intertwined histories, for which no efficiency niceties can fairly compensate. It’s particularly apparent with Daniel, who must be the movie’s tragic determine — the archetype of the fun-loving goofball whose hard-partying, hedonistic youth has metastasized into life-threatening habit. However as written, Daniel shows little of the magnetism and conviviality that may encourage extra grounded people to grow to be so protecting of their self-destructive pals. And with out a actual sense of the origin and nature of their bond, it’s a little bit of a thriller why Mika stays so dedicated to this millstone spherical his neck, and so doggedly decided to avoid wasting him, when Daniel doesn’t appear remotely excited about saving himself. 

With out a lot else to attach it to, one assumes we’re meant to take the movie’s title as a poetic reference to lives that burn brightly and briefly earlier than disintegrating, however “Meteors” is all disintegration, no burn. And whereas the temper of disaffection is highly effective — even mordant feedback about this being a city the place the rubbish males ship reasonably than acquire have the vibe of jokes worn skinny by means of repetition — it’s additionally a downer, with little levity or vitality to make the inevitable descent towards friendship’s finish extra stark and due to this fact extra shifting. Charuel’s funding on this story of wasted, marginalized youth is noble and clearly heartfelt, however “Meteors” grasps for a poignancy that at all times stays out of attain, and so right here all these good intentions, in a fashion unlikely to win him any tourist-board gigs, simply pave the best way to Saint-Dizier.