"Juillet électrique" or "Eletric July" is a French French-language live action short film from 2014, so this one is over a decade old now. Actually, it was released back in November 2014, so this does not at all fit the really warm weather mentioned in the title. It runs for 24 minutes and the writer and director was Rémi Bigot. Hope the name does not apply. His co-writer was François Peyroux. Taking a look at the careers of both, I am not too impressed. This one here could very well be their first work still and they have not been active at all in recent years. Or maybe their most known work is the compilation for which this film was used, but that one was also not really seen by many. Still, this movie managed to score some awards recognition at least and I really wonder why. Or actually I know the answer and I will get to that soon. Awards attention came mostly in France and a little bit in Portugal too. As for the cast, the two leads Bobet and Chaudière apparently never acted in another film before or after this one here. At least imdb says so. They two may be enjoying regular careers now away from the limelight. Sophie Froissard, who plays the mother, has a solid acting career too and she does not have a lot of screen time here. Same is true for Constant, who has also acted on other projects, but considerably fewer than Froissard. The short film genre is pretty popular for gay-themed movies. There are so many. However, this one here is a prime example of how one should not do it. There is no convincing acting here, a plot is hardly existent and the editing was really poor and all over the place. The worst, however, is what I just wrote about the plot. The story here would have fit in 4 minutes and not 24 to be honest. The film already starts a bit confusing how it jumps back and forth between location and maybe all you see very early on was a bit of a preview to what is going to happen later during the episode and is also a bit of a dramatic highlight because one boy was emphasizing that there was a bit of danger to the place they were visiting, but it turns out all really harmless. Nobody is injured, let alone killed. Instead, one boy randomly kisses the other shortly in a spur-of-the-moment thingey and the other boy walks away, but in the end it shows that their friendship overcomes this weirdness or maybe the other boy is even a little bit attracted too to the one who initiated the kiss. We will never know.
What I do know, however, is that this gay-themed short film is one that gives the entire genre a bad name. It lacks quality and creativity in all kinds of production values. I mentioned those earlier, so there is really nothing overall in terms of redeemable quality to this film. All it lives for is the idea that it is about male-to-male attraction. And sadly this aspect alone is enough for many already that a film is good if it includes this subject. I mean it is bad enough already if individuals do not see this film for the extremely weak outcome that it is, but that even awards bodies fall for this kind of approach. They were also trying to include the weather and burning sun / burning desire idea, but the cinematography as well as the impact of the outside on the story is nothing that stays remotely memorable at all. The talent simply isn't there, especially with Bigot, but also the child actors made it a pretty bland watch. This film was a disappointment and while 24 minutes isn't even that long, I wished it could have run for 14 only or even less. It was never good. You could see the filmmaker's ambition here and there and that he wanted to create something good, but he simply did not have the tools. If he decides to return to shooting films at some point, I hope he managed to step things up over all the time passed since this film. I give it Electric July a definite thumbs-down. There is nothing electric about this one here. It is not a bad thing by any means that this film is not easy to find nowadays and probably even more difficult with subtitles in your language if you are not a French native speaker. Watch something else instead.
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