Les Combattants -- Tournée Film Festival 2/14/2018

Thomas Cailley’s thoroughly delightful first film upends the cliché of
the “meet cute.” Set during the summer in a coastal town in southwest
France (the area beautifully shot by David Cailley, the director’s brother),
Love at First Fight follows the unlikely attraction that develops between
Arnaud (Kévin Azaïs), a mild-mannered woodworker and carpenter, and
Madeleine (Adèle Haenel), a doomsday-obsessed graduate student
preparing for an elite army unit. The two initially encounter each other
at, of all places, a self-defense demonstration on the beach, where
Madeleine easily throws Arnaud to the ground. Both embarrassed and
intrigued by his opponent, the young man soon finds himself enrolling in
the same intensive two-week boot camp that Madeleine is attending, in
the hopes, perhaps, of figuring out his puzzling new acquaintance. When
this training course proves dissatisfying to both of them, they break
away, setting out on their own makeshift survival course. As in the best
comedies about mismatched couples, much of the enormous appeal of
Love at First Fight is rooted in the terrific chemistry between Azaïs and
Haenel, two of France’s brightest young talents.