Can friends really rescue each other? That’s the key question looming over Hubert Charuel’s low-key, affecting Meteors. Can an individual restore, salvage a loved one skidding deep into alcoholic ruin? Perhaps to save someone, you really need to step back for a while, let them see how deep they can crash if they don’t wake up. When the film opens, both Mika (Paul Kircher) and Daniel (Idir Azougli) are drifters, jiving through life. Mika works at a burger joint, Dan is jobless. The two share a dream of moving to an island and doing kennel work. How can they afford it? One way is to find a long-missing carp and get hold of prize money. Dan even believes he knows where to look. However plans run aground when the two get embroiled in an accident, an absurd legal trial over kidnapping a cat.
The cat in question is precious since it’s a beauty contest winner. The friends now face several possible years of jail-time, a hefty fine. The only solution their lawyer suggests is building a solid, unimpeachable record of good conduct. The seriousness of the situation quickly exerts on Mika. He cuts down on faffing around, does what’s prescribed. He’s lost his driver’s license too. But Dan dismisses the lawyer’s brief. He remains an inveterate alcoholic, smoking up and being irresponsible. When Dan has a major health scare, Mika is left shaken. Dan suffers epileptic fits. The doctor says if he continues with his drinking routine unchanged, he would be staring at just two more years of life. Yet, it doesn’t terrify Daniel into amending habits.
Charuel’s gaze on this friendship is compassionate yet blistering. There’s no softening of toxic strains in the way it plays out. Genuine care jostles uneasily with flares of bitterness and resentment. This is an unhealthily co-dependent friendship, evident from the early stretch itself. Mika invests too much; Daniel laidback, impetuous, indifferent. Mika desperately wants to save Daniel.
Mika gathers resolve and works hard to turn Daniel around. He insists that Daniel goes to rehab, does something constructive that will get him some dough but not put his health at stake. But Daniel refuses to treat Mika’s worries with any earnestness. He falls back on one path—the one their friend Tony (Salif Cissé) proposes. It’s work at an underground nuclear waste dumping facility. While initially both Mika and Dan sign up, the former distances himself from the work as the scale of health peril dawns on him. Meteors does feel a tad scant in Tony’s weaving into Mika-Dan’s equation. The three go back a long way, but Charuel and Claude Le Pape’s screenplay largely neglects him except for latter, plot-heavier sections.
Dan is too lazy, ignorant, complacent to try other options. There are no expectations he has from life. He just wants to float by as he has done all this while. He’s almost confident of his own hopelessness, whereas Mika reverts to being determined. The little Daniel tries to fix a situation, it only gets worse. He himself confesses with shamed, pained fatigue.
Working at the dumping zone poses serious health hazards. There are radiation-exposure dangers. Even as Tony dials it down, Mika is quick to see potential risks. He calls Tony out on it promptly. But Daniel persistently clasps onto this one gig that can bring steady, substantive money. He’s in denial of his severe health. Mika pleads with him to quit, look for other jobs. But Mika’s tenacity is in vain.
In the Kircher-Azougli dynamic, Meteors lands its emotional punches. Both are instantly persuasive as friends caught between eluding and confronting the swelling distance in between. It’s an emotionally perceptive drama that locks in on a sense of irretrievability pulling friendship back. One of the most arresting young French actors, as testified by his turns in Winter Boy (2022) and And Their Children After Them (2024), Kircher probes great, uncertain emotional depths. Mika represses a lot of anguish about his friend’s steady lapses. Daniel is so absorbed in recklessness, he dodges Mika’s efforts. How long can Mika keep pushing, hoping that Daniel will prioritize what he must? Mika’s sleeplessness escalates. He’s always internally fighting for calm. Wilfully taking Dan’s responsibility exacts a toll. Kircher’s subtle, intuitive performance mines the quietly raging conflicts, the weight of being the one constantly looking out for a heedless friend. Gradually, Meteors wends its way to discomfiting, urgent places of truth—a reconsideration of a friendship that must walk to a different beat.
Meteors premiered in Un Certain Regard at Cannes Film Festival 2025.
