Review: August (Août) – A Fever Dream of Queer Youth and Unspoken Longing
By David McFarlane
There’s something elusive, almost spectral, about August (Août), Louis Thines’ short film about youth, identity, and the electric charge of uncertain desire. Like the haze of a sun-drenched French summer, it is beautiful to look at but often slips through your fingers the moment you try to hold onto it.
Thines, who writes, directs, and stars, gives us Louis — a young man drifting between adolescence and adulthood, unsure whether the world he’s entering will accept the parts of him still forming. He visits his best friend Roxane in the south of France, and we are drawn immediately into the languid rhythms of long days, warm light, and the emotionally loaded quiet between people who are not quite saying what they feel.
Enter Jérémy (played with understated magnetism by Jérémy Papallardo), a stranger met at a party who seems to reflect all that Louis is unsure of in himself. Their interactions, captured through soft, intimate cinematography, shimmer with possibility. It’s less about dialogue and more about proximity — bodies not touching, glances exchanged, silences that thrum with meaning.
And then — a kiss. Or rather, the suggestion of one. A brief, pivotal moment when Jérémy leans in and Louis recoils, not with revulsion, but confusion. We hold our breath. And then… nothing. The moment vanishes, like a wave that never breaks.
It’s in this unresolved space that August both finds its mood and loses its momentum. The film never quite allows us to know what Louis wants, or even who he is — and perhaps that’s the point. But while ambiguity can be powerful, here it feels more like absence. As a viewer, I felt not only suspended but slightly abandoned.
Technically, though, August is stunning. From the golden palette of late afternoons to the sound design that captures the lazy hum of a southern summer, Thines has crafted a world I believed in completely. Every frame feels lived-in, every gesture natural, every moment held just long enough to suggest there is more beneath the surface.
But narrative, like desire, needs direction. And here, August hesitates when it most needs to speak. The queer experience, especially in youth, is often defined by silences — those moments when we don’t say what we feel, or don’t know how. Thines understands this deeply. But in the end, I wanted a little more certainty, even if it was just emotional honesty.
August is a film about the in-between — between boyhood and manhood, friendship and love, self-assurance and fear. It is gorgeously observed, but narratively restrained. Whether that restraint is poetic or simply withholding will depend on the viewer. For me, it was a beautiful near-miss: tender, evocative, and frustratingly incomplete.
Still, I’d rather a filmmaker risk saying too little than too much. And I’ll be watching Thines’ future work with great interest. He has an eye — and a heart — worth paying attention to.
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