Love at First Fight (French: Les Combattants) is a 2014 French romantic comedy film directed by Thomas Cailley. Arnaud, facing an uncertain future and a dearth of choices in a small French coastal town, meets and falls for the apocalyptic-minded Madeleine, who joins an army boot camp to learn military and survival skills to prepare for the upcoming environmental collapse. Intrigued and excited by Madeleine's wild ideas, Arnaud signs up for the boot camp himself. They soon realize that the boot camp is harder than they'd imagined, but the experience nonetheless cements them together as the couple continues to explore their young love.
The debut feature for its young writer-director, this unassuming but engaging French dramedy deserves the prizes it picked up at Cannes and at the country's Oscar-equivalent Cesars.
Aggression, not affection, sparks romance in Les Combattants, a promising feature debut that already had members of the French film establishment touting newcomer Thomas Cailley as the next big thing.
Crowd-pleasing without compromising on its uniqueness, the result has romcom structure but a beguiling adventure mood reminiscent of the best US indies.
What starts out as a promisingly unique tale of a macho woman and the meek guy who falls for her turns into something else once Madeleine leaves for training camp and Arnaud follows.
There's a better movie floating around the edges of the French import "Love at First Fight" than first-time feature director Thomas Cailley has allowed to surface.
Love at First Fight is overflowing with relentlessly acerbic humor that shapes the way the film's two young protagonists contend with not just each other, but also with the uncertainties of the world they're emerging into as adults.
