Quartile rating: 6.5/10 · 1 rating
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.
Love at First Fight is a charming but modest French coming-of-age romantic comedy with a quirky survivalist premise that gives it some personality above the genre norm. The plot is engaging enough with its offbeat setup — apocalypse-prepper romance filtered through a military boot camp — but never fully capitalizes on its more satirical or dramatic potential. Acting from the young leads is naturalistic and appealing without being exceptional. Cinematography is competent and captures the coastal and forest settings pleasantly but without distinctive visual ambition. The novelty is moderate: the survivalist-romance hybrid is a fresh enough angle for a French indie, though the emotional arc follows fairly predictable young-love beats. The ending feels somewhat inconclusive and low-key, leaving the romance and Madeleine's ideology somewhat unresolved in a way that feels more deflating than meaningfully open-ended.