2018-05-09
N/A
132 min
Jacques is a writer living in Paris. He hasn't turned 40 but already mistrusts that the best in life is yet to come. Arthur is a student living in Brittany. He reads and smiles a lot and refuses to think that everything in life might not be possible. Jacques and Arthur will like each other. Just like in a lovely dream. Just like in a sad story.
It's too long and the characterisations lack depth - but it is still quite an interesting story to follow. Pierre Deladonchamps is "Jacques" a (slightly) older Parisian writer who meets a young Breton "Arthur" (Vincent Lacoste) in a cinema. Initially neither are looking for much more than a quickie, but before long something clicks and the couple begin to test, probe and like each other. It transpires that "Jacques" lives every other day with his young son "Loulou" and that he isn't a well man - all of which serves to focus the emphasis of this film on their priorities and their desires - physical and emotional. It's set in the early 1990's so it's pretty clear what's going on, on the medical front - the relentlessness of the author's decline is evident but not allowed by Christoph Honoré to overwhelm what is essentially quite an engaging, but too shallow, character driven study. Denis Podalydès and the young son Tristan Farge provide potent diversions to the prevailing theme as the relationship and it's implications gather steam. The writing doesn't allow us to get bogged down in sentiment either; it's sexy and provocative, funny and sometimes just a bit course - and that gives the piece a bit more richness. I could have been doing with a little more one-on-one time between the principals. I still wasn't quite comfortable with the speed, or plausibility, of their romance - but this is much more than your bog standard gay romantic drama, and I'd suggest you stick with it.
