Confusion of Genders

Ladymol's Review

There’s a moment in this movie when a character is sitting on a bed and just… falls off. I know how he felt.

This film was such a disappointment! However, I now know why Hitler invaded France: it had to be to stop all that damn self-analysis and talking!

This film was just nonsense from beginning to end. Alain is a very unattractive, balding, heavily lined middle-aged man who never smiles, can’t get an erection and has chronic self-doubt. However, he seems to attract people like a magnet, to the extent that he has his boss (female) wanting to marry him despite not liking him or respecting him; a lover (female), that lover’s brother, a man in prison, his girlfriend…. Nonsense. And it’s all done with such heavy worthiness! There are a couple of tumbles in the bed between him and the young boyfriend, but hardly enough to make me look up from the book I was reading at the same time.

Cyrille Thouvenin is the main reason we wanted to see this film: he’s stunning in Just a Question of Love: one of our favourite films. In this he seems only too aware of the dross he’s being required to act in. Boredom marred his stunning features. I know how he felt, too.

Women often annoy me in movies, and I suppose I should have been prepared for just how annoying these were going to be—after all, it’s a bisexual film. Grrrr. When one is threatened with a knife, I was going “Yes! Yes! Kill her”. No such luck: she decides to go off with the would-be killer: an old man just out of jail after thirty years. Did I mention this was total nonsense?

Sheesh. I have real low points about my stories sometimes. This cheered me up immensely. Even I could write a better screenplay than this disappointing rubbish.

Avoid.


Cerisaye's Review

Well, I don’t know if I’m gender confused, but this movie certainly left me bewildered.  It’s billed as comedy, a sexual (and sexy) farce.  Huh?  Did they watch the same movie?  Apart from one scene that did actually raise a smile- when a 40-something lawyer interrupts his wedding to lady boss Laurence to discuss whether or not they should proceed if they’re not actually in love- because of sheer ridiculousness.  Really, it is like a send-up of a French film, talky and totally up itself.  As for Gallic sex & nudity, well, that’s another disappointment, unless you’re into almost still images (reminded me of My Own private Idaho).

Alain is the uncertain suitor, afraid to be gay and desperate to prove he isn’t by having bad sex with Laurence the ice queen…yeah, she’s more man than he is, a control freak suddenly aware her biological clock is winding down, the only explanation why she’s willing to put up with wimpy Alain who wants into the pants of every breathing man he encounters, including hunky but menacing client, Marc, facing a life sentence for murder.

For some inexplicable reason- a fetish for sexually ambivalent older men?- young Christophe, brother to yet another of Alain’s girlfriends, hangs around for the crumbs whenever Alain has time to squeeze the boy into his busy schedule.  Christophe, played by the gorgeous Cyrille Thouvenin who shone so bright in Just a Question of Love (the reason I bought this turkey) tells Alain he can have it all.  Yeah, but what about Christophe?  He’s the only likeable character in the whole movie, and we barely see him (though we do see him bare, briefly, which is about all this mess has going for it).  No way did I want him settling for Alain, not even as f&*k buddy. Alain has no passion, no tender affection, nothing but complete self-absorption and a Peter Panlike refusal to grow up and accept responsibility.

So, while Alain fights his desire for sultry killer Marc, he chases after the prisoner’s girlfriend, sexy hairdresser Babette- the other sympathetic character.  Despite knowing Marc is a very jealous man deeply in love, with nothing left to lose.

Eventually, Alain impregnates Laurence and they decide to get married.  Alain’s worried she’ll not accept live-in lover Christophe.  And so it goes on.  I wonder about the poor child of that inappropriate union, neither parent capable of love.

Basically, everyone appears only to want those they can’t have.  Also the film appears to suggest that if you’re bi you’re simply confused or greedy, not making a choice to enjoy it both ways because that’s what makes you happy.  I expected a story that explored complexities of gender & sexuality, something a lot more fluid than the labels our proscriptive society puts onto people to control behaviour.   Maybe that was in there somewhere, but the confusion of characters meant I didn’t care enough to bother working out motivations.  I didn’t like Alain, which didn’t help, and he doesn’t seem to learn anything from his experiences.

Maybe I just didn’t understand what the film tries to say.  Or wanted romance between Alain & Christophe.  I’ve just read another review that has a completely different perspective, written by someone who is bi who says the film really does comprehend what it’s like to fear picking one person of either gender for fear that part of him will be starved as a result.  That’s why Alain’s afraid of love, and always moving on.  Basically, Alain refuses the finality of choosing gay/straight/bi, but by trying to keep his options open he ends up in total confusion.  Yet I didn’t get that from watching, so it didn’t work for me.