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Today's film was Phillipe Valloise'

Johan - Mon été 75 / Johan (1976)

This mid 70's look at Paris gay culture is very good.

It is a "remember when" for anyone who came out around this time, me. Although they say that Paris was behind the US a bit, there is still the under-cover cruising and, of course, unsafe public sex that marked the time. Also bell bottoms. Did we really wear those clothes? I am afraid so.

The sex is quite explicit, even a bit too much for some present day sensibilities, gay or straight, but they do not miss the romance and the happiness of being open. Doing a film!

The film is a conceit. The writer, director Valloise wants to make a film about his romance with Johan, starring Johan himself. But Johan has been taken to jail for something unspecified. Valloise, impatient to get started, makes the film anyway with a new Johan stand-in in each sequence. Sometimes a friend, another time an audition guy. Sometimes the film is a film of a film showing the history leading up to meeting Johan. Other times it depicts the current situation with Valloise reading letters that he and the jail bound Johan are exchanging.

Valloise does not stop seeing guys while he is waiting for Johan, in fact he sort of tries out the audition people as well as others. It is all quite fun if a bit confusing as many of them look alike. There is even a Johan twin. Ha!

To add more levels, there are also two actors playing Phillipe Valloise. If this sounds confusing it is not and that is a strength of this film.

So there is this absurdist tinge to the whole thing. Very sexy in a gay way.

There is even the kind of fag hag that we used to see everywhere at that time. A cruel word used by all involved including the hags for which there was no shame in being and doing their thing.

I was never around one very much. They had a mouth and an attitude that would have one steer clear. Often caricatures of an over the top queen. Very strange. But it is not at all about her. It just includes her and all the other kinds of gay that one might be aware of. We are as different as other people, being people.

What else? The film was accepted into the Cannes Festival that year and then got an X rating but the Cannes audience got to see the uncut version. Later, after a lot of infighting and cuts made of erect penises, they gave it an NC18. This DVD brings the dicks back.

Valloise made many films as writer and director and was active at least up to two years ago according to IMDb.

I liked this a lot but once is probably enough. I will give it a 3 out of Netflix5.

Labels: films