esrosedotblog

A boy leaves the country fiercely independent, tries to make a go of it, fails on first try, then rebounds.

What we used to call "pluck". Here it is gallic pluck.

Andre Techine's

J'embrasse pas / I Don't Kiss (1991)

Spoilers. This is a coming of age film involving some pretty hard times. Finally, breaking his pride, the young man, a boy really, becomes a successful hustler and enjoys "the life" that such a profession brings. Drag queens, generous johns, other hustlers, female prostitutes. It is the later with whom he falls in love and runs athwart her pimp and gets the shit beaten out of himself. Defiant unto the pride breaking end of the punishment.

As it turns out, chastened, like his brother, he joins the army to get things sorted out. He makes a go of it. And returns to Paris. We do not see the rest of the story but I imagine that the pimp and the goons who beat him up are in for a major surprise.

I liked it. It is not really predictable at all. It is very gay about a convincingly straight young man who falls into the gay life. But it is relentlessly positive. Techine uses his experiences of gay men to enhance all his films and presents an unconventional and sometimes complimentary point of view even though the goings on are kinda rough.

I have some similar experiences. The irony here is that the boy is convincingly straight. Or, perhaps not so convincingly. It is really left to the future. He is a pretty successful whore though until he gets messed up with some guys who really mean business.

Emanuelle Beart appears here as the love object, a tough streetwalker. She will become a star. Others share the cast in a very enjoyable way. There is a lot of warmth in this film and what seems bad turns out to be not so bad even good. I like this kind of thing. I will most assuredly see it again. A 5 out of Netflix5 if it was from Netflix which it is not. It is part of my box set of Techine works.

Labels: films