Garçon stupide

The drama plot is all over. Too many incomplete stories without end.

Lionel Baier's "Garçon Stupide" is touching and sad -- and occasionally original -- without being wholly successful. It blends material from both Baier's and his non-actor star Pierre Chatigny's lives for the portrait of twenty-year-old Loic, a French-speaking Swiss gay guy who divides his time between an assembly-line job at a chocolate factory in the town of Bulle; graphically shown anonymous sex Loic finds via Internet; taking photos with his cellphone (which makes him dream of being a photographer); and chatting with his long-time pal Marie, a more mature woman at whose place he mostly sleeps. The split-screen sequences in which Loic's intense, bold sex scenes and the hammering factory machinery at his day job get paralleled are very obvious; but they do have the virtue of sharply veering away from the saccharine, super-sincere quality of so many gay coming-of-age films. This director doesn't look away from the mindless, self-destructive aspects of his main character. Unfortunately "Garçon Stupide" ultimately plays out too randomly to have an overriding viewpoint.

Loic becomes enraged at Marie one night. Her new relationship with a man has made him jealous. He calls her a slut, forgetting he's a super-slut himself. She kicks him out and says the relationship is over. This changes everything, since now he has no friend he can count on, or any friendly place to sleep.

The film, which is a rough but assured collage up to here held together by its vérité feel and the tall, striking (if blank-faced) Chatigny's strong physical presence, disintegrates into fantasy and sentimentality after the breakup with Marie. A narrative that had seemed real now begins to feel like thoughtless improvisation. Something happens to Marie. Loic wanders off and has a telegraphed car accident. He cashes in his savings to buy a professional quality video camera. In a pathetic, pointless digression, he pursues a minor football star from Portugal who plays on one of the local teams.

All this undercuts the simple specificity of the earlier sections and gives the film the appearance of having lost its way. Loic is naive, emotionally stunted, and ignorant: he tries to look things up in a dictionary but since the lacunae include such basics as Hitler and Impressionism, he has a long way to go to reach the middle-class/artistic life he dreams of. He is estranged from his family and without Marie has no one. The film, which avoids the conventional gay coming-of-age clichés, ends on a down note for two reasons -- because both Loic and his future are dim, and because director Baier lets his first film's promising opening crumble away into random pieces as it moves along. Loic ends with a long catalogue of things he is not going to become, but there's no sense of where he's going or what he will be.

I enjoyed this film. It has a lyrical quality, and it is essentially a character portrait. Many Americans will tire of the film quickly, because they expect clearer character development and a more coherent plot. But if these qualities ate not essential to you and you like French films, you will find this movie touching and memorable. (I know that this is a Swiss, not French, production, but I think most Americans will view it as stylistically French.) The main character and Chatagny's performance, reminded me greatly of Joseph Gordon-Levitt's character and performance in "Mysterious Skin." (Many Americans will prefer this movie, though the subject matter is darker.) I love both films, both performances. I hope to see more films with Pierre Chatagny.

Garcon Stupide (Stupid Boy) is an emotionally-packed punch. The film and it's lead character, Loic, had me hooked from the start. With the exception of a few slower scenes, I thoroughly enjoyed the film from start to finish. A few laughs, intense thought and emotion, and a few tears were generated from this well directed and acted film.

The filming techniques and styles, and the soundtrack selections helped me score this film. The direction and unique filming combined with some classical scores and the storyline all fit perfectly together.

The story itself follows the plight of Loic, a young handsome 20-year old who works in a chocolate factory by day, and entertains men of all ages by night for extra cash. In the film, he has a close loving friendship with a girl, Marie. He also develops a relationship of trust with a man he meets on the Internet, Lionel. The 2 never have sexual relations, just conversation about life. Something interesting to note: we never see Lionel. Or do we at the end? You decide.

The story line develops around Loic's desires to be someone - a photographer, a gay man, ...? He seems to have lost direction in life, and is unable to trust/confide in the 2 people who seem to care for him most, Marie and Lionel. When Marie finds a boyfriend, you can clearly see the upset and anger in Loic. He withdraws from Marie, and Lionel, and neither situation has a positive outcome.

In the meantime, he develops an infatuation of sorts with a local soccer player, who is successful, married and with child. Loic sees a life he wants for himself.

Although this is a French film (with English subtitles), we have young people like Loic all over America. And we have adults who take advantage of them - and we have adults, like Lionel in this film, who truly can be a trusted friend. One of my favorite lines spoken by Lionel to Loic is "You can be interested in someone without wanting to f**k them". This statement rings true for so many, both those near the age of 20, and those near the age of 40.

This is overall, an exceptional film - very good acting, great soundtrack, unique camera angles and film styles, wonderful story, and well-directed.

Director Lionel Baier has created a work of freshness and imagination and truth. The few melodramatic clichés he employs stand out only for their rarity. In choosing Pierre Chatagny to focus his camera upon, Baier has chosen brilliantly. (Baier who plays an older friend, Lionel, to Chatagny's Loic, is glimpsed just once. In truth the director is a young man of 28 with much great work ahead of him on the evidence of this production).

Though the character and, I would say, Mr. Chatagny at 20, is self-absorbed and vain as 20 year-old boys tend to be, his natural beauty reveals itself in every movement of his eyes and his isolation in the stark awkwardness of his stance. He is not hard to watch or gawk at for 90 minutes.

Loic,a horny Swiss youngster who has notched a lot of casual nocturnal sex, envies his sisterly girlfriend's enjoyable personal relations with her boyfriend, distrusts Lionel's apparent disinterest in immediate sexual gratification and feels hopeless in the presence of an adored soccer player's fatherly love for his three year-old son. Luoc is by turns angry and despairing and anxious.He has begun to suspect it doesn't always boil down to just sex but he doesn't know if he has anything more than sex to give or take and if there is a place in him where there is more he has no idea how to reach it. But after much pain and damage the first unexpected crack of sunlight in the wall of Luoc's frustration comes through beautiful and true. Jim Smith