The film threatened to be one of those two-parters that quickly slide into boring irrelevance. All the elements were there, the closeted Romanian guy, his Kabylie boyfriend from France and a fleeting visit from a nosey sister who thought her brother was going through a "gay phase".
The two lovers are happy together but there are problems. Hadi wants to go out and about but closeted Cristi wants to keep their relationship, indeed Hadi's existence, under wraps. We are not aware of Cristi's job during the scenes in the flat where the two guys are staying so his reluctance to risk an outing (in both senses of the word) is difficult to understand. Even when the film moves unobtrusively to Cristi's work, we are not sure what it is as the shots showing him do not at first reveal his gendarme uniform.
The unit is going to a cinema whose showing of a film about lesbians has been disrupted by a load of nationalistic god-botherers. Although both the police and the gendarmes try to appear neutral on the surface, when they feel they are not being overheard they make hateful and homophobic statements, Cristi included.
One of the gay guys implies that he will reveal Cristi's orientation leading to a confrontation that is only solved by long negotiations with the cops.
This much is revealed in the storyline provided by IMDB so not a spoiler.
Cristi feels that this is a disaster and we watch his feeling of doomed terror for the rest of the film.
The cleverness of the film was to concentrate on the dynamic at work rather than that of the relationship. Relationship films have been done to death. However, films whose gay characters interact in a macho and illiberal environment such as the police or gendarmerie have not.
Conrad Mericoffer played a good role as Cristi, a man who senses that his life is spinning out of control. He well portrayed the increasing desperation of the character needing to know the results of the confrontation. He was convincing in the earlier, tender scenes with lover Hadi and just as real in his role as macho man conforming to canteen culture.
The film was a compact eighty minutes long and was just right. We are left with a final comment from his boss that might mean something or might not. Had all the cover up that Cristi had maintained over his life at work been rent away? We shall never know.
