The Acrobat

Streamers Beware: Amazon Prime, Dekkoo, and Google/YouTube heavily censor the explicit scenes in this movie. These are the only platforms I've checked, but it's likely other streaming platforms censor this title as well.

Even if and/or when robbed of a proper virgin viewing of this film, the rating still stands. L'Acrobate is deeply hollow, bleak, cold, and realistic, yet maintains complexity and emotion. It manages to abandon nearly every cliché leaving you with harsh reality, but not without exploring the strange, beautiful, and fleeting moments of humanity and animalistic sexuality. The characters of this film are portrayed so vapidly and deeply at the same time.

Mesmerizing cinematographic shots accompanied by an increasingly anxious score pull you deeper into this film. The queer culture desire for anonymity intertwined with connection are well defined. Self-desires and self-criticisms make us our best and our worst. It's a temporary solution to moving forward in the continuing cold and bleakness that loom around us.

Was interesting. Seemingly dark and intense, graphic scenes that would shame. And filmed in a very arty way. Like a media studies student on final exam...

However it just stops... There's no end... I suppose it's art imitating life, but seriously I like my films to have an end...

I had the opportunity to view this remarkable new French-Canadian film and it left me wanting more. I was totally taken by the intensity and sexual tension between the two main leads. A careful, even at times subdued performances created a sensually charged atmosphere and I was captured by it instantly.

Without giving away too much, I would say that finally we have reached the age of honesty and truth in gay filmography. At times I did not believe I was actually seeing such level of intimacy from the leads. It was a completely new experience for me. It was not cheap or sleazy affair. On the contrary, I felt the characters as if I was in the room with them. To be able to take one's viewers right into the scene takes a lot of talent from the director and the actors. it is a unique achievement. Simply put, I believed them.

I hope that we will see more of Yury Paulau - a new discovery of this feature - and Sébastien Ricard - who is a seasoned actor with many titles which I venture out to find now.

Rodrigue Jean, the director, made a courageous, honest film and I applaud him. Needless to say I will be looking for his previous and hopefully future work.

Go and see this film. You won't be disappointed.

This is a very difficult title to review. On one hand, so much of this film does it right - the cinematography, the acting, the very real sex scenes. But on the other hand, there's also a lot that this film gets wrong (pacing, character motives, etc) and it in turn results in a rather confusing story that is never truly solved by the end. The film is beautiful to look at, and I've never quite seen unsimulated sex presented in such a way on screen, except for maybe the film Love, so that was somewhat of a treat to see play out since I was not expecting that. However, the cons of the film outweigh the pros, and the film never really gets to the point and leaves the viewer to analyze these characters on their own. Sometimes that's a good thing, but in this case, it's just frustrating. Especially after a majority of this film centers on a very frustrating premise as well as long (and I mean excruciatingly long) scenes of construction work and lingering exterior shots; the film should by no means be as long as it is. Overall, this is definitely not one of the worst gay films I've seen but it's also nothing to gush over.

I agree that this film is part of a new way forward in Queer/Gay cinema. It follows on from ' Sauvage ' and ' Theo et Hugo ' in its emotional and sexual power. It shows and it needs to be shown that the sexual organs are just another part of the human anatomy and that the day of the Garden of Eden fig leaf is ( or should be ) over. It is also in my opinion dealing with the disparity of the rich and the poor and the sado-masochistic relationship that can develop when the two collide in what is here a non-love story. Sebastien Ricard and Yury Paulau are hypnotically good, detailed in every gesture, and are starkly human in contrast to the inhuman world around them. It is such a blast of fresh air in film that I am still in awe of what I have seen. Essential Cinema.