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Reviews
Crever à 20 ans (1984)
Sad, touching story of two young men
This brave French Canadian film from 1984 tells the story of two underprivileged young men trying to make ends met and fulfill their dreams. They turn to prostitution, encountering a variety of clients who variously want to reform and love them and violently abuse them. Their love for each other is largely unspoken.
The story is now a familiar one and the morality tangled. Can clients really have benign motives and does resorting to paid sex or taking drugs ever achieve anything? Two strong central performances hold this film together. The dialogue is overly sententious at times. A rather poor quality version with, at times intrusive background music and soundtrack overwhelming the French Canadian accented speech, makes it difficult to assess the quality of other aspects of the film.
Le lycéen (2022)
Sensitive exploration of adolescent love and loss
This film deserves to be widely seen. So far I have not found it with English subtitles so some of the dialogue is guesswork on my part. Following a family tragedy the remaining family members come together where the wake is all about provincial appearances. The central young character, Lucas, is more interested in the truth rather than emotions dictated by convention. He is himself casual in his feelings about his local boyfriend and during a stay in Paris with his brother he begins to explore both mind and body with the help of a priest and a casual pick-up. I was drawn into his complex world helped in a large part by the soliloquies to camera. He remains vulnerable throughout and the possibility of exploitation seems to be ever present. The acting is fine throughout and often understated.