Juste une question d'amour

It was interesting to read the stats that 6.3 million viewers saw this film when first aired in prime time on French public network. Shown on prime time, the public and critical response was overwhelmingly enthusiastic.

Well, I concur.

This is a most meticulously produced film that far transcends the television medium. Christian Faure's direction is excellent and the leading actors, Cyrille Thouvenin and Stephan Guerin-Tille, are superb.

I have no negative criticism of this work, and only hope it will have the widest possible showing in regular movie houses. Too good to let lie unseen, it took five years from its making in 2000 to be released on DVD. Hopefully, this is only the beginning. Good work can't be kept a secret, and this is certainly one of the best-ever made-for-TV films.

This powerful, humane, intelligent drama was made by, and appeared in prime time on, France 2. It received just three letters of protest along with thousands praising its astonishing young actors and their memorable story. Try to imagine such a positive, thoughtful film on American broadcast television; one simply about the impassioned relationship between two men. No one gets sick, beaten up, or dies. It's just a question of love.

Cyrille Thouvenin (so wonderful in another must-see, Confusion of Genders) stars as angry, frustrated, deeply-closeted Laurent. He is terrified to come out to his parents because they are so virulently homophobic. He witnessed his cousin's coming out: disowned, thrown out, and died without his family around him. Laurent lives in fear with his best friend Carole, who goes along with the fiction that she is his girlfriend for the benefit of his parents.

Then he meets Cedric (handsome and exceedingly sexy Stephan Guerin-Tillie), with whom Laurent has a college internship. After a rather combative start (neither young man is particularly adept at 'making friends'), sparks fly, and the two revel in a joyous fling as they discover love. The heat, happiness, and fervor they project is palpable, gratifying, and genuine.

The problem is that Cedric is up front about his sexuality and makes a huge deal about Laurent coming out; Laurent is truculent, defiant, and refuses to consider it. Carole is tired of the charade and has a love of her own to nurture. Everyone wants Laurent out, but he is immobilized. When Cedric's mother impulsively let's the cat out of the bag, Cedric and Laurent's private world falls apart. How they, their parents and friends, deal with the consequences forms the crux of the illuminating story.

This transcends being just another 'gay' film. It is about learning how to love. Gay, straight, old or young, all must learn. As for Laurent and Cedric, rarely has a simple "I love you" been uttered with more poignancy on film.

The most shocking thing about this French 'coming out' story is that it was made for television! In the States, this kind of film would turn out like an 'after school special' crossed with a movie of the week (with Jane Seymour as one of the mothers). But this is an incredibly intelligent film from start to finish. Beautifully scripted, carefully directed, perfectly cast and exquisitely performed. From the idyllic opening scene to the penultimate scene of familial healing, this is one film that defies stereotyping. The two leading men turn in sensitive, honest, riveting performances. The woman who play their mothers are also quite extraordinary. There is also a standout performance by the actress playing Laurent's best friend Carole. Whenever I felt the script might veer toward the cliché, it managed to balance itself with a moment of pure honesty. Laurent's father and uncle, for example, confide in the opening scene that two men having an intimate relationship makes them sick and that they feel justified in turning their back on any gay family member. The screenwriters counter this neatly with Emma, a mother who has come to terms with her gay son, and hopes to help Laurent's parents to a similar understanding. The older (hetero) men certainly look like clichés at first, but are fleshed out to the point of possible redemption by film's fade out. JUST A QUESTION OF LOVE is perhaps the best film on this subject I've ever seen.

I cannot tell you, with any great insight, the lessons to be learned with this film or the messages it may send to those who do not (choose not to) 'understand' homosexuality. That's not to say they are not there, or that this film fails to make those connections because it does. It speaks for those mistreated, it makes clear the tragedies that come with this prejudice, and does so - in my opinion - without being preachy, or pointing angry fingers.

For me, it is simply a story of love. A love that proves to be so special, that the two main characters - Cedric and Laurent - are willing to make crucial decisions, and changes in their lives for its survival. It is these two men; with their boyish behaviors - the joking, teasing and name calling - and the easy way they are together, that make this film. Superbly acted, this is a story that you can believe in.

Laurent (a vibrant Cyrille Thouvenin) is a 23-year-old agricultural student in Lille (with a passion for poetry) who knows he's gay but lets his parents think he's straight and that his roommate Carole (a sweet Caroline Veyt) is his future wife. He's held in this bind by the fact that a gay cousin, Marc, who was like a brother to him, came out only to wind up dying rejected by his parents, an example of in-family homophobia that seems to have been all too well accepted by his own mother and father. Laurent has been on a downward spiral in school ever since Marc's death. Marc's parents are around at family parties, the mother a basket case on tranquilizers, the father stolid and still unforgiving. This angers Laurent, but the trouble is that his mom and dad, who run a pharmacy, are very dear to him. He loves his parents; he loves family; and he loves kids. But he's stuck in a charade. It's already hurting Carole, who's more than a little in love with him, though she knows full well about his sexuality.

All this has to change when Laurent is attached as a trainee (stagère) to a nursery and lab run by the slightly older Cédric (sexy, soulful Stéphan Guérin-Tillié) and they fall in love.The more grown up and independent Cédric is impatient with Laurent's playing the "little hetero to mom and dad." When he came out to his mother Emma (Eva Darlan) 11 years earlier on the death of his dad, Cédric said she could "take it or leave it." Laurent's pretense is exploded from an unexpected source. The film takes us sympathetically through the pain of Laurent's parents and Emma's efforts to help.

The special virtue of Just a Question of Love is its balance. If it's primarily from the point of view of Laurent, and secondarily Cédric, and takes pains (though it's joyful, not painful) to make their love real (without any explicit nudity or sex though, just passionate kissing), it's just as much about the parents' difficult journey toward understanding of their sons' sexuality.

A beautiful gay coming-out-to-the-parents film that had an unusually high viewership and almost universally positive response when shown originally on French TV, this has meant a lot to a lot of gay men, especially young ones thinking about love and conflicts with parents and the kind of "intense love relationship such as I dream of having and regret not to have had up till now," as one young French blogger typically put it. In IMDb comments that rate it, it has gotten nothing but a 10/10: enough said? Splendid performances by everybody, especially Thouvenin, Guérin-Tillié, and Darlan; this is far more than a "TV movie" and like some of the best contemporary French films, manages to be both elegant and emotionally direct.

With his looks and personality, Cyrille Thouvenin is irresistible in the film: he's always running and leaping, troubled, acting out, but also bursting with youthful energy and smiles. The restrained but warm Eva Darlan is also very memorable. This is the kind of film a gay man can watch over and over, with much pleasure and some tears. Doing so is also helping my French quite a bit.