Nous étions un seul homme

A young peasant farmer rescues a wounded German soldier towards the end of WWII in rural France. At first they are mutually suspicious of each other, but slowly a bond starts to grow between them and.... Serge Avedikian is convincing as "Guy" - the rather eccentric, shall we say, young Frenchman whom the locals leave to his farm as a bit of a simpleton; Piotr Stanislas as his German friend "Rolf", however, is much less so and therein lies the problem with this story - it just doesn't go anywhere. It doesn't need end to end shagging - indeed there is really only one sexual scene in the performances (asides from Guy's assignations with the local hooker), but the development of their relationship seems to grow in disjointed fits and starts; there is nothing consistent in the way the story progresses. The ending - though touching- makes little, if any, sense. Perhaps 40 years have not helped it, it may well have been much more a remarkable piece of man-to-man cinema in 1979, but now it is just all rather lost, with too much of the dialogue replaced by a rather annoying jaunty score.

This movie started at the bottom and dug a hole. Who knows what the director was going for: comedy, drama, period piece, or romance. Whatever his goal, he failed miserably.

The essence of the movie was a man with mental disabilities finds a mildly wounded German soldier who stays around for reasons that never are made clear (or simply make no sense). Strangely, no one goes looking for the missing soldier so he spends his days hanging with the village idiot. A man who doesn't bathe, sees dead bodies and people in general as violins, violently kills animals (the killing of the rabbit was real, the dog was debatable).

The whole concept never made sense but then again neither does war. Perhaps the director stumbled upon that message, purely by accident. There are two robots and a man in a space station that are missing this movie.

Some of the acting was atrocious; in particular that of the "mad man", who, in my state, wouldn't meet the criteria to be institutionalized. Even if he were very insane nothing about the way he talked or moved seemed in any way realistic. I thought briefly that perhaps he was purposefully a caricature of some sort for artistic reasons, but quickly decided that didn't work. Then there was the killing of animals. So it was wartime in France and rabbets are food; no problem there. But I really wish I hadn't seen the dog killed for no apparent reason. Nothing in the plot justifies killing a dog. If you like dogs you shouldn't see this movie.

There is truly nothing like "We Were One Man," a twisted, brave film that looks at a man-man relationship through new eyes. The way the men treat each other is hard to watch, and the ending somehow does not ring true to their earlier actions. It is almost too heavy-handedly symbolic. Still...there is an earthy, grimy quality to their sexual relationship that is fascinating to watch. This one is for gay foreign film fans, gay sadists, or very open-minded foreign film buffs only.

Vallois made a film which is not easy to watch and one never forgets it, since this film speaks out things normally silenced. Love between persons of different sex is theme in many war time movies where border line separates the lovers and the rest is sentimental crap. But here we have two men who should hate each other, as men should, even if they are not enemies. They are, however, in a secluded hut, mid-forest, also metaphorically: they don't know anything about each other than what they see. No common language. But in their flesh they begin to know each other, little by little: they are men, they have the same urges and because of the war times they don't have to play social plays. They don't need the illusion a civilized life requires; they joyfully agree in being straightforward in their physical needs. Communication is all but easy but they show us art and practice we don't know anymore, not in everyday life. They attack each other directly in flesh, both in sensitive way and aggressively, ending up making love or running away from each other. Vallois' film is like a well structured reality document where one looks the world that should be there somewhere but one knows that any peace and civilized state of mind make a life like that impossible. Men simply can't love each other without Mothers giving them rules for that.