Douches froides

Other reviews have talked about how frank this film is, especially in terms of male frontal nudity. Well, those who've seen Grande Ecole with its frequently naked actors and expect something similar are in for a big disappointment. Other than a few seconds in the judo team locker room, the two leads' side by side shower lasts a grand total of 15 seconds. The female lead has comparably brief frontal moments. A lot of this film's marketing is geared to the gay male audience, but those expecting even a hint of homoeroticism between the two male leads (best friends who have a three-way with the girlfriend of one of them) will be most disappointed. There is not even the hint of either one's being interested in the other, or even scarcely aware that the other is part of the menage a trois. As a film, Douches Froides is curiously uninvolving; the viewer gets very little sense of who these three young people are, of how they are feeling, of why they behave as they do. About one hour of the original cut was deleted; perhaps this is why the finished film seems frustratingly undeveloped. Stick with Grande Ecole, a French film which more than delivers on its promises.

'Douches froides' ('Cold Showers') is a film by Antony Cordier that has been marketed in a strange way: the projected audience was supposedly the gay audience, but aside from brief frontal nudity in an innocuous gym shower room there is nothing 'gay' about this movie. Instead COLD SHOWERS is an examination of class, sport, experimentation, and emotional borderlines that are at once fascinating and frustrating.

Mickael (Johan Libereau) is from a poor working class family - his father Gerard (Jean-Philippe Ecoffey) is a boozer taxi cab driver who lost his license as a result of a DUI, and his mother Annie (Florence Thomassin) is a cleaning woman in the high school gym: they live on the edge of poverty. Not a great student, Mickael excels in judo and his life is focused on his sport and on his girlfriend Vanessa (Salome Stevenin). One of Mickael's teammates Clement (Pierre Perrier) is from a wealthy family: his father Louis Steiner (Aurelien Recoing) is confined to a wheelchair and his mother Mathilde (Claire Nebout) is a woman of the world and society. Louis decides to sponsor the judo team, buys them outfits, and asks Mickael to work with Clement to perfect his technique and prepare the judo team for a French championship.

Mickael and Clement relate well and while Mickael is a winning player, Clement is smarter and understands the intrinsic rules of the game better. An incident occurs that forces Mickael to take the position of a wounded mate and in doing so he must lose 8 kilos to qualify for the championship team. The struggle to lose weight (his body is already perfect) places stress on both Mickael and his family and teammates. Mickael and Vanessa include Clement in their camaraderie, a situation which evolves into a ménage a trois as the three have sex in the after hours gym. Vanessa reacts as though this is the greatest physical feeling ever, Clement is smitten, and Mickael has troubling doubts. When the three decide to try it again in a hotel room Mickael is so conflicted that he does not join the other two, only listening to their cavorting in the bathtub feeling inferior to the smarter, wealthier Clement. But on the judo side, the team wins the championship and Mickael's delicate sense of self worth is restored for a moment. It is the manner in which the trio of young adolescents resolves their antics that closes the film.

Though the actors are superb and very beautiful to see and hear, the character development is fuzzy and we are left with little understanding or insight as to the each of the key players. The judo action moments are beautifully choreographed and the intimacy scenes are done with taste and fine lighting but with little passion conveyed. Though we want to identify with Mickael and his methods of confronting his coming of age, there just isn't enough character motivation to make that transference entirely successful. This film feels like two movies: a judo team's antics and a class-crossed ménage a trois. Beautiful to watch, but the script could have been more carefully constructed.

This is a movie about a teenage love triangle with two boys and a girl. One of the boys is from a relatively wealthy family, while the other, the main protagonist, is from a troubled family with an alcoholic cabdriver father, who are so poor they have to periodically turn off the power, which is why he has to take cold showers (although that may not be why some members of the audience will have to take cold showers). The plot of this movie sounds like a John Hughes flick, but this is a FRENCH movie and has something John Hughes movies definitely DON'T have, I think it's pronounced "menage a trois". If only the characters in "Pretty Pink" (or more recently, the vampire, the werewolf and Kristen Stewart in the "Twilight" saga) had thought of this, we could have been spared a lot of needless teen angst.

Interestingly, the first menage a trois occurs BEFORE the love triangle emerges when the poor kid spontaneously decides to share his sexy girlfriend with his wealthier buddy after a co-ed wresting practice goes very awry. The movies never quite delves into full-blown bisexuality, and I don't know why because there is certainly no shortage of blatant homoeroticism. The two males both love wrestling, taking showers, and occasionally wrestling in the shower. The girl (Salome Stevenin, who could probably turn gay men straight) actually has fewer full-frontal nude scenes than the two males, but one of them is another scene you're probably never going to see in an American teen flick where she wipes down her upper thighs after having (apparently) unprotected sex with both guys.

I should add that nobody here looks anything like an actual teenager. All three leads are obviously very good-looking twenty-somethings (even the French don't use actual underage actors in movies this graphic). And while they're less sexually repressed in France, I don't think it's common for French teenagers to have three ways in school gyms and showers. Ironically though considering how graphic this is in parts, the teens here seem a lot less sexually obsessed than American teens in movies, who always seem to be single-minded virgins trying to "lose it" as if it were the quest for the Holy Grail as opposed to something that inevitably happens to pretty much everyone with functioning genitals. Few people realize that this whole "horny male virgin" plot in American movies was borrowed wholesale in the early 80's from the Israeli "Lemon Popsicle" series, which was set in the FIFTIES for christsake. The French aren't stuck in this time warp and they treat teen sex much more matter-of-factly with slightly more realistic teen characters who occasionally think of something else besides just getting their naughty bits wet.

Even as a teen, I only watched stupid teen movies for the gratuitous nudity by the attractive 25-year-old "teen" actresses. But even that went away in the benighted John Hughes era, and strangely "American Pie" brought back the raunch and ridiculously sex-obsessed teen virgin stereotypes, but it didn't really bring back the gratuitous nudity/sex. Ironically, American teen movies today not only probably send a bad message to teenagers about sex, but bore the hell out of any adults expecting to see any. By that standard this French film with its unveiled homoeroticism and rather graphic sex scenes is really quite an improvement.

This film deserves a chance to be seen. This teenage coming-of-age story from France tells nicely against a backdrop of martial arts (judo), competition, and sex. But it goes beyond to show some nice subtleties where class, success, and desire play out against one another to really give you a sense of what the main character is going through. I was pulled in. And the story just seemed to work and be very real and personal for me.

The director, who was present at this Toronto International Film Festival screening, mentioned the story started out as a school project -- something that garnered accolades beyond his expectations. It then grew into a judo documentary, before morphing again into a personal coming-of-age story with the director's personal story touches.

The result was excellent and succeeds on many accounts. I'd say it's worth checking out.

The movie is fresh, poignant and real. For a non-professional actor, Johan Libereau manages to touch you with his raw humanity. If he polishes on his acting skills, he will become a formidable actor. Salome is captivating with her open frankness. The other actors were quite realistic too, in their different ways. There are a lack of continuity with many scenes, creating the impression that somebody had cut out a big piece. One example, is when the Chinese boy(his arm was in a sling)walked up with the coach and the next thing, Michael is outside kicking a ball!? Some scenes could have been left out altogether, like the night swim which Michael had with Vanessa. My major pain was with the camera work. I cannot understand why a lot of the scenes had to be done in close ups. The most annoying was the group shower scenes where the boys were making fun of the Chinese boy. At one point, somebody's back covered the entire screen. I felt that 70% of the movie was done in close ups, causing you to miss a lot of the details, like with the judo scenes. A lot of the close ups were done exclusively to mask the frontal nudity. This shame is normal for American directors but with a Frenchman? Even the Parental Advisory sticker created the impression of disgust and abnormality which nudity is definitely not. I strongly recommend seeing this movie and if at the end you feel like strangling the cameraman, you are not alone! By the way, this movie is NOT a gay movie and the 3-way sex scene was too dark and lost in the close ups.