L'homme de sa vie

Set in the stunningly beautiful Provencal region of France, "The Man of My life" looks at how both passion and responsibility play an equally crucial role in defining who we are and how we love.

Frederic (Bernard Campan) and Frederique (Lea Drucker) are a happily married couple who enjoy entertaining large groups of people at the country home where they vacation. One day, Frederic invites their next door neighbor, a single gay man by the name of Hugo (Charles Berling), over for a get-together with family and friends. Soon, Frederic and Hugo have struck up a friendship largely centered on their mutual addiction to running and their propensity to talk the night away over such weighty matters as love, passion, responsibility, freedom, commitment and marriage. Hugo tries to convince Frederic that his role as dutiful husband and father has robbed him of his individuality and earlier lust for life, while Hugo, spurned by his father at a young age, comes to his own understanding of the importance of family by the end. There's an obvious sexual attraction between the two men, but the movie goes far beyond the typical coming-out drama to explore romantic passion in all its myriad complexities and forms.

Frederic is torn between the desire to continue loving the wife who so obviously loves him and who has provided a stable home for him and their children - and this new found feeling for Hugo that he can, in no way, shape or form, even begin to understand. The movie never feels the need to judge any of the characters; it presents them simply as well-meaning but flawed human beings who struggle on a daily basis, as all of us do, with an array of emotions, needs and desires that continually come into conflict with one another.

The screenplay by Zabou Breitman and Agnes de Sacy employs long, winding conversations to reveal the truths about the characters and the relationships that help to define them. Moreover, the sensuous, bucolic setting, far from being a mere backdrop to the foreground action, actually serves to pull us into the lives of these people as they while away a languid summer swimming, hiking and exploring the inner workings of their own roiled psyches.

In his direction, Breitman has come up with interesting, slightly abstract ways of filming the commonplace details of everyday life, utilizing extreme close-ups, distorted angles, catawampus framing and mosaic-style storytelling to impart a lyrical tone to the film.

Superb performances by the three leading players also add greatly to the emotional richness of the piece.

With a great deal of insight and tenderness, "The Man of My Life" presents us with a subtly provocative, beautifully realized and psychologically complex view of the human heart.

Filmmakers invest a great deal of creativity and inspiration into their work, so I hesitate to write a negative review, but I'm compelled to make an exception here.

What a pretentious, self-indulgent waste of time. It steadily succumbs to self-conscious artiness, drunk on its own sense of contrived poetry.

It's sumptuously filmed, but ultimately shallow, empty, and a little boring. There's a good story waiting to be told that gets lost in useless side plots, languorous panoramas, and tedious conversations.

There's a germ of a very good idea in the screenplay, but I just don't feel that the writers fully grasped what they were undertaking.

Don't waste your time.

This film is so well photographed, produced, acted, scripted, etc., I feel a bit caddish for complaining about any aspect of it.

The photography is beautiful, lush at times, and often original. Much of the story takes place in dreams, or in a dream-like state, and the cinematographer does a good job conveying as much.

The film returns repeatedly to segments of an all night conversation between the two male leads, revealing nothing particularly extraordinary. Their dialog is the kind college kids have when they're talking about The Meaning of It All. But aspects of that discussion are played off against events occurring around them in the days that follow. It's a nice structure, one that lends itself to the dreamy photography.

I think the film could have been truly great if just a bit of the thematic and visual metaphors had been scaled back. This slight excess is noticeable, and that, I think, is a shame. Don't get me wrong--this is so far and away above the quality of most gay cinema it's definitely worth seeing, and thoroughly enjoyable.

I think Netflix has categorized this film as Foreign, rather than as Gay & Lesbian. It's French, so it clearly belongs to the former, but it is also a top tier example of the latter.

I keep forgetting name of this movie and I describe it as the French movie with the two guys talking all night and the sheer drapes flowing in the wind. I found it to be one of the best gay movies ever. It's honest and deeper than most. It's also very French. Which is fine by me. But it won't be for everyone. A couple of years after watching it I choose it again thinking it was something I hadn't seen. A few minutes in I realized I had and watched it all over again.

This film is about a married man developing romantic feelings with a charming gay neighbour.

The plot is simple but special. It is striking that the plot blurs the distinction between homosexuality and heterosexuality. The main character, Frédéric, is heterosexual but develops feelings for a man. Hugo, on the other hand, is homosexual but is revealed to have a child. It's a good way to say that love has no boundaries.

The way Frédéric develops feelings for Hugo is beautiful. The gradual disintegration of Frédéric's marriage is portrayed well, and Frédérique's desperation in the end of the film is palpable. This film is beautiful and engaging. It deserves to be viewed by more people.