What We Have

Maurice (Maxime Desmons) has relocated from Paris to a small North Canadian town. He is running away from a past that he can not face and decides to get a job acting as that is his profession. The pay though is basic so he advertises to tutor in French. His advert is answered by the mother of Alan – a withdrawn but talented teenager.

Maurice seems to alienate all around him despite his abilities but Alan finds him to be inspirational. Meanwhile Maurice is trying to fit in at the theatre but even as his acting is excellent the disaffected youth whom he is tutoring starts to get to him through the boy's overt needs.

Now this is a really well made and intentioned film. Alex Ozerov as Alan is superb (actually from Russia originally) and the story line is original and engaging, some of the back story is told in flashback and that is done with real style too. This is a film that is gay themed but would be easily for a wider audience as the themes are universal and I have to see I appreciated this very much indeed.

Frenchman Maxime Desmons ("Maurice") relocates to a remote Canadian community where he picks up his acting career. The wages are poor, so he tries to supplement them by teaching folks French. That's where he alights on keen, but shy, swimmer "Allan" (Alex Ozerov). Try as they both might, they struggle to fit in with their respective peers, but they do gradually begin to bond together. The former an outwardly gay man, the latter still preparing for his own journey into manhood. When "Maurice" intervenes during an incident with a bully, the younger man starts to believe that the two could have a future. This is when, using flashbacks and good old community gossip, that we discover just why the actor is now all but hiding in this provincial backwater. Desmons is pretty convincing here, as is Ozerov, but I found the writing a bit pedestrian and there is something distinctly unsatisfactory about the conclusion. The production is good though, the story evolves at a reasonable pace and it does present us with an interesting observation of behaviour that when looked on retrospectively, makes you wonder why people make some of the most basic of human errors when the heart and hormones take over.