Garçon stupide

The drama plot is all over. Too many incomplete stories without end.

Director Lionel Baier has created a work of freshness and imagination and truth. The few melodramatic clichés he employs stand out only for their rarity. In choosing Pierre Chatagny to focus his camera upon, Baier has chosen brilliantly. (Baier who plays an older friend, Lionel, to Chatagny's Loic, is glimpsed just once. In truth the director is a young man of 28 with much great work ahead of him on the evidence of this production).

Though the character and, I would say, Mr. Chatagny at 20, is self-absorbed and vain as 20 year-old boys tend to be, his natural beauty reveals itself in every movement of his eyes and his isolation in the stark awkwardness of his stance. He is not hard to watch or gawk at for 90 minutes.

Loic,a horny Swiss youngster who has notched a lot of casual nocturnal sex, envies his sisterly girlfriend's enjoyable personal relations with her boyfriend, distrusts Lionel's apparent disinterest in immediate sexual gratification and feels hopeless in the presence of an adored soccer player's fatherly love for his three year-old son. Luoc is by turns angry and despairing and anxious.He has begun to suspect it doesn't always boil down to just sex but he doesn't know if he has anything more than sex to give or take and if there is a place in him where there is more he has no idea how to reach it. But after much pain and damage the first unexpected crack of sunlight in the wall of Luoc's frustration comes through beautiful and true. Jim Smith

Garcon Stupide (Stupid Boy) is an emotionally-packed punch. The film and it's lead character, Loic, had me hooked from the start. With the exception of a few slower scenes, I thoroughly enjoyed the film from start to finish. A few laughs, intense thought and emotion, and a few tears were generated from this well directed and acted film.

The filming techniques and styles, and the soundtrack selections helped me score this film. The direction and unique filming combined with some classical scores and the storyline all fit perfectly together.

The story itself follows the plight of Loic, a young handsome 20-year old who works in a chocolate factory by day, and entertains men of all ages by night for extra cash. In the film, he has a close loving friendship with a girl, Marie. He also develops a relationship of trust with a man he meets on the Internet, Lionel. The 2 never have sexual relations, just conversation about life. Something interesting to note: we never see Lionel. Or do we at the end? You decide.

The story line develops around Loic's desires to be someone - a photographer, a gay man, ...? He seems to have lost direction in life, and is unable to trust/confide in the 2 people who seem to care for him most, Marie and Lionel. When Marie finds a boyfriend, you can clearly see the upset and anger in Loic. He withdraws from Marie, and Lionel, and neither situation has a positive outcome.

In the meantime, he develops an infatuation of sorts with a local soccer player, who is successful, married and with child. Loic sees a life he wants for himself.

Although this is a French film (with English subtitles), we have young people like Loic all over America. And we have adults who take advantage of them - and we have adults, like Lionel in this film, who truly can be a trusted friend. One of my favorite lines spoken by Lionel to Loic is "You can be interested in someone without wanting to f**k them". This statement rings true for so many, both those near the age of 20, and those near the age of 40.

This is overall, an exceptional film - very good acting, great soundtrack, unique camera angles and film styles, wonderful story, and well-directed.

Though most reviewers and viewers are putting this film down as a waste of time, this particular viewer sees many redeeming factors here that, given some further time in the editing room and a bit of script doctoring, could have resulted in a moving story.

Young Swiss filmmaker Lionel Baier has both written (with Laurent Guido) and directed with quasi-autobiographical story that explores the coming of age of a lower class young lad who seems destined to settle for being a hustler. Loic (first time actor Pierre Chatagny) works in an assembly line chocolate factory in Bulle, Switzerland and his only 'life' is provided through his internet activity meeting men for sex. His casual sexual encounters (rather graphically shown in the first portion of the film) are his only answer to relating to people until he meets Marie (Natacha Koutchoumov) with whom he rooms and bonds. Marie is bright and encourages Loic, uneducated and uninformed, to look up words he encounters- a simple but well-intended manner in which Loic can improve himself. He meets the older Lionel (played by the director Lionel Baier) who dangles before Loic's eyes the possibilities of finer things in life. Loic spends his idle hours with a digital camera and between his new interest in photography and his pursuing his 'basic' education, he begins to long for a life more significant than his brainless casual sex. He becomes friends with a soccer player and his son, loses his friendship with Marie when Marie finds a real lover, and ultimately Loic yearns to escape the life of the 'stupid boy' of the title and enters a dreamworld fantasy of something better.

Good ideas for a film here, but Baier seems to get sidetracked into artsy camera work, quasi-porno, and surrealistic moving lights and alpine scenery, and the film falters as a result. But there does seem to be some promise of a new filmmaker on the rise, This film may not be tolerated by some for various reasons, but for the adventurous spirits who are unafraid of a bit of male frontal nudity and sexual acting out, here are redeeming aspects to this little film that merit attention. Grady Harp

I saw this film in New York and was blown away by the acting ability of Pierre Chatagny. For somebody who has never acted before in a professional production, he certainly has a bright future ahead of him. While many films attempt the same docu-drama format that Garcon Stupide features, I have yet to see a film that succeeds at it as well as Garcon Stupide. From the beautiful shots of the Alps to the intense night scenes shot on the streets that Loic works, this film provides a stunning look at a young man arriving at one of the most crucial moments if his life. Loic constantly blurs the line between sex and love and leaves us wanting to know more about his turbulent life, if only to help him discover his true identity.