Jean-Sébastien Chauvin | Mars exalté (Exalted Mars) / 2022

orb and line

by Douglas Messerli

 

Jean-Sébastien Chauvin (director) Mars exalté (Exalted Mars) / 2022 [18 minutes]

 

Calling up various cinematic works such as Andy Warhol’s 1964 long (five hours 21 minutes) Sleep, and Tsai Ming-liang’s Night of 2021, French director Jean-Sébastien Chauvin’s Exalted Mars lets us off far more easily with just 18 minutes of a nude beefy man (Clain Garcia Vergara) sleeping alone in a bed while around him the city gradually comes to life in a dark, hot early morning presumably in the northern suburban commune of Seine-Saint-Denis outside Paris.

    For the first 6 ½ minutes we hear mostly the man’s deep pants as he occasionally turns and tosses in his sleep, his body covered with perspiration. Outside cars a scant number of cars seem to be leaving the city with their bright lights facing the camera, while near standstill traffic with their tail lights lit up red (like the Red Planet Mars) appear to be making their way back into the city for a day of confrontational world of the workplace.

     We know next nothing about the man, although he has some tattoos that at first appear to represent Chinese characters, but upon an equally obscured later view seem to actually be gnomic symbols regarding sexual objects. Mars, as the title suggests, seems to rise as our sleeping hero breathes in and out and turns to show his hairy ass and later his penis.

 

     At about 6 ½ minutes the audio shifts to the outside world where we hear the endless roar of the traffic, the sounds of morning birds, and the general din of a city coming to life. For a moment we catch a view of neighbors in the high-rise where we presumably also lies sleeping, having breakfast and communicating on cellphones.

      Briefly our sleeping hunk seems to awaken, touching his cock.

      We see workers beginning to walk the streets. A streetlight that has evidently been off for the entire night suddenly comes to life as the sleeper breathes out heavily. A few moments later (a nearly the 12-minute frame) he has a sudden nocturnal ejaculation, the end presumably of an arousing wet dream. We hear his deep sighs of sexual satisfaction as we watch the cum flow from his cock.

     We can only begin to wonder, if this dreamer has the power in his sleep to awaken and bring the city itself back to life? Might he himself be Mars, calling his warriors back into the battle of their daily survival?

       For the first time in this film we hear the sounds of artificed music swelling to full force as the sun finally begins to rise. The glass windows of the suburban high rises, reflect the bright morning light, a world of most immigrant, North African French citizens. The sleeper’s cum begins to coagulate as the shimmers of reflected sun fall across the city and the river pushes through its center.

Los Angeles, June 2, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (June 2024).