Yoan Clauzel | Ramené par les vagues (Carried by the Waves) 2022

crossed wires

by Douglas Messerli

 

Yoan Clauzel (screenwriter and director) Ramené par les vagues (Carried by the Waves) 2022 [11 minutes]

 

Here we have all the elements of a heterosexual romantic comedy, a moony young man, Loïs (Victor Snegas)—who wakes up at the beach after a drunken night, if we are to believe the flashbacks, of his attempts mostly to sexually hit on a woman other than his girlfriend—and a passing jogger Killian (Valentin Champion), who we are told is aged 20 (as opposed to Loïs’s 22 years), “Falls for him at first sight.”

    That isn’t very evident in the story, when the stranded Loïs begs first for the use of Killian’s cellphone to call his girlfriend, and then asks if the jogger might give him a ride back to civilization, something to which Killian insists he can’t devote his time.

     Yet Killian, on his way back from running, still offers Loïs a ride, which ends in them inexplicably eating at a fast-food joint and eventually returning together to Loïs’s girlfriend’s abode, actually the young man’s own hovel into which he finally lures Killian, admitting he is now desperately in love with the stranger.

     I don’t know, but it appears to me that Yoan Clauzel might have confused genres. This happens regularly in heterosexual films where a sloppy, somewhat cute male seduces a female back to his place, who, after much ado and corrective criticism of her seducer’s behavior—precisely what occurs in this short film—she admits she’s already fallen for him, the two embracing, kissing, and demonstrating that they are eternally in love—none of which, fortunately, Clauzel bothers to repeat. This short film’s gay couple’s relationship is established by a close-to-the-credits scene of Loïs attempting, quite unsuccessfully, to follow Killian on his morning jog.

    Nonetheless, it’s the same rom-com claptrap, which in recent days has snuck its way into queer cinema, as if somehow that’s the way, after all, gay boys also fall in love, waiting around drunken on a beach to find their true white knights.

      Sorry, boys and girls, I don’t think the transformation works. I’ve never even imagined myself as a gay boy, after a night of trying to prove to himself I was totally straight, hanging out on the beach to catch sight of the first passing male jogger. It simply doesn’t register on my gaydar. Some wires have evidently been crossed. And even if, by some far-fetched possibility of cinema magic, a jock like Killian (despite his long hair tied back in a man-bun) were tempted to fall for a cutesy fuck-up like Loïs, I’d immediately, as his best sissy friend, warn him away. The tide pool into which Loïs isn’t deep enough for even a good romantic dog-paddle.

     But then, there are apparently no sissies allowed on the beach of French director Clauzel’s Ramené par les vagues. And why for god’s sake are we told in the IMDb description their precise ages? Do two years really matter? Doesn’t mean a thing in gay years, but might very well establish the perfect sense of male age-dominance in a heterosexual rom-com.

 

Los Angeles, June 1, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (June 2024).