Jean-Baptiste Becq | Bleu piscine (Blue Pool) / 2011

the homoerotic dance

by Douglas Messerli

 

Jean-Baptiste Becq (director) Bleu piscine (Blue Pool) / 2011 [9 minutes]

 

In a public swimming pool to men play a quiet game of sexual seduction, pretending the entire time not to even notice each other’s existence. We have seen this silent eroticism between straight men many a time at parties, but more often at sports events. Without a word being spoken, the two men at first simply engage in a contest to challenge the other. The game requires that you do so without actually engaging in an actual race.

     The two men (Enrique Blain and Lucas Struna) in this large public pool, begin by obliquely noticing each other’s existence as the second man begins swimming in the lane parallel to the first. But just as quickly, he moves over into the second lane, joining the first man and, in that act, not only entering into his space, but subtly sexually engaging him in his own bodily “territory,” so to speak. One might describe it as an underwater homoerotic ballet, French director Jean-Baptiste Becq’s camera perfectly capturing the parallel movements of these aquatic dancers.

   As the men exit from their subterranean swimming palace to the terrace, they continue their erotic interaction by laying out on chaise lounges almost facing one another, again each man displaying his body to the other as if by accident.

    After, they shower facing one another, pretending not to notice one other as they carefully survey each other’s bodies. Even their application of soap is done carefully in tandem. But cutting between the two of their faces and bodies, Becq makes clear that from the corners of their eyes they are inspecting each other as thoroughly as possible, engaged with what might be described as bodily adoration. Both make love to their own bodies in lieu of the other’s touch.

      When the one finally leaves to dry off, the second moves to his shower, almost as if to engage with the other’s bodily absence. This strangely is perhaps the most sexual act of the entire film, a gesture almost analogous to moving over to a bed to lay down where another has just been sleeping, an attempt to draw in the other’s absent presence.

     Finally, the two exit the world of the public baths, the one who we might surely thought might be gay, since we wore a large ear-ring, quickly greeting his wife or girlfriend and walking off screen.

 

Los Angeles, September 8, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema (September 2024).