Pascal-Alex Vincent | En colo (Holiday Camp) / 2010

change of view

by Douglas Messerli

 

Guillaume Nail (screenplay), Pascal-Alex Vincent (director) En colo (Holiday Camp) / 2010 [8 minutes]

 

While perhaps not representing the most exciting example of Pascal-Alex Vincent’s significant oeuvre, the French director’s 2010 short film Holiday Camp does offer up small pleasures, as a group of teens on a holiday retreat attempt to discover more about one another and their hunky camp counselor, Jordan (Alexis Michalik).

     Like young teens everywhere, Mathieu (Paul Perles) suggests they play a game of “Truth or Dare,” daring the two women of their group, Bénédicte (Emylou Brunet) and Muriel (Laura Boujenah) to kiss each other on the lips. They agree only if Mathieu also kisses a boy, not his friend Antoine (Côme Levin), but the quieter peer, who has generally not been participating in the male-oriented games, Maxime (Axel Wursten). There is, of course, the standard grumbling, particularly from Maxime, since it is suddenly to be a contest of duration. Mathieu is quite ready as he not only kisses the other boy longer that the girls remain lip-locked, but, as Antonine comments Mathieu has slipped his tongue into Maxime’s mouth.

     When the others tease Maxime for being disoriented after the kiss, he angrily describes it only as a game and leaves the group, Antoine, in particular, suggesting he may actually be a fag. The game, accordingly, not only disorients Maxime but the group itself who now become somewhat mean in their attempts to actually determine Maxime’s sexuality.

      But things seem to have also changed in other subtle ways. The very next day, when Mathieu tires of wrestling in the pool with Antoine, he attempts to encourage Maxime to join them. When Antoine again challenges him by wondering if he has a hard on, “Could it be that Matt’s got to you?” Maxime answers: “Have you seen yourself jumping all over him? It looks like you’re the one interested.”

      Again Maxime storms off.

      By that evening’s final camp dance, Antoine is truly wondering whether or not Maxime might be “a fag.” One of the girls determines to actually determine the truth through another kind of game. She asks Maxime to dance, leading him into an intense feeling-up session, while Mathieu, watching, does not seem at all amused. When Maxime finally pushes her away for her flirtations, she rushes back to the others to assure them that surely the boy is queer.

     Having observed their actions from behind the bar, Jourdan finally demands to know what they’re doing.

     “Nothing,” answers Antoine. “It’s Maxime—he’s a total fag.”

     “What do you know about that?” asks the elder. “What the hell do you care?

     One of the girls offers up, “It’s fine. So we can have a laugh.”

     “Yeh. What if I told you I’m a fag too? Are you still laughing?”

     “Ah no, but you’re not,” Antoine counters.

     “Why not? Because I don’t look like your idea of a homo?”

     That quiets them all. Would that more such camp counselors existed.

     Mathieu, in particular, looks nonplussed.

     On the bus to leave then next morning, the girls quietly lament that it’s too bad that their handsome stud of a counselor can no longer be the center of their fantasies. But they still want his photo, telling him that he’s so hot.

      Seeing Maxime, Mathieu suggests that he come sit with him.

      Jordan declares it’s now his turn to get a photo of his fellow campers. They crowd in together, but in one frame the camera catches what they cannot see, Matthieu has wrapped his hand around Maxime’s hand. And in the final frame of the film, Matthieu and Maxime are kissing with Antoine finally pointing out the fact.

      Things have definitely changed for these holiday campers.

 

Los Angeles, October 15, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (October 2024).