Thomas Raoul | Bonhomme / 2020

playing the game

by Douglas Messerli

 

Thomas Raoul (screenwriter and director) Bonhomme / 2020 [19 minutes]

 

If you believe in the reality of short gay films, you surely will be convinced that most gay boys, whether aware yet of their sexuality or not, have close girlfriends and perhaps a straight friend or two with whom they constantly play “Truth or Dare,” no matter which country in which they live.

    In France, Anthony (Hugo Manchon), a stunning, drop-dead hunk of a rugby player, and his friends Chloe (Camille Bechone), and Louis (François Chatbi) play the game, the boys having dared Chloe that if they win their rugby game, she must lift up her blouse and show her ample tits to the entire team.

    They win; she reveals. And they all go for a drink. This time it’s Anthony’s turn to be dared to do something the others are sure he won’t be able to act on. Observing how attentive the new waiter, Clément (Vinicius Timmerman) is to the beautiful Anthony, and how Anthony’s eyes seem to also return the admiration, Chloe dares Anthony to kiss the waiter.

      Anthony uses a silly compliment of the man’s bracelet as a warm-up maneuver; obviously he’s nervous. But, as they are about to leave, he returns to attempt to fulfill the dare, which they’re convinced he will never be able to do. Amazingly, he accomplishes the task, the waiter seemingly not at all taken aback and certainly not offended about the event.

     Afterwards, however, Anthony seems somewhat troubled as the other two, making dinner, chatter and laugh. And the next morning he goes to the café, presumably to apologize, but actually makes a date with Clément for the next day.

      The two go to Clément’s place, have a drink or two, and passionately come together for a kiss, and for Anthony, who admits he’s never “done it” with a girl, his first fuck—although Clément fucks him.

       Not only does Anthony, as he later admits to his friends, enjoy it, but he has fallen in love at the very same moment of discovering that he must be gay.

        Raoul’s film doesn’t even attempt to take in all the emotional impact of the self-revelation of one’s sexual difference, the joy of sex, and coming out to friends at the very same moment, which I should imagine would be nearly impossible for any one person to easily assimilate, but focuses instead on the issue of “first love.”

      In this case, in trying to meet up with Clément again the next day, our lovely young hero discovers that his new lover has a girlfriend—the owner of the bar—and is not at all interested in continuing a gay relationship with a young suddenly love-smitten rugby player. He nicely apologies, but obviously for Anthony, totally crestfallen and emotionally distraught, that isn’t sufficient.

       Fortunately, so the director rather cavalierly argues, he has his friends who quickly help him to laugh it off.

       Surely, however, this film isn’t being honest with the issues it has brought up. What will his relationship now be with his friends, Louis being a solid straight boy, and with his fellow rugby players? Will Anthony shake it off as a kind of one-time experience, determined, now that he is no longer a virgin, to go straight? Or will he now have an urge to visit the nearest gay bar? If bisexual men treat others as he was treated, how might gay men treat him? Will he be able to find someone again who can recreate the marvel of that first time? Or Anthony be able to quickly put his hurt behind him and move ahead in his search for others to love.

    But even if Anthony is the “bonhomme,” we know he has some hard knocks again, surely some locker room teasing or even bullying. Surely, Anthony will soon discover that if it is difficult sometimes for his friend Louis to pick up women, it will be even more difficult, despite his great beauty, to find gay men given that there are far fewer homosexuals in the world that heterosexual women. Sorry Chloe, but kissing a boy is not at all as simple has showing off one’s boobs. The last words out of Anthony’s mouth recognize the stakes: “I quit the game.” And despite the cute charm of this film, the reality behind it will certainly throw some viewers for a loop. As one Letterboxd commentator, named Andy, railed: “I feel hustled, scammed, bamboozled, hoodwinked, led astray…Fuck the ending; Fuck the other guy.”

 

Los Angeles, April 15, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (April 2024).