Benjamin Belloir | Beautiful Stranger / 2021

getting into gear

by Douglas Messerli

 

Benjamin Belloir (screenwriter and director) Beautiful Stranger / 2021 [26 minutes]

 

Romain (Baptiste Carrion-Weiss) has just broken up his boyfriend in a taxi on the way to the train that would him back to him. His telephonic furor causes the taxi driver to toss him out into the street into a rainy night, and Romain has nowhere to go but a small nearby hotel where he hooks up online with an American (Shane Woodward) who can barely speak French.

     This short Belgian-French film doesn’t hint at great possibilities for our hero who is even maltreated by the hotel clerk (Daphné Huynh), who herself is in the middle of a breakup with her boyfriend.

    Romain sends a requested face picture, he’s cute, but the American answers with a photo of a huge cock which if nothing else looks very promising. Romain goes to the bathroom mirror and practices his English.

    The American almost immediately appears as if by magic, demanding a rather S&M situation.

   Romain explains, using the metaphor of a car, that he doesn’t “roll” in that direction. “I am not an automatic car…I need time to travel down the motorway calmly. Shifting gears, clack, clack, before accelerating and launching myself.”

     Frustrated, the American begins to masturbate, finishing himself, as he puts it, “off alone.” At least, he pleads, suck me. Give me just a kiss.

     But Romain, now disgusted by the situation, declares he doesn’t kiss strangers.

     His actions lead to a fairly sarcastic conversation with the American revealing that his visitor may be bisexual or maybe even something else. The beautiful stranger turns out the lights, switches on music and brings out a lamp to create a simulation of a gay dance bar, finally breaking down the uptight Romain’s inhibitions. They dance, the American trying to convince him that sex is not that complicated. He chose him on the app simply because he was the closest.

      They finally begin to connect when the clerk knocks on the door complaining of the noise and joins them. She loves to watch guys get it on, she declares. She drinks down nearly an entire bottle of scotch from the cold bar before joining them in bed. Posting herself between the two, she asks Romain, “So you still believe in it? Love.”

      She suddenly demands Romain pretend to make love to her, passionate love so that she can send a picture back to her ex. She too demands he kiss her nipples, make immediate love with her, as the American stranger snaps photos. But Romain is not convincing and she turns to the stranger, asking if she can kiss him instead with Romain taking the pictures. Her passion will be far more convincing with the American.

   Almost immediately the two of them, long after the pictures, go into a seemingly ecstatic sexual engagement, and poor Romain, feeling totally left-out gets thoroughly and justifiably jealous.

     She leaves in a fury, the American commenting “Boy, she was a firecracker.”

     Finally Romain is in gear and ready for deep and passionate sex. Or is the intense sex scene filmed in red all in his head?

      He awakens to find no one there. No one in the bathroom. But a scribbled note appears wrapped in the bedding: “I let you sleep. You looked happy.”

      This delightful comedy seems at one with the delirious sad-sack sex dreams of Pierre Étaix if he had been gay.

 

Los Angeles, November 6, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (November 2024).