Benjamin Thomas | Sortir avec moi (Go Out with Me) / 2023

take me out to the beach dance

by Douglas Messerli

 

Benjamin Thomas, Marie Albert, Julie Chaye, Anaïs Boucher, Véra Jantzem, Luna Delorge, and Julie Barbe (screenplay), Benjamin Thomas (director) Sortir avec moi (Go Out with Me) / 2023 [24 minutes]

 

When it takes 7 individuals to write the scenario of what basically is a standard romantic comedy, you realize almost immediately that a work of only 24 minutes is going to have problems. The two major male leads of this cast, Liam (Baptiste Baudais) and Théo (Armand Le Roux) are two lovely looking boys and seem to be charming—although it is difficult at moments to know whether Baudais’ pouting woodenness is a problem of his acting skills or the script. Besides, everything else works against this movie.

    Both of these boys, freshmen in college, seem to have daddy problems, having come out to their parents and been readily accepted by their mothers, while having to recognize that their previously loving relationships with their fathers will never be restored because of their being gay.

     All right, it hurts. My own father, who I dearly loved, and with whom I never again could restore a relationship after I came out, still long after his death, occasionally hits me with a pang of sorrow. But surely that didn’t stop me at age 18 to seek out gay love and friendship with others; if anything, it lured me on to seek the love I was now missing at home.

      Even if these characters, moreover, can be simply described as not quite being able to get over that major disappointment in life (Liam’s father even shared a loving friendship with him as a cook hovering over their home stove, something almost inconceivable in US kitchens), how could French director Benjamin Thomas and his cadre of female writers imagine that such an issue might be of interest to any gay male who had seen more than 10 short gay films?

   Of course, we root for the boys to find love and get together, but after a while their pouts and placement of their lips on the wrong gender—in the big scene of this little film, Liam discovers Théo in an upstairs bedroom smooching one of their mutual girlfriends—begins to distract a sophisticated viewing audience. From what backwater French province did these clueless kids come? Even Théo, at one point when Liam asks him he he’d like to “go out with him,” suggests that usually a relationship begins with kisses instead of a formal invitation.

     Really, both the boys and girls of this small college should get out a little more. They all seem so perfectly sweet and guileless that it’s difficult to imagine that they’ve even checked out the full resources of their own computers.

   At one point it appears that Théo does not even know how to properly address a research question; and he, in turn, cannot believe that Liam has never seen a Woody Allen movie, a director he appears to absolutely love—despite I should imagine Allen being someone most aware kids these days utterly reject, if not for his now tiresome humor and old-school Jewish plaints, then certainly for his apparent child abuse. Even though these boys together watch the 2017 gay love film, Call Me By Your Name, it appears that the sexy scenes between the actors in that movie which premiered six years earlier and which they never have still not seen, have utterly no effect on their penises or libidos. Both simply long for a father as understanding as Mr. Perlman, who in that film practically dangles his cute young 17-year-old son Elio before the eyes of 24-year-old graduate assistant. These two boys seem to have not even masturbated, let alone touched a peer’s cock. The movie seems to have almost put them to sleep instead of possibly presenting a heart-pang thrill.

     And when Théo finally gets up the nerve to put away his Pierrot mask (yes, this film actually speeds back in time to the days of Les Enfants du Paradis of 1945) and ask Liam if he’ll go out with him, they don’t seek out some private spot to kiss and touch, but join in a beach group dance with the war-paint of the LGBTQ+ community on their cheeks. Even an old-fashioned Sunday School Iowa hayride, in retrospect, seems more fun.

Los Angeles, February 1, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (February 2025).