Fabíen Cavacas and Camille Melvill | Passer les Champs (Beyond the Fields) / 2015

howling with closed mouths

by Douglas Messerli

 

Fabíen Cavacas and Camille Melvill (screenwriters and directors) Passer les Champs (Beyond the Fields) / 2015 [30 minutes]

 

After writing the essay about the film On the Same Team (2014) I came upon another film just a few days later by French directors Fabíen Cavacas and Camille Melvill that was so similar in its thematic—particularly since that film, Passer les Champs (Beyond the Fields), also related to the consideration of gay brothers and gay sports that I had also just been exploring—that I was almost startled by its relationship to the piece I had just titled “Beyond the Hills.”

     This work also contained a young man involved in amateur sports, in this case soccer, who had stayed at home apparently out of a sense of stasis. He seems unmotivated even to pursue the job his parents have hinted that a friend is willing to offer him, refusing to even make the call. Indeed, except for his younger brother Théo (Pierre Prieur), Lucas (Maxime Taffanel) seems to shun women and have surly relationships with his parents and his soccer friends, the latter for whom he may soon serve as their coach.

      Like Emanuel of the other film, Lucas seems trapped in the community in which he lives, and bitter about that fact. But at least the Argentinian rugby player in On the Same Team has a local friend with whom he engages in sex. Lucas, who appears to be heterosexual has no apparent girlfriend and even his seeming soccer buddy Nathan (Théo Pittaluga) irritates him, particularly when he shows interest in befriending Théo.

      We perceive this not as a form of jealousy, but a fear of sorts that his brother may be hurt through their friendship, since Théo is openly gay—only to his brother. And Lucas evidently has assumed the role of his protector, despite the fact that in the small farming village in which they reside there seems to be no one to protect him from. As Théo confirms, there are no “faggots” in his class, which explains why he has been chatting online with an older man, who he wants to meet when the man comes to town on business, a meet-up which Lucas warns him may be dangerous.

      Thus, it appears that Cavacas and Melvill have set us up for a situation very similar to the one I wrote about in the Norwegian film of 2003, Precious Moments, about a young gay man whose having sex with an older man ends in his partner’s arrest—although the sexual age of consent in France is 15, and even if Théo, since he’s still attending school, is clearly not the age he claims to be when he meets the stranger, 20, he is certainly of legal age.

      But before that, this far too subtle tale—almost as if afraid, like its characters, to tell its own story—seemingly first takes us down a kind of dead end, which perhaps clarifies both Théo’s and Lucas’ long silences and apparent frustrations.

      The morning after the brothers’ discussion Théo drops his Lucas off at soccer practice, meeting briefly with Nathan, to whom the boy has loaned a book to read, Allen Ginsberg’s Howl. Nathan, in turn, invites Théo to a team party they are planning for that evening, telling the younger boy that he would particularly like to have him attend.

      It is after that meeting, moreover, when Lucas becomes even more incensed about Nathan and, by the end of the day, decides against even attending the party which his teammates are throwing.

Théo does attend, clearly out of place since most of the players are entertaining their girlfriends, including Nathan. But near the end of the evening, sitting alone, Théo is joined by Nathan, telling his girlfriend that he’ll catch up with her. There is no real conversation between the two, but when Théo asks Nathan if he wants to go somewhere, Nathan stating that he can’t—beholden as he is to her girlfriend of 3 months—we can only presume that something sexual has been going on between the two, something in the nature of Emanuel and Tano in Vilaró Nadal’s film.

      The only alternative for Théo is to meet up with the stranger in the hotel.

     From the moment the boy encounters and we witness the older man on the phone with his wife, we recognize that this is not a good situation, particularly when the elder orders Théo to strip and not “play around” like a kid. We never discover precisely what does happen. The directors only show us a sense of rising tension: Lucas at home in bed—reading, incidentally, Ginsberg’s Howl—obviously worrying about the time and the whereabouts of his brother. And, finally, a call from Théo, who having motorbiked to the hotel, is now asking for Lucas to pick him up.

     What has happened in that room is never explained; but we do observe a cut on Théo’s lip and can only suspect that the boy got cold feet and attempted to leave, infuriating the older man. The boy refuses to say anything about the event. Théo simply asks can they stop somewhere before they return home. There is no other place, we realize, in this village. They stop at the soccer field, where one drunken survivor of the party lies like a dead man in the middle of the open space.

     The brothers, sitting together, stare out over the fields around them, Théo suddenly blurting out a question that might have been in our minds as well: “Why don’t we leave?”

 

      Lucas’ answer is as enigmatic as his personality has been throughout the entire film: “You’ll leave. But I’m staying here.”

      In coming out to his brother and in his obvious search for sexual gratification the younger brother has already made clear that he is no longer able to survive in the emptiness of the small village in which the brothers live. But Lucas, apparently, still unable to define his own sexuality or to even comprehend his entry into adulthood, seems permanently infantilized like so many young males who settle down with the first woman they meet and hang on by a thread through the rest of their lives without waking up to who they are or might have been. Like Emanuel’s sister, Lucas will be defined by staying behind.

 

Los Angeles, June 27, 2021

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog and World Cinema Review (June 2021).