Zachary Ayotte | Mon père travaille de nuit (My Dad Works the Night Shift) / 2018

the choir boy who only pretends to sing

by Douglas Messerli

 

Zachary Ayotte (screenwriter and director) Mon père travaille de nuit (My Dad Works the Night Shift) / 2018 [14 minutes]

 

The cute 14-year-old Canadian-French speaking choir boy of Zachary Ayotte’s short film has a father (François Trudel) who works the night shift, which means, quite obviously, that this school boy sees very little of his dad, except for at the dinner table and weekends. In short, it is quite clear that Félix (Victor Boudreault) lacks the parental attention upon which nearly any young boy, for better or worse, needs for love and guidance; there is no mother in his home.

    Moreover, this young boy, in his attraction to an older boy, Vincent (Antoine L'Écuyerat) he observes the swimming pool near his school, is beginning to realize he is gay. And Vincent, perceiving the attentions of the schoolboy, is not at all shy about encouraging something that goes beyond the young male gaze. At first he merely queries the kid about his attraction, stuffing his swimming trucks into his face and awarding them as a prize, inside of which his written his erect cock size, 7 inches.

    Félix, like many young boys, moreover, knows his power over older men, not only how to attract a boy like Vincent, whom almost taunts through his pretended innocence in the locker room, but how to draw the attention of his own highly conservative father. At first the father simply wonders whether his son must always wear the small diamond stud in his ear, Félix arguing that if he removes it, the hole will close up.

     Soon after, the boy casually asks how much is 7-inches, his father, although curious about the question, using his hands to demonstrate.

     But Félix also leaves the swimming trunks, with its secret declaration, openly on his bed, along with his cellphone featuring a picture of Vincent, which in a home of no locked rooms his father inevitably discovers, confronting him about the matter before he heads off to work.

     “I don’t need to tell you everything…,” Félix provocatively responds to his father’s question of “What’s going on when I’m not here?” His son remains silent, and the father stands, screaming out that he does, in fact, need to explain when he lives under his roof!

    The boy stands still, pretending obeisance just as he pretends to join the others with his voice in the church choir. The father asks “How old is this boy?”

     But a moment later Félix truly taunts the older man: “You know what dad? Your seven inches,” he turns toward the hall to his bedroom, “kinda looked more like five.”

     The father has no comeback and leaves for work without any violence. And when he returns home near morning, he is even ready to apologize for his temper.

     In the meantime, however, Félix has texted Vincent, and the older boy is now lying beside him in his bed, presumably after a night of sexual delight, hears the father’s return, getting out of bed and quickly dressing.

     The father approaches his son’s room, opening the door to repent his anger.

     We don’t see the apparently violent fit that followed. We see photos upon the floor, their glass frames in splinters, we see the furniture overturned, a chaos of what used to be a home, in the very midst of which sits a seemingly satisfied son.

     We can only wonder what happened to Vincent and pray that he got away before the worst of the hurricane—although his purposeful seduction of an underage boy might draw the ire of many viewers. Canada, however, has “close-in-age exemption,” wherein youths of 14 or 15 may consent to sexual activity with those of five years older, which probably applies to Vincent, who, it is established early in the film, remembers Félix from his elementary school days.

     The question remains, however, why has Félix so blatantly arranged to have his father discover them in bed together?

 

     I have already suggested that he wanted the attention of his father. But surely another reason is so that he will not have to “come out” to a conservative alcoholic. Had Félix attempted to verbally reveal that he was gay, the father would have surely seen to it that dire limitations would be put upon his son’s life or that he would be kicked out of his home. This way, the boy has revealed the truth to his father at a moment that the father’s ire surely was directed at the individual such a macho conservative would see as the perpetrator, the older seducer Vincent. And the result of his mad rampage will now haunt the father in any further dealings with his son. He has betrayed his own uncontrollable rage, and Félix now has the upper hand. What might have simply been imagined has already occurred, and the father must now deal with a son who is no longer a virgin choirboy he might hope to protect. And if he did actually hurt Vincent, it is he who be carted off the jail or even prison.

     We can only suspect that Félix will now have a freedom that before was unimaginable. Unlike the earring in his ear, any attempt at removal of the incident will not heal the hole. The boy has gotten what he wanted: attention and freedom in one fell swoop.

     Blake was right, innocence, even when pretended, can truly be evil.

 

Los Angeles, August 28, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (August 2025).