Anthony Doncque | 1992 / 2016

learning how to love

by Douglas Messerli

 

Anthony Doncque (screenwriter and director) 1992 / 2016 [25 minutes]

 

In this French film from 2016, 17-year-old Martin (Louis Duneton) has received a new Hi-8 camcorder and is taking pictures of everything. What he doesn’t catch on film is the daily shake-down by school bullies who demand money each morning. On this particular morning, they beat him even after collecting what was to have been used for groceries on his way from school. He’s found by another student passed out on the ground, and wakes up in the school infirmary, like many victims, fearful of providing information about the beating. The school monitor, 23-year-old Dominique (Matthieu Dessertine) walks him home.

     Dominique is hoping to become a history professor, but is still fearful about passing the test, meanwhile working for money to pay for his education. Reaching his room, Dominique is impressed by Martin’s camera, picking it up for a look, Martin skittishly explaining how it works; but the two have to be quiet since Martin’s father (Alain Beigel) works nights and is sleeping. Dominique says goodbye and heads back to school, but we can already see that the young boy is intrigued by his older protector.

     When his father later awakens and finds that his son as brought nothing home, he chastises him, Martin simply replying that he forgot. Later, after his father has left for work, we see Martin jacking off to some of the boys playing soccer of whom he has filmed on his camcorder—the recording perhaps being related to the reason why he’s been beaten earlier that morning.

     The next day we watch Dominique at work at the school, rousting some students at the pay phone booth who have been hanging out there too long, and later Martin carefully observing him as Dominque helps in the school library.

     Martin checks out two rather controversial, gay-oriented books, Cyril Collard’s Savage Nights, Stefan Zweig’s Confusion of Feelings, and Yuko Mishima’s Forbidden Colors, the first two made into films reviewed in my queer film volumes.*

     After asking if he feels better, Dominique queries whether the books are on the school curriculum, Martin answering, no, they’re just for his own reading.

     One cannot imagine such books even being in a school library in the US, let alone a young school monitor knowing quite clearly what reading such books indicates, that the reader is clearly gay.

     Later in the day, after locking up, we see Dominique returning to his car. Martin follows and, without asking, opens the door and gets in, the elder boy telling him it was part of his job to take him home the other day, but now he is on his own time, making it clear that he is not the boy’s chauffeur, but also obviously attempting to mitigate what he recognizes is a sexual issue.

     How much do you make, Martin enquires, Dominique answering 3,500 francs, part time.

     I’ve got 150 francs you can have, responds the boy. He quickly puts his hand on Dominique’s thigh. The elder, immediately opening up the door and demanding that Martin “Scram. Get out!”

     He angrily drives off, as Martin trods home alone, downhearted for the clear rejection.

     Yet soon after, Dominique drives past the boy and stops, opening the car door for him to get in.

     “Why did you change your mind?” the boy asks.

    In the very next scene, we see Martin sitting on the couch, full dressed, while Dominique has stripped to his underpants. He takes off his shirt and faces the boy, wondering what it is that he wants. “To play the woman. I sometimes to it like that with my girl.”

  He gently slaps the boy's face, Martin protesting. “Blow me then.” Martin eagerly pulls down Dominque’s shorts and moves into position, but cannot proceed. “Sorry, I didn’t think it was like that.”

     Clearly, the boy wants love without fully comprehending what a demand for sex entails.

     Dominique sits down on the couch with him, asking “How did you think it was?”

     “Not like that.”

     Soon after we see Martin watching a rock dance number on the TV, Dominque smoking a cigarette nearby. Martin moves toward him and kisses him, Dominique this time responding, asking the boy if he is sure that this is what he truly wants.

     A few minutes later we watch as Dominique puts on a condom, kisses the boy’s breast, telling him to put some cream on himself so that bruises might go away, and gently proceeds to the fuck the student, presumably Martin’s first experience with sexual intercourse. If it is somewhat painful, it is also pleasant, the two panting together in rhythm as the elder comes. Martin kisses Dominque.

     And soon after, as we observe Dominique asleep, we see Martin with his camera filming the man’s entire nude body as if he were an obsessive voyeur, perhaps not even knowing what his attempt to get the entire experience on film really means. In his innocence, it is perhaps just for later, an opportunity for later masturbation. Or is it something else, a desire to hold on to the experience, perhaps one of the first truly eventful experiences in his young life, one already shaped by media.

     As Martin later cleans up the cigarette butts and other matter, Dominque comes out of the shower, turns off the radio Martin has put on, and demands he listen: tomorrow he doesn’t know him and he must walk past him.

     Why don’t you kids just act your age, he wonders.

     How do kids my age act? asks Martin.

   “They don’t spend their days filming people. They don’t follow guys down hallways. They go clubbing. Have fun.”

     “I can’t. It hurts my ears.”

     “You don’t party. You don’t smoke. You’re boring.”

     Martin openly smiles. “That’s right.”

     “What time does your dad get in?”

     “7:30.”

     “We’ve got two hours then,” he shifts his tone as he picks up Martin and hugs him pulling him off to the bedroom.

      The next day in French language studies, the professor (Isabelle Vossart) is asking her pupils to read from Baudelaire—again an unthinkable phenomenon in US high schools where perhaps even reading Poe or Whitman out loud in the classroom might be seen today as risky.

       Dominique knocks on the classroom door, announcing to the teacher that the principal wants to see Martin Bouvard.

        Only a few steps later, Dominique madly grabs him and kisses him in the hallway, Martin quickly providing him a blow job.

        At home, Martin’s father takes up his son’s camcorder, turns on the TV set, and watches the scenes he has filmed.

      He is waiting at the kitchen table, dragging on cigarette when the boy returns home, demanding immediately to see him. He has discovered a remnant of a joint, and demands to know if his son is on drugs.

        Martin simply replies, no, it is not his.

      The father angrily opens the refrigerator, again showing him that it is empty and wondering what Martin’s problem is that he cannot responsibly shop for the two of them.

        Over the next few scenes we see the father driving Martin to his job with him. He evidently works as a newspaper deliverer, as he grabs up several large bundles of papers and putting them in the back of his small truck before delivering them up to various small tobacco shop sand newspaper stands. Together they have a morning coffee, where the father ponders that it seems to be good that they have spent some time together, Martin agreeing. “Now you’ve seen what it is like. You can come work with me on school holidays.” Perhaps he can make some extra pocket money, he suggests. These are questions, not challenges or commands, a gentle reaching out to get to know his son better, not at all a reprimand for the secrets he has uncovered about the boy.

        “You know I was once your age, too. We’ve all messed up in our own way. But with everything on TV, watch out. Promise me you’ll be careful.”

       Martin looks at his father carefully, studying him for a moment, replying in what appears to be full honesty and comprehension: “I promise.”

       They smile at one another. As they drive back home, Martin takes out his camera. He finally perceives his father as someone of interest to be filmed.

        This may be one of the most beautiful and forgiving gay coming out films I have ever seen, a young 17-year old learning the joys of gay sex with a handsome, slightly older and eager mentor and a father who not only accepts his son for whom he is but appropriately warns him of the influence of media upon his life.

        I should add that the age of consent currently in France is 16 with sex permissible through consent with an older person as long is that person is not in a position of authority wherein he can control or abuse the younger. In 1992, I believe, the age was 15. Although Dominique works at the school, he has no power over the younger boy such as a teacher or school administrator might and has no control over his future. Moreover, he has asked for the boy’s consent. So Dominque’s responses to the younger boy’s sexual advances cannot be described as pedophilia or any manner of illegal behavior.

      If only the US had such logical and open attitudes toward sexuality as this film argues for. We instead, mentally and, and least symbolically, physically imprison our youths, particularly LGBTQ children, until a magical age upon which they are supposedly released for sexual activity without any intellectual or often physical understanding of the joys and dangers of such acts. Yet given the location of this film’s events in the past of 1992, perhaps director Anthony Doncque is hinting that such open views no longer exist in France either.

 

*Savage Nights (Les Nuits fauves) was made into a film by Cyril Collard in 1992; Confused Feelings (La Confusion des sentiments) was directed for French television by Étienne Périer in 1981.

 

Los Angeles, December 1, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (December 2025).