Théo Gosselin, and Lucas Hauchard and others | Nevada / 2020

old friends

by Douglas Messerli

 

Thibault Lévêque (screenwriter) Théo Gosselin, and Lucas Hauchard and others (directors) Nevada / 2020 [20 minutes]

 

Nevada is not so much a coherent movie as it is a series of images of several down-and-out friends, mostly from Normandy in France who perform as a mix of drifters and tourists, which the close-knit cast and crew mostly are. The film begins with a seasoned drifter, Emmanuel Rosario, and quickly drops him for almost the entire remainder of the film, as it focuses on the two French gay boys, Victor (Victor Mieusement) and Matt (Matthieu Brochec) who have been lured to the desert outpost of Nevada—most of it shot in the former mining town of Ely—by another French friend, Thibault (Thibault Lévêque), who is definitely on the skids. 

     He has evidently encouraged the two of them to come to help him work on the construction of a new motel, but after one night in a town that consists of a casino, some cheap motels, a strip club and a diner or two, they receive a note from Thibault explaining that the job has been a lie, and he had just needed there to help save him.

     We don’t know precisely what his position is in relationship to them, possibly a former lover in a kind of polysexual friendship or simply a long-time friend; but as Victor and Matt, drunk of their minds, wrestle, attempt to cut their hair, and fall into sex back in their motel room on this cold, snowy night, Thibault almost freezes in the cold, the two finding him outside their motel room door the next morning.

      They give him a hot bath and warm him up under blankets as cuddle up to him in order to save his life.

     Victor rises and runs off, obviously with a strong feelings of betrayal and confusion, Matt chasing after. Emmanuel arrives in town, while Victor discovers that, in fact, there actually are jobs open for construction, hitching a ride with his two friends in the back of a pickup truck driver by a woman. They stop to pick up Emmanuel, also hitch-hiking, and presumably all four will find work wherever they headed.

      As I mentioned, however, it isn’t the rather purposeless plot that matters. As Anaïs Viand observes in the on-line magazine Fishbite: “A group of friends, idyllic landscape, a reflection on the American dream…. And all this in 20 minutes.”

     Lévêque is a little more specific: “Nevada is the story of an unreliable guy in great emotional distress who calls two of his friends to join him in the USA, under the pretext of motel renovations. A false plan. Because once there, the misfortunes follow one another. Then begins an initiatory journey around friendship, love, trust, and reconciliation."

     This is Kerouac territory, without a full “on the road” experience.

 

Los Angeles, December 6, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (December 2025).