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).
