Arnault Labarrone | Petite faiblesse (Soft Spot, aka Little Weakness) / 2005

a last gasp

by Douglas Messerli

 

Arnault Labarrone (screenwriter and director) Petite faiblesse (Soft Spot, aka Little Weakness) / 2005 [18 minutes]

 

Although there are perhaps not enough examples to describe it as a genre, there seems almost to be a sub-genre or perhaps a small collection of films in which, while a wife is pregnant, young men seek out other males with whom to have sex. Perhaps being warned against having sex with a pregnant wife, the find release in their own sex so not to appear as cheating on their spouses. Or perhaps they feel that this may be their very last chance to explore other sexualities.

     In this case, a handsome young Frenchman, Marc (Anthony Hallot) finds a young Polish man, Dimitry (Grégory Granier) is willing to do anything the married man asks of him. Presumably he’s paid for his efforts, but he too may just be enjoying his sexuality in a kinky manner.

     As Marc’s wife, Marion (Florence Loiret Calle) now many months pregnant begins to paint the room purple in their apartment which they have selected for the child, Marc begins his sexual explorations, first meeting with Dimitry in a hotel room where he awaits him completely naked in position to enjoy a truly raw doggy fuck.

     Curious in regard to Marc’s late nights and disappearances, she opens his computer only to discover the texts he has been sending to Dimitry outlining his specific instructions of their meet-ups.

     At first, she not so much disgusted as intrigued, imagining her own body undergoing the same sexual aggressions in which Marc has begun to engage.

     The second meet-up is far more detailed, describing the precise place in a deserted parking structure where he hopes to be bound, gagged, and beaten up by leather thugs. And as Marion imagines his own pain and sexual ecstasy, she spills the can of purple paint, rolling on the floor in a kind of disgusted fantasy—and perhaps in a brief salute to Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow Up—of being herself redefined by the purple paint in which her body wallows. She showers away her new skin, as does Marc shower away the blood upon his return.

    The beating has evidently been far more serious than he has expected, Marc returning severely bruised and in pain, explaining, in tears, that he has been beaten up by some blokes.

     But this time, as she begins to sew on the buttons broken off his shirt, she becomes angry for his fantasies and lies, and momentary takes up the needle, ready to plunge it into her belly.

     As he lies sleeping, however, she enters his study and writes directly to Dimitry, suggesting that he should come to their apartment and have sex with her as she lies in bed with her husband, in part, as she explains when Marc awakens to find Dimitry straddled over his wife, so that he will not have to choose between her and Dimitry, able to have both simultaneously.

     But Marc is shocked, furious that Dimitry has evidently decided by himself to change the rules; while gradually coming to perceive that it was his own wife who had written to him.

     Angry with the rebuke, Dimitry storms out, Marc chasing after him, but at the door realizing he has now lost his alternative fantasy world.

    Distraught, Marion again begins to pound her belly as if attempting to abort the child, asking herself and Marc how will they now be able to write the fable of their own lives, how will they create the story of their own secret desires. Stopping her from doing any further harm, he explains that the fable lies in her belly.

     It is clear that he has now accepted the fact that any new experiences they have been seeking now exists in the life of their soon-to-be-born child.

     This work, accordingly somehow combines illicit and kinky sex with a love story between the married couple. But it is clear they will both have some explaining to do—at least to themselves if not to one another—what lay behind their searches for something else, what dissatisfactions with their own lives were they trying fulfill in the experiments outside of their relationship? And will they both later regret that they have not been fully able to explore those other worlds?

 

Los Angeles, January 7, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (January 2026).