into the woods
by Douglas Messerli (scenario and director) Boy Oh Boy / 2018 [5 minutes] [music video]
In this French music video featuring
Sufjan Stevens’s “Visions of Gideon,” a group of male and female lovelies in
their 20s (Joss Berlioux, Alexandre Bouyer, Clara Cisse, Louis Cristiani, Sara
Etienne, Lucia Passaniti, and Samba Peul) meet up at a camping overnight trip
in woods near a lake, as in most such picture-postcard portrayals leaping into
the water, giggling, and making out with each other beside a crackling bonfire.
The girls shake their hair with absolute pleasure as the boys caress their shoulders.
But these days, you know, things aren’t always what they seem to be. Two
of the women began a deep kissing event in the middle of their surrounding male
friends. At one moment a heavily tatted dude (Bouyer) suddenly stands and
challenges the handsome Joss Berlioux as if he has been flirting with his girl.
But in the midst of their violent encounter, poised over the prone body, he
kisses his victim, and they can soon be seen from a distance having sex in a
car before they return to the group.
The rest of the group, having decided to go skinny dipping in the lake,
don’t even miss them. And in the morning Berlioux’s girlfriend comes up behind
him, tickling his neck and a slightly brooding Bouyer staring out over the
lake, turns back to quickly give his friend a quick look—whether of joyful
remembrance or disdain cannot be determined.
Whether or not anything might change in the sexual dynamics of this
group, or whether it will simply be chalked up to a few too many beers is
undetermined. Certainly, no one at this gathering gives much deep thought to
anything but their beauty and momentary urges.
This work is interesting to queer film
audiences only in how deeply entrenched LGBTQ life as become even in the
musical video world, the culmination of which we can observe in the works of
Lil Nas X.
Los Angeles, September 23, 2022
Reprinted from World Cinema
Review (September 2022).
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