Zachary Ayotte | Ce qu'on ne raconte pas (What We Don't Tell) / 2020

the man who got everything he wanted

by Douglas Messerli

 

Zachary Ayotte (screenwriter and director) Ce qu'on ne raconte pas (What We Don't Tell) / 2020 [14 minutes]

 

Already in 2018, the then Canadian film student Zachary Ayotte wrote and directed a truly intriguing short film, My Dad Works the Night Shift wherein a young gay boy attracted to a slightly older boy provokes a relationship with him, mostly to challenge his conservative alcoholic father by finding the two boys in bed upon his return from a night of work.

    Two years later finds him writing and directing a work far more than merely provocative, wherein a underage handsome gay boy Jeremy (Félix Paquette, played in the younger version of himself by Philippe Scrive) is basically abused by a young man, or even if not precisely abused, certainly involved in a relationship that ends in great pain to the younger, particularly when the older Max (Jean-Sébastien Courchesne) has abandoned him to become a corporate businessman now living with a woman, Catherine (Aude Mathieu), who is pregnant.

    Jeremy, now a 22-year-old drifter, pays a visit to Max in his high-rise office, demanding a check, which Max may have or may not have been regularly paying him just to keep him quiet about his past. In any event, this time Jeremy leaves without the check, which Max, confused, tears up.

     That act alone is threatening, and somewhat frightening even though we know Max to have been the offender. But when Jeremy visits their apartment, rifling through their yet unpacked bags where is discovers a special shirt once given by Max to Jeremy to wear only during their sex episodes, we realize that Max is still memorializing their former relationship.

      When Catherine returns home, Jeremy cockily greets her, puts his hand to the womb of her baby, and moves into a position of what might be construed as a kiss, instead whispering in her ear: “Watch out for him.” This is interrupted by a scene from years before between the two males, boy and young man decades before in which they seemingly prepare to have sex.

       We are uncertain whether the revenge has just been the fact the Jeremy has put created a deep level of doubt in both of him, it has gone further.

      All we know is that, later that night, we see Max still in the office, not having not yet returned home. When he attempts to call his girlfriend, he gets only her answering machine.

    Jeremy again visits the office, this time Max attempting to engage him yet again in sex, clearly revealing that the straight relationship with which he is involved is just pretense, something that comes with the territory of his job.

     As Max attempts to again make love to the now older boy, Jeremy repeats the phrase Max as told him when he awarded him the shirt, “It’s all right if you like it,” as he simply declares that that was not the purpose of his visit and turns and walks off, providing his former abuser with a kind of vengeance that will surely utterly change his life.

       All is so subtly, quite beautifully, and smartly handled, that I, as one of his commentors wrote, can’t wait to see what Ayotte does in a feature film.

 

Los Angeles, May 19, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (May 2026).