Marc-Antoine Lemire | Pre-Drink / 2017

changes

by Douglas Messerli

 

Marc-Antoine Lemire (screenwriter and director) Pre-Drink / 2017 [23 minutes]

 

This film by Quebecois writer/director Mac-Antoine Lemire is basically without significant dialogue, has no truly significant plot, and involves only two or three actions; so in a sense there is not a great deal to be said about this nonetheless moving film except to commend the directing and acting of Alexe (Pascale Drevillon), a trans woman, and her long-time friend Carl (Alex Trahan).

    In one of Alexe’s first nights out since her sexual transformation, her best friend from childhood, the gay boy Carl has promised to accompany her. He arrives a bit earlier than expected, spotting her in the mirror checking out her breasts.

     He has brought along a bottle of wine which they drink together to celebrate her new identity. In the process, they get a little drunk or at least attest to it as they fall together in bed, suddenly, after all these years, and even as they have just learned from another sharing some of their bed partners at different times, Carl admits to his strange attraction to her and before they even quite realize what is happening, they participate in sex, a lovely kind of giggly sex but also a deep and fulfilling sexual bonding.

     A telephone call from their friends remind them that they were on their way to the bar, and in order perhaps to simply cover over any embarrassment that either of them might have over the incident, turns back into the kind of rambunctious boy, a role Carl often plays, as he argues they both find the special man of their dreams.

     But Alexe is slow in restoring her face, lipstick, etc, and we can see that privately she perhaps already has put Carl into that possible role. Has she been in love with him all the years they have been together. The wan smile that covers over a sort of inner hurt says everything. Yet both know they have long been too close—like brother and sister, and before that two brothers—to ever imagine an adult relationship together. Yet the movie suggests that for Alexe, at least, such a relationship would be her dream.

     Lemire has bathed their sexual experiences in rather garish colors, reds and greens, which both imply a kind of porno affair while at the same time clearly dramatizing the meaning of their momentary coupling. But Carl, we recognize is still a boy, while Alexe is now a real woman.

 

Los Angeles, July 11, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (July 2026)