by Douglas Messerli
Olivier Peyon, Vincent Poymiro, Arthur Cahn, and Cécilia Rouaud
(screenplay, based on the fiction by Philippe Besson), Olivier
Peyon (director) Arrête avec tes mensonges (Lie with Me) / 2022
Stéphane can’t quite comprehend why he was invited as
the celebrity guest to the annual gathering of cognac lovers, particularly
since he hated visiting the facility as a child and does not drink; but he has
dutifully written a short story and is almost willing to bear with the
overwhelming memories, good and bad, of growing up in the beautifully
landscaped but deadly conservative world he knew as a boy of 17. He’s even
committed to presenting the closing speech to the event, if he can ever find
the time to write it and if the overwhelming memories that threaten to devour
him can stop long enough so that he can print out some drivel about the
beautiful countryside and its people.
Stéphane is attracted to or, at least, intrigued by the young Lucas, who
serves the cognac company as their San Francisco liaison and spends much of his
time in the film acting as tour guide for a group of Americans who have
evidently paid plenty to be drowned in cognac and other mixed cocktails before
toured taken into the dank cellars to be lectured on the ancient casks.
Almost immediately after arriving, Stéphane discovers that the young
Lucas is his dead lover’s son, and from that moment on he attempts to spend
every free moment in the company of the handsome young man, who seems just as
interested in Stéphane for possibly providing more insights into a father who
having recently died, had refused to discuss his private life, remaining aloof
from his own family, ending in his wife leaving for Spain and his son feeling
that he had never come to really know his father.
Although Lucas shows up to Stéphane’s reading at the village bookstore,
he claims to never have actually read the books and merely seems to want
several autographs for his tourist friends.
Much of the first half of the film, indeed, shifts back and forth in
scenes between Lucas’ father at 17 with Stéphane as a young man (performed by
Jérémy Gillet)—as the older Belcourt relives the absolute joy of being suddenly
chosen by Thomas to have sex and the frustration that he encounters when they
are not alone together and the popular Thomas pretends a heterosexual life to
all others—and the older man’s attempts to get closer to Thomas’ son.
Thomas realizes, unlike his young lover, the socio-economic, religious,
and political reasons why their deep love cannot be shared with others in the
Cognac region, leaving Stéphane desperately in love with someone with whom
could never be convinced to join him in his new life. For much of the rest of
Stéphane’s adult life he has rewritten his childhood love story, sometimes
changing the characters to heterosexuals, and other times transforming his
childhood self to an unsatisfied woman; but more recently he has found himself
unable to move forward, all of his other adult gay relationships also having
failed.
But even more problematic is the older Belcourt’s fascination with
Lucas. Things grow even more complex for organizer Gaëlle—herself, it is
hinted, being a lesbian who having grown up in Cognac has left only to return
home, forcing the community to accept her on her own terms. When Stéphane
overhears the information that Lucas has in fact long been a huge fan of his
fiction and was the one who recommended him to the head of the company to
invite him back as a celebrity guest, things grow even more complex.
Eventually, Lucas reveals that his father’s death was suicide, an event
that occurred after a visit to his secret adult lover, a farmer in a nearby
region; moreover, he learns that his father Thomas, had spoken reverently of
Stéphane and his writing all throughout his life, but never permitted Lucas him
to read the books, while carefully displaying them in his library, contending
they were adult material.
While attending university, Lucas finally read the books, making the
connections, and verifying his suspicious about his father through his private
belongings uncovered after his death, which included a good-bye letter from the
young Stéphane.
Taking him back to the family farm, Lucas reveals to Stéphane the world
from which his childhood lover believed he could never escape, and realizes
that Thomas’ love, nonetheless, had flourished even in his absence, just as had
for Thomas. The lies they both maintained created “closed off” words of
suffering and nostalgia for them and, in Thomas’ case, even for his family.
Realizing how both men have lived through their lies and mistaken
notions of reality, Stéphane turns his Testimonial
speech from yet another rambling lie about the beauties of the region into an
extemporaneous speech about how his friend, although not leaving a suicide
note, had invited his own intelligent son to figure out the riddle of his life,
knowing that he would read Belcourt’s books and eventually come upon the saved
artifacts revealing their childhood lives. Truth has finally prevailed after
all, and the reasons, given Thomas’ generational viewpoint, are made evident.
His love for Stéphane had been maintained in secret just as Stéphane’s love for
Thomas had been kept mysteriously alive only through his coded fictions.
I
am, however, not truly convinced by his, once more vaguely concealed
references. Are the attendees aware of how personal his comments truly are, and
if so, can they be fully moved by something they know truly nothing about. The
speech seems, if nothing else, a kind a drunken embarrassment for a writer
finally admitting the reasons for his sudden inability to go on writing.
All the viewer of this film can say of their behavior, alas, is “what a
waste!.” All those empty years lived out with the ridiculous notions of what
the community believed and might say, even after things had changed, when
someone like Gaëlle could return and stubbornly retain her identity.
The reviewer for L'Indépendant, Oisin McGilloway, however, had a far more positive reaction to the
film’s ending:
“By the end, however, all is resolved: Stéphane and Lucas get over their
grief together, culminating in a speech that the former gives at a dinner,
revealing all to his friends and adoring fans. What is a complicated, emotional
affair, brought to life by Peyon’s weaving of the past and the present with
intimate moments that connect Stéphane to his past, is brought to a satisfying
finale, where the pair are able to accept their loss.”
As
fucked up as his life has been, nothing has been hinted in this movie about
Lucas being gay. We simply don’t know anything about his sexuality. He lives,
however, in San Francisco and has become obsessed with Belcourt’s fictions and
his father’s private life. Nowhere in this work does he demonstrate any
interest in a woman. Perhaps he needed the truth simply so that he might better
understand the way life was in a world which believed in a love that could be
openly spoken. But then, we have to wonder, why was the director Olivier Peyon
been terribly discreet about Lucas’ love-life? Let’s hope that he has someone
with whom to toast cognac glasses and to cuddle up to in his pricey North Beach
studio apartment.
Los Angeles, October 26, 2023
Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog
(October 2023).
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