Stéphane Giusti | L'Homme que j'aime (The Man I Love) / 1997, released as a film in 2001

the lifeguard

by Douglas Messerli

 

Stéphane Giusti (screenwriter and director) L'Homme que j'aime (The Man I Love) / 1997, released as a film in 2001

 

Despite some of the groundbreaking TV fare of the 1980s on AIDS—the British television film on a simultaneous son and father outing in The Language of Cranes (1991) and the exploration of various viewpoints of LGBTQ sex on the Canadian TV program gathered by Nik Sheehan in Symposium: The Ladder of Love (1996)—it is utterly unimaginable that any English-language TV broadcasting company of the day might have produced the French TV comedy-drama L'Homme que j'aime (The Man I  Love) (1997), directed by Stéphane Giusti.

       Unlike most public entertainment and news services which cautiously dip their toes in a narrow and focused aspect of life when it comes to anything even faintly concerning LGBTQ issues, this film fully dives in with its embracement of the subject of AIDS at a time when the medical community was pretending that all had been resolved, as well as telling a coming out story—one of the first of what I have describe as the B variant that rose to prominence the following year--along with various other aspects of gay life including, surprisingly, even the seldom-explored territory of hearing-and speaking-impaired gay individuals who are further closeted and segregated within an already outsider community. It even takes us inside a mixed gay bar, introducing us to several gay obsessions, including a drag artist who sings by signing.

       All of these themes are intertwined, moreover, around the central character, Lucas (Jean-Michel Portal) who is a totally brash, outspoken, selfish, and to a certain degree, even unlikeable fellow, who a less generous reviewer might also describe as being engaged throughout much of this movie with stalking a handsome heterosexual man in order to convert him into his gay lover. On top of this, Lucas is HIV positive and is near death from AIDS.

       Even if a US writer had been nervy and crazy enough to have written such a script and by a strange quirk of fate had found a producer willing to undertake the project, and the TV executives had inexplicably been convinced that such a work were worthy of public attention, US audiences would surely have been so severely puzzled and, having suffered thoroughly over the moral implications of the work, that their shrieks of outrage would still be ringing in our ears.

        I have no idea how this work was received in France, but nearly all the characters in this cinematic narrative appear to accept the sexuality and the behavior of its central gay and questioning heterosexual couple that it appears to be hardly worth talking about. Although France did not permit same-sex marriage until 2013 (the same year that it became possible for gay and lesbians to marry in the US and Britain), and even then allowed such marriages only to be celebrated as civil ceremonies, Lucas and his eventually-convinced lover Martin (Marcial Di Fonzo Bo) are married in a church by a priest sixteen years earlier. Perhaps we should simply describe this work as a kind of cultural fantasy, which evidently the French public felt ready to embrace as opposed to the reality.

      In fact, one might describe the work, although it is not at all framed within such a narrative structure, as a dream of a dying man.

       Lucas has just been hired as a pool monitor of an Olympic-sized indoor pool, and even as he dresses for the job, irritates the resident swimming teacher/lifesaver, the hunky, good-looking Martin by endlessly whistling a version of the song of the calvary of the Republic Guard. Immediately upon being introduced to one another by the pool’s owner, Martin begins a series of stunningly perfect high dives, Lucas reporting they will close in fifteen minutes, with Martin reacting by insisting the new pool monitor will simply have to wait until he finishes his weekly dive practice.              

      Angry over the surly lifeguard’s sense of privilege, Lucas insists he will not wait another hour, dumping Martin’s street clothes into the pool. Outraged over the act, Martin is now also without clothes to even get home. The new man quickly attempts to resolve the situation, however, by offering him one of his own shirts and a pair of pants which he insists he’s outgrown and should fit Martin perfectly. 

      Even more unexpectedly, Lucas follows Martin home—again to the total irritation of the lifeguard—attempting to make friends with him. If nothing else, we realize that Martin apparently has no sense of humor and is uncomfortable with speaking, while Lucas appears to be somewhat insanely intrusive. If, as Lucas proclaims, he has taken a liking to Martin and sees him as the perfect boyfriend, he has clearly chosen the wrong person, so it appears, for Martin appears to be a sulky hermit.

      Arriving home, Martin discovers that in all the shifts of his wardrobe he has forgotten his keys. But even though he eventually gets into his apartment, Lucas shows up with the forgotten keys, demanding just a glass ov water, but in the process inspecting the other’s entire apartment, including his library which includes a book on learning how to sign, which intrigues Lucas since, he explains, he has learned the language of the deaf himself simply because his first lover was deaf.

      Before Martin can even get rid of the unwanted intruder, the lifeguard’s girlfriend enters, delighted with Lucas’ appearance since she has never before met one of Martin's fellow workers—it is she who apparently works with deaf children—and going so far as to invite him to join them for a restaurant dinner they have planned, even though Martin reminds her that he has made the reservation for only two.

       So begins the series of Lucas’ direct assaults on the man of his dreams, showing up again and again in his nemesis’ life so often that finally he begins to wear down Martin’s well-studied resistance.

     Unfortunately, Giusti, having written a truly witty script for Lucas, has not fully developed the obviously sexually and somewhat bitter young beauty Martin. And we have no real evidence of what might be the long-fought doubts about his own sexuality. We have merely hints, and the recognition that in his relationship with Lise (Mathilde Seigner) she is clearly the more dominant and assured, and that perhaps she has manipulated him into their current living situation.

      The only other thing we discover that helps to explain matters is that Martin's father is doctor, in fact, Lucas’ doctor, who has had little time throughout his life for his son. And accordingly, in seeking a replacement for a father, perhaps Martin has sought out relationships in which the other is in control.

     If nothing else, Lucas, released by any of the conventions of ordinary behavior by his recognition that he is near death, and given his seemingly long experience with relationships and his need for one last lover before he dies, quickly comes to control Martin’s life. Manipulating him through Martin's own alterations of pure adoration and outrage over his friend’s growing interest in him, particularly when he discovers through his father about Lucas’ medical condition, the clever Lucas, now noticing the increasing interest and fascination that Martin has gradually developed about him, is able to even predict when his "prey" will finally spend the first night in bed with him, even though neither can imagine themselves having sex.

       Understandably, the situation between Lise and Martin decays as, in his attempt to figure out what his growing feelings for Martin are all about, the lifeguard's silences grow longer and longer. He goes missing for long periods of time, voyeuristically observing Lucas just as Lucas had previously almost stalked him. He takes two-hour baths, and you can immediately see in Lise’s face that their sex life is no longer fulfilling.

     Accordingly, the film—although gloriously rich in its visual images during this “silent” part of the work—suffers for its descent into Martin's long silent funks, which would be disastrous were it not for Jacques Bouquin’s visually striking cinematography and composer Lazare Boghossian’s music. The visual elements alone help to tell the story. In the first photograph above we witness the sense of extreme danger Martin is feeling through the image of the beautifully lit and decorated bridge upon which he wanders dangerously close to the edge. And in the second photo, shortly after one of his long baths, we observe the double being that Martin has become, now torn between the internalized imagine of himself along with the so-called “other” person he presents to Lise. As in so many LGBTQ films, we are forced to reckon with the doubling of reality that homosexual men and women feel in presenting themselves to society in one way and emotionally responding differently within. Revealingly, in this instance, Martin faces Lise only in the mirror, while the “real” self faces the audience, revealing an entirely different being to us.

          It finally takes Lucas’ mother, Rose (Vittoria Scognamiglio) to bring Martin literally “out” of his funk, simply through her imperial arrival in a lavender car and later dressed in the same color, as she simply presumes, having witnessed the two in bed on the morning after Lucas has called Martin to his side for comfort, that two are lovers and already are involved in a serious relationship. Indeed, she even takes Martin aside in an attempt to discover whether or not he’s truly serious about his relationship with her son (“because if you hurt him, I’ll kill you. I have to take it out on someone.”). Given the situation, he not only assures her that he is serious about Matin, but obviously convinces himself.   

     Lucas, insisting that he will give the two, his mother and still-reluctant lover, a wonderful tour, takes them on a visit to various cemeteries, "shopping" as he describes it. When Rose insists he stop, he admits that he has, after all, already found the perfect place in which to be buried, touching both the temple of Martin’s and his mother's head. 

      When they return home, Lise is there waiting to claim Martin as her own. But she has arrived too late, and her rude insistence of her ownership of Martin’s love is met with further resistance, Martin moving out of their apartment and moving in with Lucas; soon after, Lucas asking for his first kiss, which if awkwardly rewarded at first, is soon followed with a series of serious mouth-to-mouth expressions of Martin's growing love for Lucas, even as Lucas insists—now that he has finally gotten what was seeking—that he is now furious for his selfishness of wanting Martin there to watch over him as he dies.

        Lucas attempts to send Martin away as his condition worsens, and succeeds for a day in which he goes missing, Lise finally tracking him down when Martin returns to her in despair for his being unable to locate his lover in a hospital bed in which he sought him. Lucas, like a constantly resurrected Phoenix, has in fact pulled off his intravenous drip connections, telling the nurse that he is checking out for a better hotel.

       Now looking after his dying lover, Martin—having become a true “life-guard”—is told the story of Lucas’ lover with whom he contracted AIDS, and for whom he also served as nurse. In those scenes the ex-lover himself appears to help tell the tale, which leads us to believe that just possibly the other half of the seemingly realist tale with which he have been engaged might also have been a kind of fantasy, a magical wish-fulfillment of dying queer.               

   Rose's sudden search of small rural church for a priest willing to perform an illegal marriage ceremony between Martin and her son also seems like something almost out of a fevered dream of a Pedro Almodóvar film. That they find one, the priest actually going through with the celebration, a shower of confetti floating down the vaults of the small country church after the two say their “I Dos,” further creates a sense of fantasy, sealed with their illegal church kiss and a smooch on the cheek of the priest by the appreciative mother.

         At this point it hardly matters whether we believe in what is happening before our eyes. The dream has become real, just as the real must again return to the dream as, after saying his final goodbyes and demanding a gentle stroke of his check by Martin, Lucas himself goes diving off the high board of the pool into the waters below--apparently to drown.

         In the last scene, the normally serious and sour-faced Martin is seen recklessly driving a bicycle down the middle of a city street whistling Lucas’ calvary song of the Republican Guard. Martin has been transformed into the joyful believer in life that Lucas was.

         We must forever be appreciative of such wildly whimsical presentations of LGBTQ life. For if the French indeed could accept this TV movie as fantasy, presumably some day they and others might be able to invoke such a tale as truth. Even in their deaths, gay men can be saved through love.

 

Los Angeles, February 5, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (February 2022).