the figure from the past
by
Douglas Messerli
Bernard
Alapetite and Cyril Legann (screenwriters and director) Comme un frère (Like
a Brother) / 2005 [54 minutes]
This
film begins in a Paris nightclub with Zack (real name Sebastien) (Benoît
Delière) meeting up with another habitue of the club, Bruno (Johnny Amaro).
They go home together and appear to have great sex together. But soon after, as
they meet for breakfast, Sebastien seems to be in a funk.
It
is his birthday and he is not only worried about the fact that he’s getting
older but recalls the love he left back home in La Baule.
Suddenly the film moves back in time to Sebastien’s final year of
education. From the bright vivid, almost gaudy colors of Paris, we now find
ourselves in a muted, hazy world of France’s west coast. Back here, we can also
see that Sebastien is moody, and his friends Romain (Thibault Boucaux), Romain’s
girlfriend Sophie (Amadine Maury) and Sebastien’s female friend, Marine
(Adeline Ishimin) notice the changes in his behavior. When the others probe
about what’s bothering him, Marine suggests they leave him alone, knowing
already that part of the problem is that her so-called “boyfriend” is actually
realizing that he is in love with his life-long best friend, Romain.
Romain’s parents will be away the next
weekend, and he invites his friends to join him in a party, in part perhaps to
perk up Sebastien in the process. Sebastien appears disinterested.
Back in Paris, we see Sebastian arriving
and calling up his father (Michel Derville), the owner of a delicatessen, long
divorced from Sebastian’s mother. Romain immediately comes out to his father,
explaining quite forthrightly that he is gay and it is the reason the has come
to Paris. The father admits that he is not surprised. He also adds that even if
it wasn’t what he might have hoped for his son, he still loves him and wants
him to be happy. And he offers him a place to stay.
Sebastien is returning to college, but
will now find a job in the meantime, he claims.
So we begin the toggle between Paris and
La Baule, as the cinema tells his full story.
Back in La Baule he gets a tattoo in
Nantes. In Paris he stops both other boys and men in their tracks as he passes
them on the street. He is soon calling up on hot lines he’s found in local
leaflets seeking out sex: “cute, hairless.”
On
the beach in La Baule with Romain, Sebastian and he briefly wrestle in a very
homoerotic manner. I’s clear that both boys are equally in love, but we soon
see that Romain cannot accept his the two sitting on the bed, Romain begins to masturbate,
but quickly rises to finish off in the bathroom, where Sebastien peeps on his
friend.
In
Paris, Sebastien meets up with the beautiful, slightly older, Laurent (Gaétan
Borg). At first, Sebastien appears as a rather shy provincial, but quickly
leans into a full kiss and embrace him as the two quickly follow up with
incredibly hot sex, Laurent fucking the boy, perhaps for the first time
Sebastian has experienced anal sex. Yet, he clearly enjoys it.
Back in La Baule, Marine and Sebastien are
on the beach, Marine explaining that she hasn’t yet gone all the way but is
willing to without waiting for “the right man.” They play at sex, but when she announces
that Sophie as had sex before Romain, he is disturbed. She asks outright
whether he’s in love with Romain, and Sebastien admits that perhaps he is.
In Paris, Laurent, after sex with
Sebastien sends him packing. He doesn’t want a relationship, and Sebastien
quickly dresses and leaves. His attitude is a clue, perhaps, to how much he
should trust those me he meets in his new home.
Later, he begins a letter to Romain, but
when his father, interested in his welfare, asks, he says it’s crap, and rumples
into a ball as he throws it away.
Again, in La Baule we see him intimately
reading a book to Romain. Suddenly even Romain seems to recognize that it’s
different with a mate and between a girl, already doubting his relationship
with his girlfriend Sophie.
Sebastian admits to his friend that if it
weren’t for Romain, he would have long ago left. He explains that he doesn’t
need a brother, that he already has one. He’s needs someone affectionate and
tender. Romain queries him if Marine might be that person, but he admits he
does not love her; she’s just a friend. But just a quickly another of their
friends shows up and Romain proceeds to play pool with him, while ignoring his
adoring “brother.”
In Paris, Sebastian reveals to his father
that he might like to be an actor, even though knows it is difficult. And we
now discover that his older brother has become a butcher. As his father says, “You
are not at all like your brother.” The brother, he presumes, will take over the
delicatessen when he dies. His son also admits he could be happier with a few
friends.
By this time in the film, although one
recognizes the film’s structure is based on past and present intertwining, we
are a bit frustrated by the constant interruptions in narrative action. We seek
a bit more coherence in the plot so that we might even get to know what
Sebastian is truly seeking, the provincial boy from his past or new sexual
relationships in the present. But then, he himself is confused, unsure of what
he is looking for. Surely he cannot go home again, but he longs for a relationship
with Romain that has been refused him. Yet after a while, the experience of the
film is a bit like a tennis match, as we are snaped back and forth into the
beautifully muted past and the garish and quite alive Paris. To me, Paris too
is immersed with the past, where so many buildings and streets point out the famous
dead figures who resided there, and whose great cemeteries feature more renowned
figures that almost any other city, but this film does not even seem to elude
to that reality.
Still at the dinner table in Paris,
Sebastian asks if his father has any female friends, he replying that there is
nothing serious.
Back on the beach of La Baule, which
Sebastian admits he misses, Romain comes running out from the water to meet up
with his friend, who can’t swim, waiting for him on the beach. He wishes he
might learn how to swim to join him in the water. They lather one another with
sunscreen, which again, becomes almost a sexual act.
Sophie announces she is throwing a big
party, with a number of their friends, many of whom share the names,
incidentally, of Sebastian’s later sexual encounters in Paris. Once again
Sebastian seems disinterested, even though Sophie claims she is throwing the
party, in part, for him. Yet the boy recognizes that it is really for her own
sake.
At the party, Sophie plays the perfect
host, greeting and kissing all the friends she has invited, announcing the event
is for Sebastian’s birthday, itself a constant repetition in this film. How
many birthdays, both in La Baule and Paris does Sebastian actually have. Here
also is a David (Patrick Esilva, who looks a lot like Bruno of the first scene
of the film) and a Laurent, as if even the boys of his past are haunting him in
the city of lights and delights.
In Paris once more, we finally see the
unhappy Sebastian dancing in front of his own mirror, celebrating his young and
beauty as he dresses and undresses, exploring his own youthful sexuality. The
long funk seems to have passed. He runs off presumably to another club, after swigging
a drink of gin.
In La Baule he finally rises from his
roost at the party, pushes his way through the party crowd where he discovers
the fickle Sophie making out with David, trying to convince her that she is
better than her loser boyfriend Romain with his queer friend. They kiss and
embrace just as Sebastian enters the kitchen for a beer. The petty provincial
world has never been more revealed than in this scene, where lies and treachery
are simply part of the territory of small-town life. I know this world only too
well. Romain, in the other room, meanwhile, is clearly drunk, dancing basically
alone, clumsily bouncing into tables and other pieces of furniture.
For a moment we are back in Paris where we
see Sebastian dancing, swept up by someone just like Bruno in the club.
And then we are back in La Bule the next
instant, Romain joining the dejected Sebastian sitting on a bench outside the party.
He is hurt, having evidently gotten into a fight with David. Sebastian comforts
him, but reminds him he is thinking only of himself, not of the love he might
provide. Finally, Romain does kiss him. And the boys, who everyone has now
identified as queer, return home to share a bed. Sebastian gently touches him,
perhaps the beginning of a sexual relationship until the phone rings: it is
Marine. He quickly hangs up, but by that time Romain has turned again,
rejecting the gay relationship Sebastian might offer him.
In Paris, Sebastian again has wild sex
with a man who appears to be Laurent.
In La Baule, Sebastian strips naked at the
sea late at night, presumably after being rejected by Romain, and walks into
the sea.
Sebastian wakes up in bed to a loving
Laurent, but soon receives another interruptive phone call from Romain, who
announces he is in Paris. Even Romain describes him as unenthusiastic about his
sudden appearance, to which Sebastian can only say his is pleased, but “I’ve
changed quite a lot.” He explains to Laurent that his old friend is straight.
But we know, of course, their homoerotic history.
They meet up in a park, Sebastian
explaining that he left without even a goodbye because he hates goodbyes,
Romain revealing that Sophie is history, still with David. They now are both
in different worlds. Sebastian now feels at home in Paris, telling his old friend
that at first he missed La Baule, but prefers the anonymity of the city,
something that Romain cannot comprehend. He even admits to his changed name,
Zack. And yes, he admits to a boyfriend. He finally must leave his friend for a
job interview at a bar.
It is the end of a lovely imaginary
relationship that might have existed, but is now lost forever in their own personal
differences. Sebastian moves forward, while Romain remains a mystery. He might
be able to move to Paris, but all is uncertain, and certainly there is no gay
life there to greet him. The idyll that was La Baule is over as both must find
their ways to negotiate their futures.
It is a sad story, but so common that it almost
gets lost in the history of so many first provincial loves left behind. This
happens, and then it means nothing given the new perspectives of the previous
lover, while the reticent, unable to express to love are left to wonder what
might have happened to change their lives, for too late for any alternatives.
In the end, despite the constant shifting
of the narrative, I loved this film for revealing fully what it means to
necessary leave someone you once love behind. Most of us who have moved on to
urban territories from small towns throughout the world, have experienced something
like this. You now exist in a world that is truly impossible to explain to the
figure from the past.
Los
Angeles, August 2, 2026
Reprinted
from My Queer Cinema blog (August 2026).
