Ma vraie vie à Rouen is something of an experimental film, although that is no surprise bearing in mind what Ducastel and Martineau have produced recently. It reminded me not only of the much more recent Stéphane Riethauser's Madame with its gay coming of age, but also its amateurish camcorder footage, which in this case is deliberate.
His grandmother (Hélène Surgère) gives Étienne (Jimmy Tavares) a camcorder for his sixteenth birthday, although we don't discover that until a number of oddly painful moments staring at Caroline (Ariane Ascaride) staring at the camera, wondering if it's recording her. She'll soon get to know only too well how true this is.
The camera will be Étienne's toy throughout this movie, although toy is the wrong word for such an existential tool: it's an extension of his consciousness, an exploratory object by and through which he can not only attempt to hide his intentions but also discover himself.
Much of the time we see Étienne with his friend Ludo, photographing Ludo, and Ludo asks 'What?' because he can't understand why Étienne is photographing him all the time, but he also obsessively asks Ludo about his relationship with his girlfriend, wanting to know 'how far' he's gone with her. (As usual, the sub-titles don't do the spoken words justice, and this time 'Tu l'as faite ?' is, for example, way too weak for the strong 'Did you fuck her?' we see on screen. But no matter.) Étienne has a few obsessions, but his sexuality is one he has to figure out for himself. Painfully.
Is his constantly photographing his mother an intended distraction from his preoccupation with shooting men or is this oedipal? Anyway, his mother gets together with his teacher Laurent (Jonathan Zaccaï), and Étienne finds himself working his camera on Laurent in overdrive. All the main subjects of his vision – Ludo, mother and 'step-father' – are more than a little irritated by being filmed, and Laurent (after too many drinks) goes as far as to ask if Étienne's doing this because he 'likes' him, even slightly unzipping himself.
And then Étienne asks Ludo about men-liking-men relationships, but Ludo walks away, but Étienne then comes upon a male stranger who welcomes him into his bed. End of self-quest, perhaps, but who will he aim his camera at now he's lost his cherry?
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