Alain Guiraudie's Ce vieux rêve qui bouge (2001)

Ce vieux rêve qui bouge is perhaps best known as the medium length film which Jean-Luc Godard praised as the best film at the Festival de Cannes in 2001. I can understand why: this is a hymn to work, of rather the remains of it, and as such it's a rather rare film in that it shows people actually performiing actions at work, not stopping to talk but talking at the same time as they're working.

Jacques (Pierre Louis-Calixte) has come to the factory – which is closing down – to remove the last piece of machinery. We see him working on the machine, drinking with the workers, and showering at the end of the day. We also know that he's unmarried, is only attracted to men, and is sexually drawn to the pot-bellied boss Donand (Jean-Marie Combelles), who withdraws when (at the same time as he works) Jacques tries to pull his cock out.

On the final day, Jacques learns definitively that Donand really isn't interested. But Louis (Jean Ségani) – a man in his early fifties much weathered by work and appears considerably older than his years – tells Jacques that he gets a hard-on at the mere thought of him. But Jacques isn't interested, and no it's not his age or his figure, he just isn't interested.

And as the credits roll, a muscular-sounding male voice ensemble sings Théophile Gautier's 'Villanelle', a heterosexual pastoral song as the viewer sees an urban setting drift along.

Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau’s Théo et Hugo dans le même bateau | Paris 05:59: Théo & Hugo (2016)

 

In a way, the film Théo et Hugo can be compared to Richard Linklater's trilogy, beginning with Before Sunrise (1995), only the couple in that movie, Céline (Julie Delphy) and Jesse (Ethan Hawke), first get to know each other and take a very, very long time before having sex: see Before Sunset (2004) and Before Midnight (2013). Hugo (François Nambot) and Théo (Geoffrey Couët) have sex first and then get to know each other.

They have sex at the gay sex club L'Impact, 18 Rue Greneta, 2e, in a long scene lasting over fifteen minutes in which bodies kiss, stroke, fondle and have (sometimes noisy) unsimulated sex. This scene – set in real time like the whole film, and of course reminding us of Varda's Cléo de 5 à 7 in format – is hardly pornographic though, as there is no dwelling on the genitals, just the faces and the bodies, the movements.

After the anonymity, Théo and Hugo leave together, still in the early hours of the morning, and their first argument is a serious one: they agree that there's something special about their encounter, although when Hugo reveals that he's not used a condom Théo goes crazy and says he has to go to hospital immediately: Théo is HIV positive. What ensues is not an easy ride, with the two guys having to pass through a homophobic old guy and Hugo being initiated into the medication procedure. This is Hugo's fault or Théo's? Well, Théo's from Lons-le-Saunier (Jura), which is hardly Paris, and, oh, we'll forget that, they're both in the same boat, both as guilty as the other.

After that the film resembles an old-fashioned love story, two people just wandering around Paris before daybreak, buying a meal from the Syrian kebab man, the aged chambermaid from Yvetot talking to them on the first métro, and them arriving in central Paris, to Hugo's chambre de bonne on the sixth floor. There Théo undresses Hugo, examines his genitals in a loving way, as if he's really impressed with his catch, but they don't have sex again, that's for later: who knows, this relationship could continue until, well, the end?

I have a feeling that this could well prove to be a landmark gay movie.