How could it happen that someone (Christophe Honoré) whose first movie that I saw (Ma mère) I actively disliked, and whose second (Dans Paris) underwhelmed me got a third chance? Netflix made it possible to start watching "Les chansons d'amour" (Love Songs) without the massive commitment of having the DVD sent to me. I watched the first third and decided I wanted to watch the rest on my tv.

I already had a copy of "Tout contre Léo" (an inapt title meaning "All against Léo; the English title "Close to Leo" is apter) lying around, not having connected it with Christophe Honoré. It is actually the first-made of the four Christophe Honoré films I've now seen. It astonishes me that it was a French tv movie, given the usual casual male frontal nudity in Honoré films and a not very edifying story.

I think that I'm glad I watched "Léo" after "Love Songs," in part because I was more attentive to the characters being Bretons and because I noticed the golden God of Liberty on the Colonne de Juliet in the Place de Bastille often in "Love Songs." When brothers visit Paris in the last part of "Léo," their room looks directly out at that statue, and they go up to a platform that I didn't know existed at the statue's feet. (To put it mildly, the traffic swirling around the Colonne de Juliet in the Place de Bastille is heavy.

But back to Honoré's native Brittany, where most of the movie takes place -- in a coastal town that is not Brest (I know this because Léo and his father go to Brest--offscreen) or San-Malo (at least not anywhere with a view of the fort there) and is not Honoré birthplace Carhaix (I know that because Carhaix is inland).

The movies of Honoré that I've seen show very strong family bonds (way too close in "Ma mère," which is the one he did not also write). The 21-year-old Léo ((Pierre Mignard)) is the eldest of four sons of camera-store owner Dominic Gould and Marie Bunel (neither character has a name, only the role designations "father" and "mother" in the credits). The members of the family like each other and have a physical ease with each other that astounds me (being a reserved Midwesterner).

The 19-year-old Tristan (Rodolphe Pauley) is starting to work in the store. Pierrot (Jérémie Lippmann) is supposed to be somewhere in the 15-17 range and Marcel (Yannis Lespert) is eleven.

Marcel literally jumps into his pajamas, which cannot be news to the rest of the family. Nonetheless, while he is off getting into his pajamas they have a family council in which Léo announces that he has tested HIV-positive and the family decided to shield Marcel from the information. Marcel hears this and is as distressed at being excluded as well as at the news itself and further burdened by not being able to talk about what he's not supposed to know.

When their mother farms Marcel out to stay with Yvan (Louis Gonzales) who looks younger than Marcel and with Yvan's depressive rather wine-soused mother (Joana Preiss) for a few days, Marcel regresses. He and Yvan make prank calls that are traced back and Yvan rather successfully manipulates Yvan's mother. (I thought that adults used "reverse psychology" on children, but Yvan uses it on her.)


Plot implausibilities and spoiler alert?

Léo returns from Brest with four prescription medicines. Léo decides to visit Paris (something that seems natural to me) and decides to bring Marcel along (something that seems very, very odd in that the main reason for the trip seems to be to visit the Arab lover, Aymeric (Assaad Bouab) whom Léo left -- not a mission that having an eleven-year-old in tow aids in any way imaginable to me!). About equally counterproductively, Léo wants to talk to Aymeric at work (in what looks to be a family-run bar/restaurant).

Léo also decides to dump his medications in the Seine -- in front of Marcel. Marcel is understandably very upset by this and desperate to stop Léo.

At least Marcel is spared watching Léo seduce the darkish (also Arab?) desk clerk and then bolting when the young man wants to use a condom.

And what happens to the car? I can't imagine going to stay directly on the Place de Bastille burdened with a car needing to be parked either!

And while I'm at it, what is with the bleeding knee scene earlier on (Pierrot's if I remember correctly)? Neither its cause nor any consequences are included, so why it is shown at all?

Following Albert Camus's argument, I consider suicide a right, but I find Léo's failure to tell Aymeric that Léo is HIV+, the attempt to have condomless anal sex, and subjecting Marcel to dumping the drugs are all inexcusable in my view. Plus being frustrated that Léo does not even attempt to find out if the drug regimen will work for him. Perhaps from having watched many friend succumb while fighting all-out against HIV, I find Léo's embrace of death particularly frustrating.

Yes, I know people get depressed and do foolish things, but this story comes too close to the 1950s "The Homosexual Must Die" imperative mixed with the 1980s trope of AIDS death wishes (cf. http://www.epinions.com/content_438448918148 for a discussion of this myth still stalking the earth!), even though everyone else, even the eleven-year-old knows that having the human immunodeficiency virus is not a death sentence and that there are drugs that sustain lives for decades for many HIV+ people with access to them (as Léo has).

End spoiler alert

What occurs in the Paris part of the film makes it impossible for me to like the movie. It is also why I characterized the film as "unedifying."

As in other Christophe Honoré movies, I am very impressed by the courage and skill of the actors. I'm not sure whether Honoré is good at directing actors or great at casting ones who will play difficult and often unlikable parts without holding back or signaling their distance from the roles in the manner of, say, William Hurt and Jack Nicholson on occasion (I'm not like this: watch me, Ma, I'm acting!).

As destructive (to self and others) as Léo is, Pierre Mignard manages to generate some sympathy for Léo, especially in the tenderness for Marcel that he displays. And as Marcel, Yaniss Lespert is compelling. It is impossible not to feel his pain and the multiplicity and nuances of what hurts him and why he acts out to some extent. Despite his childish telephone pranks, in Paris he seems far more mature than Léo. He is devastated by what he understands Léo is doing/going to do. His forlorness at the train station is heartbreaking. And his final scene again mixes a certain childishness with full recognition of the enormity of loss in the boy's eyes.

Although the characters do not burst into singing dialogue, there is pop music written by Alex Beaupain, who would later write the songs for "Les chansons d'amour"). Léo sings along or sings what are supposed to be songs he has on tapes he left home on his impromptu excursion to Paris with Marcel.

Remy Chevrin's cinematography looks pretty good -- especially for a tv movie -- though not as good as his work on "Les chansons d'amour." In between, he lensed "Monsieur Ibrahim," another movie with a wise male child (Pierre Boulanger) -- and Omar Sharif in the title role doing his best work since "Juggernaut" (rather long ago).

There are no bonus features relating to the film, only some trailers for other releases from Picture This.


© 2008, Stephen O. Murray

The characters and attitudes and relationships in Christophe Honoré movies are very French, so this is another (daily?) French find for Barbara's writeoff, though one I cannot recommend despite the outstanding acting on display in it. The bravery of the actors and the strength of family bonds are, as in "Dans Paris," not enough for me in the final analysis.





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