Olivier Peyon has created an achingly beautiful movie about the first love between two teenage boys, and the pain and happiness it reflects some 35 years later.
Stephane Belcourt (Guillaume De Tonquedec) is a successful novelist who returns to his small home town to help celebrate the 200th anniversary of what has put the place on the map – the making of cognac. He’s a somewhat reserved man, often touching his glasses for reassurance or to signal awkwardness. Cut to 1984: a young and shy schoolboy, forever touching his glasses, seems smitten with a brash schoolmate, who’s chased by the girls and admired by his male friends.
So imagine his shock when the dashing farmer’s boy Thomas (Julien De Saint Jean) seeks a private assignation, which turns out to be quickly naked and sexual. The deal is this relationship must be strictly private – “just you and me,” he tells shy Stephane.
So that’s the beautiful unravelling of a story of secret first love, denial, abandonment and ultimate tragedy, set against the picturesque wine-growing French countryside.
Back in the present, there are numerous awkward moments, and also middle-aged recollections, reinforced by flashbacks. And then the older Stephane meets Lucas – an importer of the local cognac to the USA, also here for the anniversary celebrations.
We quickly realise he is the son of Thomas, Stephane’s first forbidden love, but how much does Lucas (Victor Belmondo) know and how much are the two men – a generation apart – prepared to share with each other? And what happened to Thomas?
It’s an intriguing, engaging and at times painful narrative – Stephane says: “I don’t like raking over the past,” then proceeds to do exactly that, revisiting his teenage love scenes. There are strong themes of the art of story-telling, his profession, and the fabrication of lies he has constructed, projecting it into his fiction. It’s a clever conceit and Peyon makes it work, as we know more and more of the back story and the characters are forced to face up to it.
There are four strong central performances – De Tonguedec has the languid look of someone who has never truly been as happy as he was at age 17. Belmondo, from a famous cinematic dynasty, is forceful and fragile, revealing bit by bit just how much his character knows. Jeremy Gillet as the shy young Stephane and Julien De Saint Jean as Thomas are perfect foils for each other – the physical and the thoughtful.
And Peyon brings the strands together in a long moving exposition by the novelist, being honest about his thoughts and feelings – maybe for the fist time. It’s beautifully completed and not without a tear in the audience.
Lie With Me is distributed on demand by Peccadillo Pictures on PeccadilloPOD
