I Have Seen the Land Beyond

Spring has come to our houses yesterday. Not much to say. He sat at the table, silent, and stared straight at the wall with a stubborn look. He left the door of our place open, so we froze our asses. He told me he was uptight, and confessed something was stuck up his bum.



"You know I will warm you up and make you smile", he said. "I'm in a terrible mood today so you'll have to wait a bit". He then argued that he had already took care of the snow, and I had to admit he was right.

Let's take the trash out and clean the streets, so we can walk barefoot all summer long on Sherbrooke East without feeling like a goddamn fakir.

*

I have seen Bertrand Blier's TENUE DE SOIRÉE. Funny and theatrical, it's typical Blier, with a disrespect for manners and a fantasy of its own. However, one can't deny there is a certain homophobia sweating through every frame. The movie may be about some "homosexual conversion", but there is nothing but mépris in the way it is narrated.

There is a very "french" obsession with anal sex, the ass itself, and cross-dressing. As if there was a mandatory man and woman in every gay couple. As if, at one point or the other, a gay man would end up dressing as a woman. The term "fiotte" is used, and I think it's the most degrading one I've ever heard. It's on the verge of being offensive, and believe me, I'm not easily offended.

More often than not, homosexuals like manliness. They sleep with men because they like men. Most of the fags I know aren't into effeminate guys, they prefer straight-looking jocks that bend.

Blier might be a great filmmaker, but he's losing points here.

*

I have also seen Claude Fournier's JE N'AIME QUE TOI, a very strange drama involving a really cute hooker (Noémie Godin-Vigneau) and an aging writer (Michel Forget) falling in love. Forget finds inspiration in the dirty stories he's told by Noémie, and ends up paying for every word she says.

Now that is something odd. Very crude verbally, the movie is not explicit in its images, but you get a good glimpse of Godin-Vigneau's hot body. The acting isn't always perfectly coached, and as in many québécois movies, the language isn't totally controled, oscillating between the written and the talked, sometimes feeling as if the actors were just reading their lines and looking for a way to ring true without finding it.

Jean-Nicolas Verreault, who I like to call "the beef", plays an editor in what is the worst casting choice ever. As if the guy could impersonate an intellectual.

At 105 minutes, the movie drags a bit, but it's always nice to see Michel Forget elsewhere than in Lance & Compte and to see Fournier come back to a more virulent form.

Oddly, Fournier also directed, a couple of years ago, a comedy about homosexuals that was filled with clichés : J'EN SUIS. It involved a character pretending to be a fag just to get hired in a good firm. There was nothing as mean in there as in Blier's feature, and in fact many notorious homosexuals cameo'ed (including Claude Rajotte), but we still felt as if, once again, homosexuals were the "dindon de la farce", the ammunitions to make the "petit peuple" laugh. Just like the black man once was, homosexuals have become the "friendly comic relief element" that is required in popular film making.