Movie reviews

SAUVAGE

Watchable. The topic of male prostitution is less unusual in cinema than the director imagines but here it's rendered engagingly, with a wide range of situations the whores encounter and the silver lining of a love story. And with occasional great techno music. It's predominantly an intimate portrait of a homeless/squatting youngster, gay, benevolent to clients and in love with a colleague. It's presented through his social caste, e.g. he feels uncomfortable on a couch and in (new) clothes. It's an insight into a world a viewer can't get to know otherwise. The film also shows how intrinsic the human need for love is.

Camille Vidal-Naquette explained a lot after the screening. The director's convinced he's explored a topic non-existent in cinema. Even if the film reality appears brutal, there's more violence in the community than in the movie. For the protagonist getting beaten is the only chance of contact with the one he loves. Later he's battered but then feels better, it's like a resurrection. And he still gives love. Camille Vidal-Naquette first wrote the script, then spent a few hours with homeless prostitutes working on the street. The hours turned into days, months, finally years. The street ones are the very bottom. Others work online. The director met around a hundred men working on the street, made friends with 10. 90% of gay prostitutes are straight men. They stop feeding and washing their bodies but still have affections. In real life, they take cash upfront. They live close to nature - in the Bois de Boulogne. Sometimes a whore would disappear for a few months to live comfortably with an older guy but always returned on the street because "he told me for the 10th time to put on slippers so as not to ruin his wooden floor". They're often immigrants so have no protection from the police or any other institutions. One Romanian guy walked through Europe. When the director observed the group, once a female psychologist from the foundation aiding the homeless stopped him from intervening. Their world is ruled by different rules. A normally calm boy was beating another one nearly to death. What was it about? He beat him because the other guy had stolen his tent and the boy faced the menace of freezing to death so he beat him so that that guy never steals it again.