France and Queer Cinema

I have been watching a lot of gay films recently, and seeing as i live in France and have a few gay friends, I have been discussing it thoroughly with them. Saturday night after a few glasses of wine during a screening of Once Upon A Time In America, the conversation turned to Blue is the Warmest color, a film which I in fact adored but my friends didn’t. In addition a discussion earlier that night about the films of Xavier Dolan and Stranger by the Lake got me thinking about the state of LGBT cinema in the world right now, it seems to me that the best gay films being released at the moment are French, and since releasing ‘The Kids are All Right’ Hollywood has yet to release another game changing queer film.

One of the biggest voices in queer cinema at the moment is Xavier Dolan, a frighteningly young director who has just released his fourth feature film and will premier his fifth at Cannes in May, what defines Dolan’s films is that despite having gay characters and being directed by a gay man, they are not defined by being gay, all of his films could be equally successful of they had exclusively heterosexual characters, and the fact that his films have gay characters, simply adds to their richness. Dolan has a quiet observant style of filming, almost like a documentary filmmaker, and rather than showing the audience what he can do with the camera, Dolan is content to simply let the cameras roll, and the drama unfold. It is important to remember that being gay is not an esthetic or a style, it is only just an identity, and Dolan’s films are gay only in the sense that they have men who like men in them, and not due to any specific ‘queer’ orientation.

Unlike the films of John Waters (whom I love by the way) French queer films are notable for not being camp or flamboyant, this perhaps has a lot to do with the fact that they are mostly directed by younger directors. Gay youths are much less segregated than their older counterparts, and, in my opinion are less likely to advertise their sexual orientation. This explains the more naturalistic, and subtle feel of current French gay films. French cinema also feels much less censored that American cinema, and French gay films are much less afraid to show explicit sex, Blue is the Warmest Color and Stranger By The Lake both contain explicit sex scenes, and were both released to critical acclaim.

It would be unfathomable to discuss French gay cinema without fully discussing Blue is the Warmest Color. La Vie D’adèle (French title) was released in 2013 and went on to receive the Palme D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, the film is about the passionate engrossing love story between two young French girls living in Lilles. My friend suggested that the success of the film was perhaps partially based on it being released around the time of the proposal for equal marriage passing, and gay marriage becoming legal in france, and while I agree that the awarding of the Palme D’Or to this was in part a political statement, that doesn’t take away from this being a beautifully passionate love story, told and acted with heart and flair.

France also has a reasonably healthy relationship with genderbending and transgender themed films, the 2011 film Tomboy about a girl who pretends to be a boy in order to fit in, and the 2012 Xavier Dolan film Laurence Anyways, both deal with this deep and complex issue with a huge amount of sensitivity. Gay cinema in the rest of the world has reached a vaguely stagnant phase, and nothing really exciting is happening right now, has released a multitude of hugely successful queer films, and it is a hugely exciting time to be a fan of gay cinema.