Today I make my running return. My first outing on the
tarmac since the ill advised Christmas Pudding run at Langdale before Christmas.
We are at the Cheadle Spring 5, a mammoth five miler but
needs must. I manage to up my pace a little from the levels of my training runs
(all three of them) and record 39:16 and 83rd place, half way down the
field. The official photos show me battling with some school kid who I managed
to fend off eventually. It wasn’t a glorious return but a return it was.
In the evening we head into town to celebrate...
The film takes us on location, to one location, a gay
cruising spot by a pretty lake somewhere in France. Everything in the film happens
by this lake. Everyday everyone arrives at the beach, park their cars in the
same place, lay their towels out in the same place and then tan their equipment
in the same place. Before later retiring to the woods for the main course.
By the end of the film I was so familiar with the layout of
the area that I could have drawn a map of it. This repetition succeeds in
building the tension because you know there’s going to be more to the film than
this (surely).
The main character is Franck (Pierre Deladonchamps), a man
on a mission, for a shag. Well he’s come to right spot you would think but he’s
initially frustrated. The object of his desire, Michel (Christophe Paou), isn’t
available. That is until Franck sees Michel drown his current boyfriend. Now
Franck doesn’t think oh shit I ought to report this to the authorities,
he only thinks that goody, Michel is now available.
To be fair to Franck he’s not the only one who does nothing,
nobody else does anything either. Even when the dead man’s car remains on the
car park and his towel lies on the beach in the same place for days on end no
one bats an eyelid.
Instead Franck hooks up with Michel and covers for him when the
police come investigating. Franck is so blindly in love that he even goes
swimming with him. FFS. Yet, despite his puppy dog devotion Michel refuses point
blank to have any sort of relationship with Franck beyond the boundaries of the
beach. Which is good for the director I suppose, taking the film to another
location would clearly have blown his mind, and probably ours too.
What we have here is a gay twist on the old chestnut about
the young girl in love with the bad lad from the wrong sides of the tracks; the
one that’ll be no good for her but her love is so blinkered that she can’t see
past the rippling muscles of his chest. Only with a lot more sex. If you already suspect that this isn’t going to have a happy
ending, then you’d be right.
It’s educational I suppose, I learnt a lot about how
cruising in the homosexual world operates (if this is typical).
It’s not a bad film but the endless naked flesh is a bit off
putting. I’m also not really sure who the stranger on the beach was supposed to
be. Michel? Franck himself? or the self-pitying non-gay Henri (Patrick
d'Assumçao), who turns up on the beach everyday for no other reason that he’s
on holiday and has nothing better to do.
Henri to his credit is the only clothed man in the film,
apart from the police inspector (Jérôme Chappatte), and there’s not a woman in
sight.
Personally I’m still waiting for the first body to wash up
on the beach.
We eat at Broadway but are again thwarted at Brewdog which has now become amazingly popular so we have a few drinks in the Major Oak instead.
(Sunday 2nd March)
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