Smalltown Boys (2022)

We were already familiar with Gaël Lépingle's taste for provincial small towns, and with his precise, insistent, and often generous interest in their inhabitants and their lust for adventures, as shown in his work, from Julien (FID 2010) to Seuls les pirates (FID 2018). Provincial towns are shown here through the prism of the journey of boys who like boys, narrated by Gaël Lépingle like three tales set in three different places, three slices of life involving choices. In each of these tales, the director portrays in delicate touches various ways of living as a homosexual, in places where it is possible, or sometimes unthinkable, but always steering clear of the usual drama and clichés of the genre. In the opening scene, a young man seems to be dreaming of a reality different from the business he is about to take over and the married life that goes with it; he is drawn to the spicy life of a queer vaudeville troupe performing in his village. Then we follow the wanders of a teenager, the unlikely experience of his slender figure walking the streets of his village. Finally, we catch a glimpse of the fetishist passion of a respectable teacher, before he is sent back to his path of renunciation. These three portraits end up composing a fresco. Gaël Lépingle becomes the cartographer of uncharted areas of desire, in landscapes that are devoid of qualities and sharpness, but filled with the dreadful banality of preordained destinies. So many paths to take and decisions to make for these provincial boys. Lépingle subtly delineates dead ends and openings, and lingers on the in-between: in between words and bodies, in between desire and bleak life, in between bodies and landscapes, searching for the right distance between beings. With dressing-up and its possibilities as a secret formula that connects them all. (Nicolas Feodoroff)