Lie With Me is a queer French melodrama from director Olivier Peyon that echoes movies like Name Me By Your Identify and Summer time of 85, specializing in the character Guillaume de Tonquedec’s Stéphane Belcourt who returns to his hometown of Cognac for the primary time in 35 years to advertise a distillery. While there – we get to see him uncover a brand new reference to the son of his past love; Victor Belmondo’s Lucas. The movie makes use of this as a construction to offer us a glance into the flashbacks to past love at 17 which propel the storyline ahead; heartache, need, ardour – all the things you’ll have seen earlier than and you understand precisely what’s taking place earlier than it totally will get underway.
The change between the 80s and the current day offers the Summer time of 85 comparisons and the stylistic nature of the costumes and small rural French city is superbly captured by Olivier Peyon with an air of gravitas. We get to see the eagerness of the 80s narrative mix with Stephane telling Lucas increasingly about his secretive dad; previous traumas popping out: and also you see the connection develop between each characters as Lucas searches for solutions about what his dad was like. There’s additionally the core relationship between Stéphane and Thomas – with Jérémy Gillet and Julien De Saint Jean having close to unmatched chemistry that represents the joys of first; forbidden love completely – with Peyon dipping his toes into the messy waters of friendship and betrayal.
The movie’s themes are contextual and powerful: it desires you to be true to who you might be and reside that. It’s a primary love film; touching and with the guts that it has to offer us in spades. But regardless of all the things you possibly can’t assist however really feel like Lie With Me is strictly the movie that you understand it’s going to be entering into – there’s an air of familiarity right here such as you’re moving into well-trodden waters. The tropes are there and from minute one you’re daring it to do one thing completely different.
Sadly; it may well’t escape its style trappings – which is an actual disgrace; as there’s a whole lot of goodwill right here and the performances give the movie the power that it must thrive. Maybe probably the most notable shock of the movie is discovering simply how a lot Victor Belmondo seems like Jean-Paul Belmondo, the resemblance is uncanny – and he’s definitely a spotlight of Lie With Me. It is a disgrace the remainder of the movie cannot reside as much as the potential.
