Movie Review: Sauvage (French)
There is something detached and voyeuristic about observing a nameless 22-year-old gay prostitute (Felix Maritaud as 'Leo,' physically and emotionally surrendering himself to the role) going about his day, sometimes walking the streets in Strasbourg, sometimes waiting by the roadside for hours on end, in hopes of landing potential pickups, in hopes of finding someone who will reciprocate his feelings.
Selling himself as needs be, he cannot imagine a life outside it. "It's like you enjoy being a whore," his gay-for-pay colleague Ahd (a fantastic Eric Bernard) says at one point after a threesome with a wheelchair bound client. "So?," comes right back the reply. While escape is something that Ahd actively seeks (the hustlers hang out in a woods close to the airport, smoking meth or crack while watching planes take off) — even if all it takes is to find a sugar daddy — Leo doesn't seem to know or want anything else.
When a doctor refers him a program to help him kick his drug habit, he simply asks, "Why?" And when another gay hustler (Nicolas Dibla) offers him a cellphone, Leo responds: "Who would I call?" But despite the pleasure Leo takes in his sex work, he isn't after money. It's love. It's this quest for a deeper connection that drives Camille Vidal-Naquet's remarkable feature debut Sauvage (read: Wild).
Explicit but never gratuitous, painful but tender and strangely romantic, the film captures the intricacies of the profession beautifully without judgement, just as it lays bare open Leo's with an emotional nakedness that's both intimate and startling. "I want to spend the night in a boy's arms; tonight, that boy is you," he tells an eighty-something widower as they both lie in bed, clinging to each other, looking for the physical affection they both desperately long for.
But all the love strangers pour on Leo doesn't seem to satisfy him. For it's Ahd who has his heart, and it's Ahd who spurns all his affections, leaving him emotionally battered and bruised, leading him to mask his own true self by feigning a faux toughness that proves to be self-destructive. Sauvage's complex exploration of love, from fleeting connections with sexual partners to intense romantic passion, is nuanced and vivid, as is its affecting take on solitude that's divorced from societal norms, expectations and material desires.
The sense of heightened realism (Jacques Girault's handheld lenswork superbly matches Leo's movements step for step) and its frank depiction of sex and gay love is undermined to some extent by one-dimensional characterisations, but the movie never for once wavers from Leo. An unflinching portrait of a loner as much as it's about homelessness, Sauvage is a fully-realised world that's by turns arresting and poignant, while also striking a tricky balance between hope and recognising that not everyone in a situation like Leo's can be rescued.
When a doctor refers him a program to help him kick his drug habit, he simply asks, "Why?" And when another gay hustler (Nicolas Dibla) offers him a cellphone, Leo responds: "Who would I call?" But despite the pleasure Leo takes in his sex work, he isn't after money. It's love. It's this quest for a deeper connection that drives Camille Vidal-Naquet's remarkable feature debut Sauvage (read: Wild).
Explicit but never gratuitous, painful but tender and strangely romantic, the film captures the intricacies of the profession beautifully without judgement, just as it lays bare open Leo's with an emotional nakedness that's both intimate and startling. "I want to spend the night in a boy's arms; tonight, that boy is you," he tells an eighty-something widower as they both lie in bed, clinging to each other, looking for the physical affection they both desperately long for.
But all the love strangers pour on Leo doesn't seem to satisfy him. For it's Ahd who has his heart, and it's Ahd who spurns all his affections, leaving him emotionally battered and bruised, leading him to mask his own true self by feigning a faux toughness that proves to be self-destructive. Sauvage's complex exploration of love, from fleeting connections with sexual partners to intense romantic passion, is nuanced and vivid, as is its affecting take on solitude that's divorced from societal norms, expectations and material desires.
The sense of heightened realism (Jacques Girault's handheld lenswork superbly matches Leo's movements step for step) and its frank depiction of sex and gay love is undermined to some extent by one-dimensional characterisations, but the movie never for once wavers from Leo. An unflinching portrait of a loner as much as it's about homelessness, Sauvage is a fully-realised world that's by turns arresting and poignant, while also striking a tricky balance between hope and recognising that not everyone in a situation like Leo's can be rescued.
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