Not all sissies are gay, get it?

lasttimeisaw

Winning 5 trophies of César Awards this year including BEST FILM (fending off tough competitors like STRANGER BY THE LAKE 2013, 8/10; THE PAST 2013, 8/10 and BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR 2013) and BEST ACTOR, for the director-debut of triple threat farceur Guillaume Gallienne (director, writer and leading actor), and more strikingly, he plays two opposite roles, Guillaume and his mother.

Treading off the beaten track, it is an ingenious counter-coming-out story of an effeminate boy Guillaume, who is assumed by his family to be gay because of his outlandish deportment, being lackadaisical in sports and the accurate mimicry of his mother's intonation, all the way he is trying to comply with her expectation, to love men like a girl. Guillaume learns how to dance like a girl, enrolls in different all-male boarding schools, observes girls' unique comportment, the way of how they utter, nurtures a crush on the handsome jock, dodges military service, arranges sorties to gay club, to experience sex, after all the stereotyped attempts to be a normal gay, he meets the love of his life, Amandine, a genuine girl.

The film opens as a live premiere of a monologue play by Guillaume, who farcically recounts his autobiographic anecdotes and intermittently mama pops up to conduct the make-believe conversations with him, everything is saturated with uplifting vivacity and hilarious skits, never too lewd or offensive, Götz Otto and Diane Kruger's cameos as a beefy masseur and an enema nurse are sidesplitting. Also the mockeries of professional psychiatrists are sterling bursting points. All in all, underscored by Wagner's magnificent Tannhauser Overture, Guillaume accomplishes his rite-of-passage by overcoming his fear of horse, and finally he understands who he is, and the last confession is to come out to be straight, feminine surely, but he is a heterosexual man who loves woman.

No melancholy, it is an out-and-out fine piece of French comedy, Guillaume is daring enough to take on both challenging characters, a young man half his age, and a middle-aged woman with a reserved caricature of frigidity and supremacy. He somehow pulls off both roles, with admirable talent of imitation to be wacky and sincere at the same time, it is not only a boy's path of knowing his true id, it is also an inconspicuous ode to a mother's profound attachment to her son, it may be overbearing, but the ethos of unconditional support is universally appealing.

score 8/10

lasttimeisaw 8 April 2014

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2994398/