Théo et Hugo dans le même bateau (2016)
Directed by Olivier Ducastel, Jacques Martineau

Film Review

Writer-directors Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau have virtually made a career of looking on the bright side of AIDS with such off-kilter films as Jeanne et le garçon formidable (1998) and Drôle de Félix (2000), so it's not so surprising that, after six years away from our cinema screens, they should return with more of the same - a film that accentuates the positive in that scariest of phrases: HIV positive.  Théo & Hugo dans le même bateau (a.k.a. Paris 5:59) is the classic boy-meets-boy love story which takes the bold step of starting off with its protagonists submitting to carnal desire even before they have so much as exchanged telephone numbers, let alone first names.  This being a Ducastel-Martineau film, it inevitably follows that one of the two gay singletons is HIV positive, and because the other was stupid enough not to take advantage of the condom dispenser offered by the sex club where they first get off he is likely to end up with the same medical status.  It is this somewhat forced pretext that allows the directors to deliver not just their best film to date, but also one of the most beautifully composed and truthful of gay love films ever made in France.  And you don't have to be gay to warm to the poetry and charm of this intimate low-key drama.

Although the film owes its title to Jacques Rivette's Céline et Julie vont en bateau (1974), it is more visibly modelled on another Nouvelle Vague era masterpiece, Agnès Varda's Cléo de 5 à 7 (1962).  With the events of the entire film taking place in real time, we are treated to a vivid slice of life lasting just over ninety minutes in which two young men have wild sex, get to know each other, wander aimlessly around Paris and, whilst visibly torn between lust and resentment over the possibility of AIDS transmission, gradually come to realise that they are an item.  In spite of the somewhat clunky dialogue the film's authors keep lumbering them with, the lead actors Geoffrey Couët and François Nambot manage to appear remarkably natural throughout the entire proceedings - it is their on-screen chemistry, not the script, that makes their characters' developing romance so utterly credible.  You'd hardly think that this was the first leading role for the two actors - both commit themselves one hundred per cent to the film and give it such a potent sur le vif impact that in some scenes (notably the one where Théo takes his first HIV treatment) it appears to cross over into documentary.  It is in the dialogue-free moments, where the central characters communicate through non-verbal cues, that their growing emotional attachment is most convincing and most strongly felt.

Before he/she gets to the emotional heart of the film, the spectator has to endure something of a challenge in its opening twenty minutes, which on the face of it appears calculated to limit the appeal of the film to gay men with a stomach for hardcore pornography.  Tempting though it might be, it's important not to fast-forward past this overture.  The soul contact between Hugo and Théo is apparent as soon as their eyes meet in a sex den that is so cluttered with naked male flesh, sensually bathed in a fiery red glow, that the patrons are scarcely recognisable as individual human beings.  The vital connection established, the anonymous sea of flesh falls away and the two protagonists face one another as two distinct individuals, their beautiful white bodies bathed in a luminescent glow to underline the fact that they are each other's ideal.  For some, the graphic exhibition of full frontal nudity and non-simulated sex that ensues may prove too much, but in their defence Ducastel and Martineau succeed in steering their film's controversial opener away from pornography and achieve what Gasper Noé failed magnificently to achieve in his film Love (2015), which is to film an intense and explicit sex scene without making it appear tacky, exploitative or just plain silly.

It's quite a transition when Théo and Hugo emerge from their crowded pit of carnal excess and suddenly pop up in the dark empty void that is Paris in the early hours.  The vast open spaces they now find themselves in mark them out as solitary loners desperately in need of something or someone to cling to.  The stimulus of the sex pit removed, the two men's physical animal craving retracts and a deeper spiritual bond develops between them.  They still do not know each other's names when they agree to spend the night together (what remains of it) and embark on an amiable bike ride across the capital.  A promising romance is suddenly placed in jeopardy when it is revealed that one of the two, Hugo, is HIV positive and the other, Théo, omitted to take suitable precautions.  As feelings of recriminations and guilt flare up, the two men appear set to go their separate ways but they meet up a short while later as Théo is waiting to get preventative treatment at an all-hours clinic.  Théo has good reason to beat the stuffing out of his new friend, and threatens to do just that a few scenes later on, but as they continue their solitary ambulations around an eerily beautiful neon-lit Paris it's by now clear that Cupid has done his worst.  Théo and Hugo are in the same boat not because they potentially share the same medical condition, but because their emotional attachment to one another is now so strong that nothing can part them.

This nocturnal ramble gives us, as well as the protagonists, a chance to see a side of the capital that is strikingly unfamiliar yet intensely alluring.  Paris in the early hours, where there is virtually no one about and the streets are practically devoid of traffic, is a spooky place, and Ducastel and Martineau use this to maximum effect, placing their protagonists in a setting that feels so strange as to be almost unreal, to make apparent the reality of the developing affection between Théo and Hugo.  There is a subtle lyricism to the film, which adds a sweet poetic resonance to Couët and Nambot's casually naturalistic performances.  The lead characters' own problems are put into context through a series of chance encounters with those who have much more to moan about - a young nurse working unsociable hours without complaint, a Syrian immigrant who (in a few sentences) gives a vivid sense of how intolerable life in his home country has become, and an elderly woman who must work as a hotel cleaner because her pension is inadequate.

In their ninety minute life-changing odyssey, Hugo and Théo are carried along not so much on a tide of passion but by a tender mutual regard that develops into something much deeper as they get to know one another and become more aware of their own personal needs.  Whatever the result of Théo's impending HIV test, it is certain that he and Hugo will be together for many years - and their mutual consent not to round off the night with another bout of love-making confirms as much.  'This is when it all starts', Hugo tells his elected soul mate at 05:59 precisely, before they descend the symbolic staircase that will take them on to their new life together - in the same boat, but on much calmer waters.

Film Synopsis

In a Parisian sex club, two young men are irresistibly drawn to one another.  Surrendering to the physical yearning that suddenly takes possession of them, they are united, body and soul, in a passion that is the most intense either has ever known.  A few minutes later, they are fully dressed and standing outside the club in a deserted street.  Neither knows anything about the other, not even his name, and yet they find it hard to part.  One of the men invites the other to accompany him on a bike ride back to his apartment.  Whilst riding through the empty streets of the capital, one of the men lets slip that, in the excitement of the moment, he forgot to use a condom.  Shocked by this revelation, his companion is forced to admit that he is HIV positive and insists that the other man visits a clinic straight away to get preventative treatment.  The latter, Théo, insists on making his own way to the clinic but the other, Hugo, cannot prevent himself from following him.  Afterwards, the two men continue wandering around the city on foot, one stricken with guilt, the other inwardly shaken and fearful of what the future holds for him.  Lust is what drew them together in the first place, but now a less familiar, more powerful set of feelings is preventing them from separating.  Before the sun rises, Théo and Hugo will discover that they have fallen in love...