YOU'LL GET OVER IT (Á CAUSE DE GARÇON) France, 2002
Director: Fabrice Cazeneuve
Stars: Julien Baumgartner, Julia Maraval, François Comar, Jérémie Elkaïm
Yet another troubled-gay-teen dragged Christ-like through the wringer of high-school-hell film. In this case, it's Vincent (Julien Baumgartner), a hero of the school swimming team, who openly dates Noémie (Julia Maraval) but secretly bangs an older man after school. Isolated and confused, Vincent misinterprets the sensual attentions of a new school mate, Benjamin (Jérémie Elkaïm) who doesn't miss a beat telling the whole school that Vincent tried to kiss him.
Instant turmoil results, with Vincent's bored teenage peers scribbling hurtful grafitti over every blank surface around the school yard, and the formerly popular Vincent sees his friends fall away like cruel, giggling anti-gay dominos. Even Vincent's burly boxer brother Régis turns on him.
The crisis-state of most adolescent homos lasts pretty much until the day they make like bats out of hell and finish school. Transgressions aren't readily tolerated in the self-conscious teenage playground let alone the boy's change rooms, where male teens break their backs to show how comparitively masculine and macho they are. Pansy boys are the perfect fodder for such peers, and the experence can be unendurable, with humiliations, beatings and and endless threat of malice shadowing every hor of every day from ages 14-18. Gay adolescence can be a misery, but then, adolescence in general can be a misery. Ever been a pregnant fifteen year old girl? I guess the difference is that gay teens lack support infrastructure and can suffer in silence, which is possibly why stories like this seem to exist in such a vaccuum. Each one of Vincent's peers seems to be sailing through while he gets broken on the wheel. It's nicely sentimental, and I guess the story stays in sharp focus, but dramatic potential goes south the minute didactic simplicity becomes the rule of the day. Every character in the film loses their identity and becomes a satellite for Vincent and his gay dilemna. Strange scenes such as Vincent inspecting his naked body in a mirror are truncated and smothered in an ambient-pop soundscape peppered with the occasional frustrated gasp, perhaps prefiguring the only noises Vincent will hear again once he starts going to gay bars.
Additionally, it's disappointing that all our coming out heroes have to be reasonably straight-acting kids that blend seamlessly with the other boys and who are often sporting heroes. Wouldn't it be a more interesting story, and perhaps a more realistic one, that told of an gratingly effeminate misfit who didn't need anyone to reveal his already obvious homosexuality?
