Film Review
Sauvage marks an impressive directorial debut for Camille Vidal-Naquet,
his first feature after making a number of short films that include his 2001
work
Backstage. For this harrowing hyper-realist portrait of
a vulnerable young man driven into the hazardous career of male prostitution,
the director draws heavily on his first-hand experiences working for the charity
Aux captifs la libération, which concerns itself with people living
on the streets. Vidal-Naquet's inexperience as a writer and director
is amply made up for by his sincerity, although the film's stuttering narrative
suffers from being somewhat repetitive and contrived.
To its credit, the aply titled
Sauvage tacitly avoids being crude
and sordid, or gratuitously shocking, but instead deals with the subject of
male prostitution in an honest and humane manner, although it spares us nothing
of its bitter physical and emotional consequences. The film treads
similar ground to André Téchiné's
J'embrasse pas (1991), but does
so with a far greater sense of immediacy, from which it draws its intensely
visceral emotional impact. The film presents the grim realities of male
prostitution in a sober, matter-of-fact manner, and it achieves its powerful
resonance by focusing throughout on its central character, played to perfection
by comparative newcomer Félix Maritaud.
It was in Robin Campillo's 2017 drama
120 battements par minute that
Maritaud first came to our attention. In Vidal-Naquet's film he is a
revelation, pouring everything he has into a performance of devastating intensity
and reality. Despite the bleakness and shocking nature of the subject matter,
Maritaud compels us to keep watching and we can but empathise with his fragile
gay character as he follows a trajectory that is more likely to lead him
to abject disaster than to the affectionate human coupling that he desperately
pines for. His character's feeble attempts to reach out for honest
tenderness are as heartbreaking as they are pathetic.
Using a handheld camera to stick close to the central protagonist at every
stage of his traumatic journey, the director endows his film with a raw documentary-like
realism, alongside which the sheer gut-wrenching poignancy of Maritaud's portrayal
lends it an extraordinary emotional potency. Intermittently distressing
and a tad uneven,
Sauvage doesn't make for comfortable viewing, but,
thanks to its arresting central performance and its director's temerity to
present life as it really is, the film makes such a deep impression that
it is bound to stay with you long after you have seen it.
© James Travers 2019
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Film Synopsis
Léo is a vulnerable 22-year-old man who is used to living on the
streets. To make the money he needs to get by, he is willing to do anything,
even selling his body to men he encounters on the streets of Strasbourg and
its wooded environs. He has no difficulty finding clients with ready
cash who are keen to take advantage of him, but the one thing that he truly
desires - genuine love - remains forever beyond his reach. Léo
can have no idea what the future has in store for him as he wends his solitary
way down an evermore precarious path...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.