Main cast: Sébastien Ricard (Christophe), Yury Paulau (Micha), Victor Fomine (Louis), and Chloé Germentier (Tracy Ling)
Director: Rodrigue Jean
I didn’t expect it when I randomly chose to watch L’acrobate, but there are what seems like actual, real deal sex scenes here. Awesome! Going down, plowing through, all the way to the happy ending – they are all here. It’s probably a good thing that the main actors, possible body doubles, and likely prosthetic pieces are all in good shape and conform to the conventional standards of male beauty – no ugly or fat people here, hurrah! – so there is no need to cover the eyes or devolve into nervous cringe-giggles here.
Christophe is the more straight-laced type who is looking to buy an apartment, when he discovers that a man needing crutches, Micha, is already squatting there. The latter ends up getting a mouthful of Christophe’s you-know-what. Christophe buys the apartment and allows Micha to stay as those two embark on a no-strings-attached “Don’t need your name, just shag!” affair. Of course, the two men have issues. Christophe has a very sick mother, while Micha is the acrobat in the title, who is now unable to do his thing due to a bad leg injury. Consequently, he is bitter, jealous of his replacement, and is paranoid that his own accident had been engineered by his rivals in his acrobatic show.
Everyone will be curious about the sex scenes, so let me get to those first. Yes, they are explicit, with graphic penetration and all, but I hesitate to call them erotic because the whole affair isn’t passionate or romantic – these two guys are clearly trying to use sex as a means to let out all those anger and other negative feelings they have bottled up inside them. Micha is quite an asshole here, treating Christophe like a means for free boarding, punching bag, and more, but it’s hard to feel sorry for Christophe because he clearly gets off from being treated that way. Their sexual interactions have a raw domination-submission vibe to them, with things getting kinky and even violent at times, but honestly, it’s a bit of an oversimplification to say that Micha has the upper hand all the time here. The whole thing is actually quite compelling to watch.
Because this is an arty movie, there is predictably no happy ending here, but it will be unrealistic to have one anyway, given the whole premise of this movie. No, nobody dies, but things are left in the air for the most part.
Despite everything though, despite the director Rodrigue Jean’s claims that this movie is all about exploration of intimacy and sex regardless of one’s sexual identity, at the end of the day this is still a movie about emo upper class gay men wringing their hands over issues that they could have attempted to address with their money and position of privilege if they had chosen to. Christophe, for example, can certainly afford to have a nice place and he has a nice job. Am I to believe that a well-to-do handsome man like him has a hard time finding people to sleep with in this time and age of hook-up apps and what not? Oh, so he has issues with his mother – don’t we all; get in line, sweetheart. There’s really nothing deep and meaningful here, other than to show me that even rich and hot people can have issues like everyone else. How reassuring, we are all truly in one big sad family.
Aside from that, this movie is over two hours long, mostly because there is a tendency to focus on some scenery for five or so minutes, maybe to make me think profound stuff as I gaze at the screen, or at people taking ages to do things like making coffee in what seems like slow motion. Then again, this is an arty movie, and directors of this kind of movies love to believe that the draggier and longer their movies are, the more they will be taken seriously.
Anyway, yes, L’Acrobate. There’s a story here, but who cares. Get your fast forward function ready, and skip to the pretty parts where hot men have sex. Think of this as a well-lit, more well-shot kind of adult film, with more human-looking hot people. You can pay attention to the story if you wish, but I personally think we all have better things to do.
