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Writer/director Christophe Honoré
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Honoré on the set with Paul Kircher
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Kircher on the set with cinematographer Rémy Chevrin
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Honoré shooting a scene in Paris
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Honoré with Paul Kircher
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Honoré with Juliette Binoche and Kircher
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Honoré with Kircher, Vincent Lacoste, and Binoche at San Sebastian
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WINTER BOY (Le Lycéen) A- France (122 mi)
2022 ‘Scope d: Christophe Honoré
You haven’t hurt yourself Just as I
thought. It’s
no use Sheltering
from the wind We
are just seashells Scattered
over the sand. With no chance of return To
when the sea was calm. —Andrea
Laszlo De Simone, “Conchiglie,” Conchiglie
- Andrea Laszlo De Simone [Letra - Lyrics - Parole] YouTube (4:58)
While some critics are finding this uninspired, others claim
it is the director’s best work to date, so it’s clear this is an impressionable
work that affects people differently, but this moody film is arguably Honoré’s
best effort since La
Belle Personne (The Beautiful Person) (2008) more than a decade ago. Emotionally raw and dramatically gripping,
this is extremely literary, recalling the autobiographical coming-of-age narrations
of Bresson’s Four
Nights of a Dreamer (Quatre nuits d'un rêveur... (1971) and Rohmer’s A
Summer's Tale (Conte d'été) (1996), a film dedicated to the director’s
father, with Honoré himself playing the role of the father, who dies early in
the film from a mysterious car accident, with questions surrounding whether it
might have been intentional, as the family is reeling from grief afterwards,
specifically the impressionable 17-year old son Lucas (Paul Kircher, son of
Irène Jacob, best known for her work with Krzysztof Kieślowski) who is the
centerpiece of the film. It recalls the
exact same teenage scenario in Honoré’s MA MÈRE (2004), though handled quite
differently, while death also plays a prominent part in his very first film, Seventeen
Times Cécile Cassard (Dix-sept fois Cécile Cassard) (2002), which was dedicated
“to my father; for my mother,” with bone-jarring metal music taking the place
of unspoken grief. So clearly this is a
familiar theme with this director, veering into the same territory as Krzysztof
Kieślowski’s THREE COLORS: BLUE (1993), André Téchiné’s Wild
Reeds (Les Roseaux Sauvages) (1994), Hirokazu Koreeda’s Maborosi
(Maboroshi no hikari) (1995), Nanni Moretti’s The
Son's Room (La stanza del figlio) (2001), Lynne Ramsay’s MORVERN CALLAR
(2002), Ned Benson’s 2014
Top Ten List #8 The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them, and two films by Kenneth
Lonergan, 2011
Top Ten Films of the Year #2 Margaret and 2016
Top Ten List #5 Manchester by the Sea.
In each of these films grief is a major element for the prominent
characters, where Honoré’s films show unusual levels of depth and complexity by
intensely exploring how love is like memory, never disappearing, forever etched
into the fabric of our lives, yet the intimacy of this film feels more overtly
autobiographical, with Lucas facing the camera interview style as he poetically
describes the inner realms of his thoughts, lost in a stream-of-conscious sea
of confusion, creating a theatrical effect that may be contradictory to what’s
happening onscreen, WINTER BOY | Official Clip |
Now Streaming YouTube (1:06). This confessional
voice-over narration continues throughout the film, with Lucas drowning himself
in excess and extremes to avoid thinking about the trauma of pain, yet he is
engulfed by it and can’t escape, filling him with an anger that his teenage
self can’t begin to articulate, making questionable decisions with his life which
continue to reverberate. Set over the
course of one winter, where the coldness dominates the wintry landscape in much
the same way as Agnès Varda’s Vagabond
(Sans toit ni loi) (1985), the chaotic journey that follows blends together
a dual state of adolescence and tragic loss, as the emotional meltdown of the young
protagonist is a reflection of the filmmaker’s own experience, much like
Truffaut’s Antoine Doinel (Introduction
to The Adventures of Antoine Doinel), but is primarily a fictional
character, transporting Brittany to the mountainous town of Chambéry in the Rhône-Alpes
region. Initially seen happily attending
his last year of boarding school in rural France (with students all wearing
masks), Lucas has a gay boyfriend in Oscar (Adrien Casse), where his life as a
queer teenager seems normal, studying for exams, making new friends, developing
his first sense of independence, and feeling on the precipice of adulthood until
tragedy hits and his life implodes, bringing him closer to his mother Isabelle
(Juliette Binoche, the star of THREE COLORS: BLUE) and older brother Quentin
(Vincent Lacoste), as their lives start to spiral out of control, where attempts
to fill the void lead to no easy answers.
A beautifully drawn, melancholy film, exploring an emerging
gay identity, much of this is shot in darkness with claustrophobic close-ups by
longtime Honoré cinematographer Rémy Chevrin, whose restless handheld camera is
almost always in motion, capturing the inner restlessness of youth, mixing pastel
pinks and blues into the 35mm color scheme, yet as the family prepares for the
funeral, they go through a song playlist of what might and might not be
appropriate for the church memorial services, getting energized by Robert Palmer - Johnny and
Mary - YouTube (3:47) and a melodic synth-pop track, 'Electricity'
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (LE LYCÉEN) YouTube (1:48), as music has
a way of lifting their spirits, at least temporarily, allowing them to blow off
steam. Like Shakespeare’s Hamlet, his father’s memory is a ghostly
presence wreaking havoc through most of the film, gone but not forgotten,
leaving Lucas wracked with guilt, literally tortured and consumed by the loss,
unable to make sense of it all. Inevitably
the brothers get into a heated political disagreement that grows contentious at
a family dinner, but getting away for a week in Paris with his older brother,
an aspiring artist, allows Lucas a window into a completely different world,
one that fascinates but also isolates, as his stand-offish brother is busy establishing
his career for most of the visit so he ends up spending much of his time alone,
hardly the trip envisioned by their mother with Quentin showing him the various
art museums and cultural landmarks, including the Pont-Neuf bridge, ironically
a central focus of one of Binoche’s earlier films made more than thirty years
ago by Léos Carax, The
Lovers of Pont-Neuf (Les Amants du Pont-Neuf) (1991). Instead, Lucas spends most of his time with
Quentin’s black roommate Lilio (Erwan Kepoa Falé in his film premiere, also
appearing in Ira Sach’s Passages), a creator of erotic art who makes an
astonishing impression as both a lover and a father figure, where the most
memorable moment is playing a song on the guitar, Conchiglie
- Andrea Laszlo De Simone [Letra - Lyrics - Parole] YouTube (4:58), which
has an essential role in the film, with Lucas falling for him immediately, but out
of respect for Quentin, Lilio tempers his outbursts of affection and instead
becomes more of a big brother than his own vanishing sibling. In an attempt to blend the dreamy and somewhat
romanticized past with the present, Lucas erratically explores the boundaries of
his sexual self-discovery, delving into an anxiety of moral consequences that
tends to accompany the formation of sexual identity, viewing his suddenly
shattered life as a wild animal that needs to be tamed, yet the Yoshihiro Hanno
piano interludes have a calming effect, Bitter Hope for
Three Pianos (with Paul's dialogue) YouTube (4:58), linking the various
moods into a kind of understated poetry that continually seeks balance, much
like musical composer Joe Hisaishi provides for Miyazaki films. Exactly like the teenage character in MA MÈRE,
death has such a drastically destabilizing effect, as Lucas similarly attempts
an excessive carnal avenue to confront his mourning, with explicit scenes of
nudity, where a toxic mix of love and death has the capacity to destroy him,
yet in Greek mythology Eros and Thanatos also could not exist without the other
(Eros
and Thanatos: Freud's two fundamental drives). With passion and precision, having reread
Dostoyevsky’s novel The Adolescent before
shooting began, Honoré examines the field of possibilities, where the
existential landscape manifests itself in the literary exploration of the
voice-over narration, which has a way of introducing the audience to new
sequences, like chapter headings, charting the course for where we’re
heading.
While Lucas has questions about death, they are internalized
and remain largely unspoken, instead what happens is he lives an accelerated
life in such a short timeframe, at times becoming very heavy and very sad, but
only because that life is always just a bit out of reach, where he hasn’t yet
developed a capacity to understand, which is the real charm of the film, as it
develops before our eyes, like one of those old Polaroid photographs, and
viewers can lay their own claim to what they are experiencing. Nothing is spelled out, in the best way, and
there are no big dramatic moments, yet the quiet tenderness on display lures
the audience into the growing dynamic of his young life, where Kirchner is
something of a revelation here mastering the balancing act between the abyss
and joie de vivre, feeling a desperate urge to start anew, embodying the
complexities of human emotion that Honoré wants to convey through the cinematic
experience, with the drama slowly escalating over time, where there is a rhythm
to the narrations that include flashbacks, building to a powerfully impactive
conclusion. It’s the wandering fragility
of a young adolescent that stands out, however, as the title suggests, where
his story, and the surrounding lives associated with him, become pieces of a
jigsaw puzzle that need to be assembled into a whole, where only fragmented pieces
are shown along the way, exploring the psychology of the characters, withholding
the accumulative effect until they can all miraculously come together. In 2020 and 2021, Honoré staged Proust’s Le Côté de Guermantes at La
Comédie-Française, with its central theme “To find something, it is necessary
to admit we lost something,” then created an autobiographical play, Le Ciel de Nantes, for the Théâtre de
l’Odéon, which won the Critic’s Prize for best play. Both share motifs of memory and loss, which
may have inspired the direction of this film, recreating Honoré’s own
experience to a large extent, having lost his father at the age of 15, with the
film confronting his own traumatic history with excruciating honesty, at times
feeling out of time, which adds an appeal it would not otherwise have, reflecting
a time in the 80’s or 90’s, yet it’s treated in a very unique way that feels completely
contemporary, where the clever use of songs has a way of bringing back
memories, ushering in a flood of associative emotions, something this director
has always excelled at. The significance of the ensemble cast is a bit
surprising, as initially it’s largely a coming-of-age film, but the warmth and
openness of those on the periphery take on a more prominent role towards the
end, obviously having an impact on this impressionable life, where the director
likes to allow each of them to have their moments, while the narration at the
end is transferred to the mother, widening the scope of the film. Renowned for his complex narrative
techniques, Honoré’s film is quite meticulous about the various stages of
mourning, with each plunging into an emotional abyss, but it falls on Lucas to
carry the picture, to show us the way, and he’s a bit like Icarus flying too
close to the sun and getting scorched, yet in his darkest and bleakest hour before
the fall he pulls himself from the precipice and resurrects his spirit, with
death figuratively paving the road for the start of a new life, beautifully
expressed through the brilliant use of that earlier song about the ephemeral
nature of existence that Lilio sang for him, 'Conchiglie' -
Andrea Laszlo De Simone (LE LYCÉEN) YouTube (2:27). This has a staggering effect not only on
Lucas and his family, who are utterly floored by the maturity he’s finally capable
of expressing, but it’s a transforming moment for the audience as well, like an
emotional catharsis with a liberating effect, creating a lasting impression
that sticks with you, like that exhilarating music, Petite Maman 2021 - La Musique
du Futur YouTube (2:16), at the end of Céline Sciamma’s Petite
Maman (2021) that leaves you in a state of euphoria.
