| since the release of one gay feature you just have to have seen. Le Clan aka Le Clan des Hommes aka Three Dancing Slaves is a lovingly-photographed and highly homoerotic study of bored, beautiful masculinity. |
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Directed by openly gay French actor-director Gaël Morel
and starring Stéphane Rideau and Nicolas Cazalé, this 2004 feature never made
it on cinema release in the UK, but for OutUK Ross van Metzke has been recalling his great love of the movie. This is one of the most raw and disturbing homoerotic films I’ve seen in years, but it manages to escape being deemed borderline pornography and succeeds at being something greater — cinema. As the title suggests, brothers Marc, Christophe and Oliver bond and butt heads over the recent death of their mother and the weak, passive aggressive abuse from their father. |
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Marc, a body Nazi who in one scene shaves his already bare face and trims his pubes
with his dad standing just feet away, is the rebel. Christophe, fresh from jail and
trying to get it together for his family, is the hypocrite. And Oliver, tattooed,
shy and exploring his sexuality, is the likely homo of the bunch.
Together, against a back drop of drugs, sex and violence, the brothers suffer the stresses of sexual awakening and exploitation. And director Gael Morel’s film boasts a mélange of sexual images and provocative dialogue. Metaphorically, a class of film buffs could have a field day with the sometimes Freudian, sometimes avante garde psycho-sexual situations at play here.
The most bold statement of this fine line between homosexuality and sexual confusion is when these brothers, still in mourning as they welcome Christophe home from jail, sleep together in the nude — their connection goes beyond the lines of what’s normal but, in their innocence and genuine confusion, it seems normal… as if they’ve done it their whole lives. Much of Morel’s film is up for interpretation, but one thing is for certain. For the voyeur and the truly curious literary mind, there’s enough on display here to sit contemplating for hours and emotion aplenty to debate in your mind. |
| Le Clan is available from Amazon. |