Parky at the Pictures (DVD 16/5/2019)

With acclaimed writer Rebecca Lenkiewicz (who recently explored overlapping themes in Sebastián Lelio's Disobedience) helping polish the script, Colette represents a marked improvement on both Danny Huston's Becoming Colette (1991), which paired Mathilda May and Klaus Maria Brandauer as Colette and Henry Gauthier-Villars, and Westmoreland and Glatzer's own The Last of Robin Hood (2013), which starred Kevin Kline as the ageing Errol Flynn. Some will detect similarities with Tim Burton's Big Eyes (2014), which featured Amy Adams and Christoph Waltz as painter Margaret Keane and her controlling husband, Walter. But this affecting example of artistic collaboration approaches the topics of female repression, marital abuse, sexual liberation and art's ability to shape society in an accessible and distinctive manner.

In 1892, Henry Gauthier-Villars (Dominic West) takes the train from Paris to Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye in Burgundy to visit Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (Keira Knightley) and her parents, Sido (Fiona Shaw) and Jules (Robert Pugh). It's his fourth visit of the year and `Willy' brings Colette an Eiffel Tower snow globe as a gift. But, while Sido and Jules discuss their marriage prospects after waving Willy off to the station, he rendezvous with Colette in a nearby barn and she writes to him that night of her pride at having captured the heart of her father's old army buddy. 

Within a year, the married Colette is being introduced to such members of Willy's social circle as Madame de Caillvavet (Arabella Weir) and Count Muffat (Máté Haumann) and being judged for wearing provincial attire at a soirée. She takes pity on a tortoise being exhibited on a platter and informs Willy that the demimonde is full of pretentious and talentless nobodies. However, she is fond of Veber (Ray Panthaki) and Schwob (Al Weaver), two of the numerous ghost writers that Willy employs to churn out the theatre reviews and short stories he publishes under his own nom de plume. Colette even writes his correspondence for him. But she returns to mother after catching him with a courtesan and he comes to plead for forgiveness.

As Willy is in dire financial straits, he asks Colette to attempt a novel in 1895 and she bases Claudine At School on her own experiences. However, he rejects the manuscript for being too sweet and sincere when his readers require racy storylines. Moreover, he gets jealous at when he finds Colette flirting at Madame de Caillavet's salon with her son, Gaston (Jake Graf), and his new wife, Jeanne (Janine Harouni). But he is intrigued when Colette declares an interest in Jeanne rather than Gaston and he intimates that he might be prepared to turn a blind eye if Colette chose to stray in this direction. 

Three years later, with Willy so deeply in debt that bailiffs call at the apartment. As he empties a desk about to be repossessed, however, he finds Colette's manuscript and they work on it together to replace the more literary passages with some spice. Publisher Ollendorff (Julian Wadham) is delighted with the result and the couple not only enjoy bestselling success, but also spark a vogue for Claudine and her saucy antics. Having bought Colette an abandoned house in the country, Willy locks her in the study until she has completed Claudine in Paris and, despite her fury at being exploited and having her own contribution concealed, she complies and they score another hit. 

By 1900, they are the toast of Paris and a chance meeting in the Bois de Boulogne sparks an affair between Colette and Georgie Raoul-Duval (Eleanor Tomlinson), the bored American wife of an elderly munitions tycoon. It doesn't take long before Willy makes his own move on Georgie and Colette begins writing about the ménage after she sees her husband on her lover's balcony. Georgie's husband hears about the text and offers Ollendorf a sizeable sum to torch the entire print run. But, while Colette and George squabble, Willy merely retains the copyright and offers the property to another publisher and makes plans to bring Claudine to the stage, 

The role is taken by Polaire (Aiysha Hart), who sports bobbed hair and has a North African exoticism that makes Claudine all the more irresistible to the novelty hungry public. Willy talks Colette into cutting hair flowing locks and posing for photographs, as a range of merchandise takes the name of Claudine into every fashionable home in France. During one boisterous night on the town, Colette meets Matilde de Morny, Marquise de Belbeuf (Denise Gough), who is known as `Missy' and wears men's clothing. She realises that Colette is the voice behind the books and urges her to go public, especially as Willy has become obsessed with a fan named Meg (Shannon Tarbet), who dons a pinafore dress to seduce him. 

When Willy refuses to put Colette's name on the next Claudine volume, she stalks into the streets in a three-piece suit. Moreover, she starts taking acting and movement classes with Wague (Dickie Beau) and Willy cuts a deal for her to perform with Missy at the Moulin Rouge, where they cause a sensation in 1904 by sharing the first same-sex kiss on the Paris stage. However, during her father's funeral, Colette ponders the idea of divorcing Willy, as he wants to sell the house at Besançon to clear off his debts. She is virtually living with Missy and Sido urges her to make a clean break. But she feels sorry for Willy having to scrape a living with Meg as his new scribe and goes along with his idea to make a Claudine film. 

On a tour of the provinces with Wague's music-hall company, Colette bumps into Ollendorf, who breaks the news that Willy has sold the rights to the Claudine novels for five thousand francs. Livid that Willy has gone behind her back, Colette is also heartbroken that he has failed to recognise that the books were the only thing keeping them together and she accuses him of killing their baby before walking out on him. He blusteringly tries to apologise and forbids her to leave and seeks to hurt her by having secretary Paul Héon (Johnny K. Palmer) burn the exercise books in which she had written down her memories, emotions and opinions. 

But he defies his master and Colette similarly rebels in refusing to speak to Willy after their divorce. Moreover, she uses her own name to publish The Vagabond about her acting experiences and is sufficiently lauded for her to become the most celebrated female writer in the history of French literature. A closing montage of monochrome photographs conveys her chic and steel, while her gaze reveals an intelligence, determination and vivacity that is largely absent from Keira Knightley's spirited, but typically mannered performance. Tending to set her face rather than suggest inner feeling through her eyes, Knightley looks the part without ever living it and, consequently, the film often feels more like a series of elegant tableaux vivants than an insightful psychological study. 

Having started out in the porn industry using the name Wash West, Westmoreland has come a long way since he and Glatzer debuted with The Fluffer (2001). But, while they impressed with Quinceañera (2006) and Still Alice (2014), which earned Julianne Moore the Academy Award for Best Actress, the duo have never been noted for over-stressing their socio-political message. Thus, while this flirts with modernity with its references to electric lighting, tandem bicycles and moving pictures, it plays frustratingly safe in its discussion of gender politics, with the result this adheres more closely to the Merchant-Ivory heritage strand than the punkier depictions of LGBTQ+ issues in other films made by co-producer Christine Vachon.  

Despite Westmoreland's light (fun de siècle) touch, Knighley's cause is hardly helped by the fact that Dominic West contributes such a bristling performance as Willy, as he uses the shoddy standards of the times to justify his monstrous betrayals in the boudoir and the study. Moreover, his tipsy table-top recitative about Claudine's charms leaves Knightley's supposedly salacious sarcophagus dance in the shade. Abetted by Luca Zucchetti's slick montages, the script limns the fin-de-siècle morality and mores rather more adeptly than it sketches the secondary characters, the majority of whom are paper thin. Even Missy is scarcely fleshed out and, as a result, her relationship with Colette seems inspired more by capricious whim than Sapphic passion. However, the lack of nuance is primarily down to Knightley's limitations, as, while Gilles Nuttgens's camera ensures that she looks magnificent in Andrea Flesch's costumes against Michael Carlin's nattily Impressionistic interiors, the intensity of Thomas Adès's brooding score exposes the surficial nature of her acting technique.

It's doubtful whether any Western artist has been portrayed more often on screen than Vincent Van Gogh. Invariably depicted as a tormented soul, the Dutchman has been played by Kirk Douglas in Vincente Minnelli's Lust for Life (1956), Tim Roth in Robert Altman's Vincent and Theo (1990), Jacques Dutronc in Maurice Pialat's Van Gogh (1991) and Benedict Cumberbatch in Andrew Hutton's Van Gogh: Painted With Words (2010), Even Martin Scorsese took a cameo in the Arles segment of Akira Kurosawa's Dreams (1990), while the he was voiced by Robert Gulaczyk in Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman's hugely ambitious animation, Loving Vincent (2017). 

Documentarists have also been drawn to the artist, with Alain Resnais's Van Gogh (1948) being followed by Mai Zetterling and David Hughes's Vincent the Dutchman (1972) and Paul Cox's Vincent: The Life and Death of Vincent Van Gogh (1987), in which the lead was taken by Michael Gough and John Hurt. Indeed, Exhibition on Screen is so taken with the Post-Impressionist that it will follow Vincent Van Gogh: A New Way of Seeing (2015) with Van Gogh & Japan on 4 June.

For now, however, the focus falls on Julian Schnabel's At Eternity's Gate, which saw Willem Dafoe add Golden Globe and Oscar nominations to his victory in the Volpi Cup at the Venice Film Festival, Scripted by the director, Jean-Claude Carrière and Louise Kugelberg, this is a visually sumptuous picture that reflects Schnabel's painterly preoccupations. Yet, while it's markedly different in tone from his earlier artistic biopic, Basquiat (1996), the familiarity of the subject matter means that this isn't always as dramatically bold as Before Night Falls (2000) and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007), which earned Schnabel an Oscar nomination and the Best Director prize at Cannes. 

In Paris in 1888, Vincent Van Gogh (Willem Dafoe) is distraught when an innkeeper withdraws an offer to hang paintings on his wall. But, while dining with his art dealer brother, Theo (Rupert Friend), Van Gogh meets Paul Gauguin (Oscar Isaac), who is bored with the petty hierarchies within the Parisian art world and advises the Dutchman to go south in search of fresh inspiration. On arriving in Arles, Van Gogh paints his boots in a frenzy of creativity, while the wind rattles his windows. When he does venture outside, however, he is overcome by the light and the landscape, with even the dead sunflowers giving him an unusual sense of freedom and well-being. 

While supping at the inn, Van Gogh asks Madame Ginoux (Emmanuelle Seigner) if she knows of a place he could use as a studio. She finds him a yellow room nearby and Theo arranges the rent. However, Van Gogh is always short of funds and is spurned when he offers 50 francs for Ginoux to spend the night with him, as she knows he is broke and is put off by his poor hygiene. Barmaid Gaby (Stella Schnabel), is equally unimpressed when he tells her that he paints flowers to immortalise their beauty, although she offers to pose for him and scolds him when he suggests he could make her look younger. 

Ginoux gives Van Gogh a large accounts ledger and, when the weather improves, he fills it with sketches made with a pen that he fashions from a towering reed during one of his many walks through the surrounding countryside. Clambering through the hills in his ubiquitous straw hat, he is inspired by everything he sees and strives to see the eternity behind the landscape and capture the meaning of Nature. But he lashes out when a party of schoolchildren mock a painting of some tree roots and their teacher (Anne Consigny) calls Van Gogh a madman as she chivvies them away. Indeed, he is confined in an asylum after beating a boy who threw stones at him and he is relieved when Theo comes to visit him. He claims to have no idea why he has been committed, but admits to having visions and dark thoughts that he fears could drive him to murder or suicide. 

As he is too busy to stay, Theo arranges for Gauguin to come to Arles and pays his expenses in return for a steady supply of pictures. The friends work en plein air and agree that they need to start a revolution in art because the Impressionists have nothing new to say. They discuss the uniqueness of an artist's perspective and how environment can feed and shape inspiration. But they also disagree on matters of life and technique, with Gauguin chiding Van Gogh for the haste with which he paints Ginoux's portrait after he had painstakingly created a sketch. He claims he over-paints and daubs oils on the canvas so heavily that he comes closer to sculpture than painting. However, Van Gogh thrives in his company and is crestfallen when Gauguin announces that he has to return to Paris because he has sold some work and needs to be around intelligent people and not the stupid, wicked provincials he finds in Arles. 

In a desperate bid to dissuade Gauguin from leaving, Van Gogh cuts off his left ear. However, he is too late and gives the bloody ear to Gaby in a piece of paper with the words `Remember Me' written on it. Interviewed by Dr Felix Ray (Vladimir Consigny), Van Gogh tries to justify his action and reveals that he often hears the taunts of a malevolent spirit and may well have severed his ear to silence it. Agreeing that he drinks too much and needs to regain control of himself, Van Gogh is admitted to an institution at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. 

While he is locked away by the director (Vincent Perez) and subjected to water treatments with a facially tattooed ex-soldier (Niels Arestrup), his paintings are exhibited in Theo's shop and his wife, Johanna (Amira Casar), reads an article by Albert Aurier (Louis Garrel) commending the boldness of Van Gogh's style. However, the need to be outdoors prompts him to run away and he is recaptured after molesting a shepherdess (Lolita Chammah) he asks to pose for a picture. He is interviewed by a priest (Mads Mikkelsen) about his state of mind and his conviction that he has a God-given gift for painting. The cleric is sceptical about Van Gogh's talent and wonders why he produces works of such ugliness. But he defends his desire to paint things the way he sees them and refuses to believe (having studied theology as the son of a pastor) that the Almighty would saddle him with a corrupted vision. 

As the people of Arles have signed a petition to disbar him and he cannot bear the thought of living in the capital, Van Gogh settles in Auvers-sur-Oise, near Paris. Eager to help after being unable to sell any of his brother's paintings, Theo puts him in touch with admirer Dr Paul Gachet (Mathieu Amalric), who poses for a portrait and discusses Van Gogh's métier. He suggests he may well be ahead of his time and must leave a legacy for future generations to see what he was trying to achieve. Moreover, he confides that painting detaches him from the thoughts that torment him. Yet, he is sane enough to recognise that his talent depends upon his flaws and he admits that being cured would not be a blessing.

While out working on 27 July 1890, Van Gogh is approached by two boys brandishing weapons. They are playing at cowboys and meaning no harm when a gun goes off. Burying the canvas and tossing the firearms into the river, the youths plead with the wounded Van Gogh not to betray them and he staggers back to Gachet's house to insist that he has no idea why he has a bullet hole in his stomach. He dies before Theo can see him and is laid out in a simple coffin in his shop, surrounded by canvases that are inspected by curious customers. 

Closing captions reveal that Van Gogh withheld the truth about his demise after completing 75 pictures in the 80 days he resided in Auvers-sur-Oise. Moreover, Madame Ginoux never knew that he had returned the ledger containing 65 drawings by way of payment for her kindness and it was something of a miracle that it survived to be rediscovered 126 years later in 2016. A last flourish sees the screen yellow out, as Gauguin recalls his friend's love of that colour and how he had once daubed on the wall of his room in Arles, `I am the Holy Spirit. I am sound of spirit.'

Making extensive use of a handheld camera, abrupt facial close-ups and an array of perspectival distortions, Schnabel and cinematographer Benoît Delhomme strive to convey the world through Van Gogh's eyes. At one point, they even switch to negative-like monochrome (a conceit that feels as unnecessary as the shifts between English and French dialogue). Indeed, Schnabel frequently over-reaches and often lapses into pathos, as in having the artist crumble Provençal soil on his face or kneel with arms outstretched to feel the breeze in his ginger beard. But he and his co-writers are more successful at capturing the Dutchman's source of inspiration than they are at getting inside his troubled mind.

While Schnabel could rely on the visuals to fathom Van Gogh's creativity, he resorts to verbosity to discern the nature of his inner turmoil. He's fortunate that Dafoe is able to make the often florid discussions of demons, deities and delusions appear to come from the heart. However, the leading questions posed by Vladimir Consigny, Vincent Perez and Mads Mikkelsen feel as forced as the comparison of Van Gogh and Jesus Christ as great men who were ignored during their lifetimes and feted in death. Much more credible are the conversations with Rupert Friend and Oscar Isaac, although Schnabel rather sits on the fence in gauging Gauguin's influence on Van Gogh's style and sanity. Indeed, it's a fellow `madman' who cuts through the nonsense to bluntly ask Van Gogh what he paints and his answer - `sunlight' - seems all the more poignant considering it's delivered in a darkened room in an asylum.

Given the difficulty of conveying artistic ecstasy on screen, Schnabel is right to employ such experiential immediacy, especially as Dafoe often assumes an outward serenity that belies his psychological distress. The borderline discordance of Tatiana Lisovskaya's piano and violin score ably reinforces these enigmatic contrasts, while Stéphane Cressend's production design avoids straining to recreate views and rooms as they are depicted on the celebrated canvases. Yet, while Schnabel matches Paul Cox in suggesting that painting for Van Gogh was tantamount to a messianic vocation (and one for which he was prepared to sacrifice himself so that others may believe), much of this occasionally self-consciously fragmentary account (which is named after an 1890 picture from Saint-Rémy that's also known as `Sorrowing Old Man') is overly familiar. When is someone going to follow Tate Britain's lead and make a film about the painter's time in Ramsgate and Isleworth?

Despite being so photogenic, the city of Strasbourg has only rarely been used effectively as a feature backdrop. Besides the likes of Valeria Sarmiento's L'Inconnu de Strasbourg (1998), Philippe Claudel's Tous les soleils (2011) and Catherine Corsini's An Impossible Love (2018), the standout picture is José Luis Guerin's In the City of Sylvia (2007), which not only captured the look of the Alsatian capital, but also its atmosphere. This may not be the best time to release a film set in the home of the European Parliament, but Camille Vidal-Naquet's debut, Sauvage, sets its focus elsewhere, as it invokes the spirit of Stuart Rosenberg's Cool Hand Luke (1967) and Agnès Varda's Vagabond (1985) in producing the most unflinching study of French rent boys since Robin Campillo's Eastern Boys (2013).

Following an assignation with a client posing as a doctor (Lionel Riou), Léo (Félix Maritaud) heads to a popular cruising spot on the outskirts of Strasbourg and is invited by Ahd (Eric Bernard) to join him in a threesome with a disabled man (Lucas Bléger). As Ahd is reluctant to kiss, the john offers him extra money to embrace Léo, who is taken aback when Ahd pushes him away after a couple of tentative pecks. Consequently, he tries to give Ahd the cold shoulder when they run into each other at the pick-up point. However, he is tickled into submission and spends the day getting high with Ahd's pals. He is put out when Ahd disappears with the only woman in the group, but winds up snuggling up to him when they share a bed for the night because, as Ahd insists, they are not animals. 

Back at the woods, Ahd asks Léo why he kisses the clients and warns him that enjoying the work will keep him on the streets. He reveals that he is straight, but would cheerfully shack up with a man who would take him away from his mundane life. At a club that night, one of Ahd's regulars (Joël Villy) invites him home and promises to buy him some clothes if they can spend the night together. Not wanting to be alone, Léo sidles across to an ageing librarian (Jean-Pierre Baste), who takes him back to his apartment to show him some of his rare books. After abandoning sex because it is too painful, the old man reminisces about watching his wife brushing her hair before bed and he is touched when Léo asks if it would be okay to stay so they could sleep in each other's arms. 

During a night shift at the rendezvous, Léo wanders over to a luxury motor and is chatting to the driver when Ahd ushers him away and informs him that The Pianist (Jean-François-Charles Martin) is into blood and violence. They spend the next day smoking near the airport runway with Ahd's pals and they watch the departing planes with envy. Subsisting on stolen fruit and scraps found in litter bins, the scrawny Léo has a coughing fit and one of the group offers him a cotton shirt to stay warm. As he sleeps rough, however, Léo has no way of keeping clean and a pierced couple (Nicolas Fernandez and Nicolas Chalumeau) consider asking him to leave because he smells. Ultimately, they use and abuse him with an outsize butt plug and send him packing without his fee. 

He seeks out Ahd to help him get his money and he is furious with him for approaching him when he's with his sugar daddy. However, he agrees to mug one of the punks and gets so angry with Léo for placing him in a compromising position that he beats him up on the street. Feeling rough, Léo consults a doctor (Marie Seux), who discovers that he has asthma and a tubercular-related problem. As she is examining him, Léo wraps his arms around her and she allows him to hug her because he is so clearly starved of affection. She questions him about his work and his friendship with Ahd and suggests that he should think about going cold turkey to cure his addiction to crack and crystal meth. When he seems puzzled why he would want to give up one of the few things that makes him happy, the doctor smiles sadly at him, as he seem so naive at 22 that she worries how he will find an alternative path. 

Missing Ahd, Léo is pleased to see the return of Mihal (Nicolas Dibla) after Ahd cut his skull open during a fight about discount prices. They go to a club together and pick up a bearded man (Thierry Desaules), who invites them back to his mother's apartment. Mihal gives Léo a drug to inject into the tip of his penis in order to render the john unconscious so they can burgle the place. He has no qualms about robbing the man, but only takes a stapler to repair the tear that Ahd made in his jacket during their tussle. Waking in the park the next morning, Léo reluctantly joins Mihal and his mates in a game of football, but he feels faint and is amused when Mihal insists on trying his asthma inhaler. 

Spurned by Ahd again, Léo hooks up with Claude (Philippe Ohrel) on the railway bridge. He is Quebecois and hints that he would be happy to take Léo with him when he returns. It's his first time with another man and is calmly sympathetic when Léo coughs up blood during sex. Claude offers to find him a doctor and invites him to stay while he recovers. But Léo calls him old and ugly and storms out in annoyance that his weakness has made him vulnerable and emphasised his loneliness. He goes to the sugar daddy's place and attacks him when he discovers that Ahd is going to live with him in Benidorm. Genuinely fond of Léo, Ahd urges him to find an older man because he's a romantic and needs to have love. 

Distraught, Léo wanders the streets and suffers from excruciating abdominal pains. In a daze, he gets into The Pianist's car and Claude finds him staggering along the railway bridge several hours later after he has been savagely mistreated. Holding him in a Pietà pose, Claude promises Léo that everything will be okay and he looks remarkably healthy when he is signed off by a rehab doctor (Philippe Koa). He asks about his plans to move to Montreal with Claude and admits that he is concerned that he will break his friend's heart. But Léo seems attached to Claude when he meets him outside the clinic and kisses him while waiting for their plane at the airport. When Claude goes off to buy something, however, Léo realises that he is making a mistake and he strips off the jumper and shirt he is wearing to feel the sun on his skin, as he rushes back to the woods, where the camera leaves him curled in a ball under his new jacket. 

With so many scenes being staged near places of departure, it's almost inevitable that Léo will choose to remain in the personal hell he is too afraid to leave. As next to nothing is revealed about his background and few palpable insights are offered into his psyche, we are left to speculate why Léo is on the streets and why he is so resistant to assistance. Interestingly, in spite of the fact that three scenes (one bogus) take place in a doctor's surgery, no mention is made of Léo's sexual health and there are no references to condoms throughout the entire picture. This blasé attitude to safety is all the more surprising considering Félix Maritaud's involvement in Robin Campillo's AIDS drama 128 Beats Per Minute. But romantic recklessness is key to a feral survival instinct rooted in a self-destructive unwillingness to protect himself and Vidal-Naquet makes no apologies for the film frequently sharing all the impersonality of a trick. 

As he is so often depicted in unrelenting close-up, the deceptively impassive Maritaud is very much the centre of the story, with the other rent boys and their clients largely being stereotypes (although it should be noted that several of the hustlers are immigrants, while their patrons are all white and middle-class). Jacques Girault also sticks close to Maritaud when he is stomping through the streets, with jittery handheld imagery often being shredded to add to the audiences sense of disorientation by editor Elif Uluengin. Yet Vidal-Naquet is careful to avoid overt voyeurism, as, while he lingers throughout the sordid encounter with the masochistic punks, he shows nothing of the sadistic tryst with The Pianist.

Strasbourg is consciously presented in an anywhere manner, although Charlotte Casamitjana's interiors for the various assignations are thoughtfully designed to show Léo, Ahd and Mihal as being outsiders in any setting apart from the gay clubs, where they can be themselves while gyrating in strobe-lit anonymity. On occasion, Romain Trouillet's score betrays more emotion than the actors, but Vidal-Naquet wisely leaves the most poignant moment silent, as Léo seeks a moment of maternal solace from the doctor who has seen enough disaffected youths to know that proffered help isn't always accepted.
Despite being so photogenic, the city of Strasbourg has only rarely been used effectively as a feature backdrop. Besides the likes of Valeria Sarmiento's L'Inconnu de Strasbourg (1998), Philippe Claudel's Tous les soleils (2011) and Catherine Corsini's An Impossible Love (2018), the standout picture is José Luis Guerin's In the City of Sylvia (2007), which not only captured the look of the Alsatian capital, but also its atmosphere. This may not be the best time to release a film set in the home of the European Parliament, but Camille Vidal-Naquet's debut, Sauvage, sets its focus elsewhere, as it invokes the spirit of Stuart Rosenberg's Cool Hand Luke (1967) and Agnès Varda's Vagabond (1985) in producing the most unflinching study of French rent boys since Robin Campillo's Eastern Boys (2013).

Following an assignation with a client posing as a doctor (Lionel Riou), Léo (Félix Maritaud) heads to a popular cruising spot on the outskirts of Strasbourg and is invited by Ahd (Eric Bernard) to join him in a threesome with a disabled man (Lucas Bléger). As Ahd is reluctant to kiss, the john offers him extra money to embrace Léo, who is taken aback when Ahd pushes him away after a couple of tentative pecks. Consequently, he tries to give Ahd the cold shoulder when they run into each other at the pick-up point. However, he is tickled into submission and spends the day getting high with Ahd's pals. He is put out when Ahd disappears with the only woman in the group, but winds up snuggling up to him when they share a bed for the night because, as Ahd insists, they are not animals. 

Back at the woods, Ahd asks Léo why he kisses the clients and warns him that enjoying the work will keep him on the streets. He reveals that he is straight, but would cheerfully shack up with a man who would take him away from his mundane life. At a club that night, one of Ahd's regulars (Joël Villy) invites him home and promises to buy him some clothes if they can spend the night together. Not wanting to be alone, Léo sidles across to an ageing librarian (Jean-Pierre Baste), who takes him back to his apartment to show him some of his rare books. After abandoning sex because it is too painful, the old man reminisces about watching his wife brushing her hair before bed and he is touched when Léo asks if it would be okay to stay so they could sleep in each other's arms. 

During a night shift at the rendezvous, Léo wanders over to a luxury motor and is chatting to the driver when Ahd ushers him away and informs him that The Pianist (Jean-François-Charles Martin) is into blood and violence. They spend the next day smoking near the airport runway with Ahd's pals and they watch the departing planes with envy. Subsisting on stolen fruit and scraps found in litter bins, the scrawny Léo has a coughing fit and one of the group offers him a cotton shirt to stay warm. As he sleeps rough, however, Léo has no way of keeping clean and a pierced couple (Nicolas Fernandez and Nicolas Chalumeau) consider asking him to leave because he smells. Ultimately, they use and abuse him with an outsize butt plug and send him packing without his fee. 

He seeks out Ahd to help him get his money and he is furious with him for approaching him when he's with his sugar daddy. However, he agrees to mug one of the punks and gets so angry with Léo for placing him in a compromising position that he beats him up on the street. Feeling rough, Léo consults a doctor (Marie Seux), who discovers that he has asthma and a tubercular-related problem. As she is examining him, Léo wraps his arms around her and she allows him to hug her because he is so clearly starved of affection. She questions him about his work and his friendship with Ahd and suggests that he should think about going cold turkey to cure his addiction to crack and crystal meth. When he seems puzzled why he would want to give up one of the few things that makes him happy, the doctor smiles sadly at him, as he seem so naive at 22 that she worries how he will find an alternative path. 

Missing Ahd, Léo is pleased to see the return of Mihal (Nicolas Dibla) after Ahd cut his skull open during a fight about discount prices. They go to a club together and pick up a bearded man (Thierry Desaules), who invites them back to his mother's apartment. Mihal gives Léo a drug to inject into the tip of his penis in order to render the john unconscious so they can burgle the place. He has no qualms about robbing the man, but only takes a stapler to repair the tear that Ahd made in his jacket during their tussle. Waking in the park the next morning, Léo reluctantly joins Mihal and his mates in a game of football, but he feels faint and is amused when Mihal insists on trying his asthma inhaler. 

Spurned by Ahd again, Léo hooks up with Claude (Philippe Ohrel) on the railway bridge. He is Quebecois and hints that he would be happy to take Léo with him when he returns. It's his first time with another man and is calmly sympathetic when Léo coughs up blood during sex. Claude offers to find him a doctor and invites him to stay while he recovers. But Léo calls him old and ugly and storms out in annoyance that his weakness has made him vulnerable and emphasised his loneliness. He goes to the sugar daddy's place and attacks him when he discovers that Ahd is going to live with him in Benidorm. Genuinely fond of Léo, Ahd urges him to find an older man because he's a romantic and needs to have love. 

Distraught, Léo wanders the streets and suffers from excruciating abdominal pains. In a daze, he gets into The Pianist's car and Claude finds him staggering along the railway bridge several hours later after he has been savagely mistreated. Holding him in a Pietà pose, Claude promises Léo that everything will be okay and he looks remarkably healthy when he is signed off by a rehab doctor (Philippe Koa). He asks about his plans to move to Montreal with Claude and admits that he is concerned that he will break his friend's heart. But Léo seems attached to Claude when he meets him outside the clinic and kisses him while waiting for their plane at the airport. When Claude goes off to buy something, however, Léo realises that he is making a mistake and he strips off the jumper and shirt he is wearing to feel the sun on his skin, as he rushes back to the woods, where the camera leaves him curled in a ball under his new jacket. 

With so many scenes being staged near places of departure, it's almost inevitable that Léo will choose to remain in the personal hell he is too afraid to leave. As next to nothing is revealed about his background and few palpable insights are offered into his psyche, we are left to speculate why Léo is on the streets and why he is so resistant to assistance. Interestingly, in spite of the fact that three scenes (one bogus) take place in a doctor's surgery, no mention is made of Léo's sexual health and there are no references to condoms throughout the entire picture. This blasé attitude to safety is all the more surprising considering Félix Maritaud's involvement in Robin Campillo's AIDS drama 128 Beats Per Minute. But romantic recklessness is key to a feral survival instinct rooted in a self-destructive unwillingness to protect himself and Vidal-Naquet makes no apologies for the film frequently sharing all the impersonality of a trick. 

As he is so often depicted in unrelenting close-up, the deceptively impassive Maritaud is very much the centre of the story, with the other rent boys and their clients largely being stereotypes (although it should be noted that several of the hustlers are immigrants, while their patrons are all white and middle-class). Jacques Girault also sticks close to Maritaud when he is stomping through the streets, with jittery handheld imagery often being shredded to add to the audiences sense of disorientation by editor Elif Uluengin. Yet Vidal-Naquet is careful to avoid overt voyeurism, as, while he lingers throughout the sordid encounter with the masochistic punks, he shows nothing of the sadistic tryst with The Pianist.

Strasbourg is consciously presented in an anywhere manner, although Charlotte Casamitjana's interiors for the various assignations are thoughtfully designed to show Léo, Ahd and Mihal as being outsiders in any setting apart from the gay clubs, where they can be themselves while gyrating in strobe-lit anonymity. On occasion, Romain Trouillet's score betrays more emotion than the actors, but Vidal-Naquet wisely leaves the most poignant moment silent, as Léo seeks a moment of maternal solace from the doctor who has seen enough disaffected youths to know that proffered help isn't always accepted.

It can't be easy following in the footsteps of a famous father, especially when he has a track record like Constantin Costa-Gavras. The Greek-born, French-based director (who turned 86 in February) became a master of the politically charged thriller and earned a Best Director nomination for Z (1969), which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, as well as a Best Director prize at Cannes for Special Section (1975) and the Palme d'or for Missing, which tied with Serif Gören's Yilmaz Güney-scripted drama, Yol, in 1982. But Romain Gavras made a steady start with the offbeat Franco-Irish road movie, Our Day Will Come (2010), and he returns from a stint shooting videos and commercials with The World Is Yours, which puts a Tarantinoesque spin on Georges Lautner's classic crime caper, Les Tontons flingueurs (1963).

Forever being nagged by mother Danny (Isabelle Adjani) to find a nice girl and settle down, Parisian twentysomething François Farès (Karim Leklou) is determined to get out of his banlieue tenement and make something of himself. Currently, he deals drugs for Putin (Sofian Khammes), a neighbourhood crook who breaks into the pound to rescue his demanding dog, Ibra. But Farès and his sleazy lawyer, Vincent (Philippe Katerine), have lined up a deal to import Mister Freeze ice pops into the Maghreb and he needs the €80,000 his mother has been keeping in trust. 

Unfortunately, as he discovers during one of Danny's periodic shoplifting raids at the Galeries Lafayette, she has lost the money playing poker and a pistachio eclair at a posh hotel (cue a cameo by American director John Landis) scarcely compensates for his loss. So, when Putin asks him to go to Benidorm to make contact with a Scottish supplier named Bruce (Sam Spruell), Farès agrees to make the run with his loyal, but dim sidekick, Henri (Vincent Cassel), and a pair of stoner goons supplied by Putin, Mohamed 1 (Mounir Amamra) and Mohamed 2 (Mahamadou Sangaré). 

There's a snag, however, as Putin demands €10,000 to customise the car they will use to smuggle the consignment. When Danny fails to come up with a loan after Farès goes to see her at the café where she hangs out with his numerous godmothers (who make him perform a pot belly dance), he talks Henri into posing as fake cops so that they can raid Danny's poker game and steal the seed money. Naturally, she is furious with Farès for making her look bad in front of her friends. But regular accomplice Lamya (Oulaya Amamra) is amused by his effrontery and agrees to join the expedition as the designated girl to ease their passage through customs. 

While the Mohameds teach Henri about climate change beside the hotel pool, Farès allows his crush on Lamya to get the better of him and they tumble into bed together. However, she is hurt that he agrees to her insistence on paying €500 for sex and tries to bolt. But she is quickly caught and brought back to the room before Bruce arrives with his young daughter, Brittany (Gabby Rose), and henchman Glasgow Ranger (Michael John Treanor). He convinces Farès to let him take the money and return in an hour with the keys to the loaded car. When the deadline passes, the Mohameds accuse Farès of being a fool and go in search of the Scotsman to reclaim the cash. 

Rejecting Henri's offer to execute the Mohameds, Farès goes looking for Bruce with Lamya and they find him in a karaoke bar. He explains to Farès that he refuses to deal with Putin because he's young and unknown and has no intention of risking being linked into a narco-terrorist operation in which drug money is used to finance fundamentalist activity. Having entered the bar alone, Lamya seduces the Scotsman with her rendition of Toto's `Africa' and is slipping away to Bruce's hotel room when Farès tries to carjack them at gunpoint. Despite sympathising with his plight, the supplier suggests that Farès goes home before he gets too far out of his depth and Lamya avoids eye contact as her friend is beaten to a pulp by Ranger and his bully boys. 

Out of options, Farès calls Danny, who flies to Spain to break into the safe in Bruce's room. She is far from impressed with her son's performance and strides through the hotel lobby with the confidence of an old hand. However, the safe proves to be empty and Danny has to kidnap Brittany who was listening to music in her room. Farès is appalled and accepts Henri's suggestion to lay low with his old mucker, René (François Damiens), who has bought himself a swanky villa with the proceeds of a people smuggling racket. While he flirts with Danny, Farès bonds with Brittany while comparing notes on exploitative parental neglect and she shows him how to access the account on her phone that Bruce has set up to conduct his drug drops.

Farès tracks down the Mohameds (who have been driving around town bashing Brits) and fills them in about a planned raid on a delivery arriving the next night by boat. He also brings Danny, Henri and René up to speed and Lamya decamps from Bruce's hideout to join them at the villa to make their final preparations. With Brittany happy to help Farès, he leaves Henri to take a speedboat full of migrants to raid the freighter, while Danny (in a burqini) makes contact with the Scot at a water park. Promising Lamya that he will take care of her, Farès returns Brittany to her father just as Vincent makes a phone call in a Spanish accent alerting police to a non-existent bomb in the girl's knapsack. 

As the cops swarm over Bruce's gang and he curses his daughter for betraying him, Henri is driven by his half-digested knowledge about the Illuminati to torch the bulk of the stash before making a getaway with the Mohameds. However, Farès allows Danny to be arrested at the perimeter fence of the water park because he has had enough of her ruining his life. He also permits the Mohameds to steal the drugs from under Henri's nose. But he and Vincent have arranged for his blonde-dyed Congolese client, Dembèle (Boris Gamthety), to ambush them as they hand them over to Putin. While he is gunned down, the Mohameds are integrated into Dembèle's gang and we see Danny having a ball behind bars and Henri chilling out in his very own camper van before the final shot shows Farès have a momentary crisis of conscience before submerging in the swimming pool at the luxury North African villa he now shares with Lamya. 

Tying up the loose ends with a neatness that epitomises this slick, if occasionally boorish flick, Gavras and co-writers Karim Boukercha and Noé Debré (who has collaborated in the past with Jacques Audiard and Michaël R. Roskam) toss in a teasing sense of ambiguity that edges this a notch above the genre norm. The debts to Brian De Palma, Quentin Tarantino and Guy Ritchie seem obvious, while it's tempting to suggest that Karim Leklou spent some time studying the screen mannerisms of iconic crime actor Lino Ventura. But the action most bears similarities to Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah's Gangsta (2018), which also alluded to issues of race and class while keeping the focus firmly fixed on the intricacy of the scams. 

Ably served by cinematographer André Chemetoff and editor Benjamin Weill, Gavras demonstrates the visual flair that has become his trademark without being flashy. He also relishes quieter sequences, such as the choice exchange between Leklou and Gabby Rose on nightmare parenting, while Vincent Cassel's ongoing struggle to understand the conspiracy theory clips he keeps watching on his phone is also drolly handled. As the emasculating matriarch from hell, Isabelle Adjani fully exploits her Algerian roots to play up the exotic Ab-Fabbish eccentricity of a character who could easily prosper in a spin-off picture of her own. Less is demanded from Oulaya Amamra, however, who suffers from the chauvinist skein that coils itself around the often cartoonish proceedings in a much more distasteful manner than the self-consciously provocative debunking of racial stereotyping in French cinema.