Director|Writer: Alain Guiraudie | Cast: Damien Bonnard, Christian Bouillette, Laure Calamy, India Hair, Raphael Thierry | 100min | Drama | France
After winning Best Director in Cannes Festival’s Un Certain Regard sidebar in 2013, for his intriguing thriller Stranger By the Lake, Alain Guiraudie came back to the main competition line-up with another eventful drama entitled STAYING VERTICAL
In the wild and wolf-inhabited plateaux of the Southern Massif Central it shares the same dark and absurdist humour as his 2009 outing The King of Escape. STAYING VERTICAL is also a similarly charming and queer oddity that its dorkish but likeable hero Leo (Damien Bonnard) an itinerant screenwriter who chances upon a single-mother and shepherd Marie (India Hair), while researching his writing.
This bucolic love story opens in the farm she shares with her father, the rough-handed ogre-like Jean-Louis (Raphael Thiry), and soon leads to the lovers fathering a child, but Marie will leave for pastures new when she realises Leo has no real future.
Leo feels satisfied by this outcome but Guiraudie has more quirky surprises in store for us in the shape of a strange local couple, Yoan (Basile Meilleurat) who he invites to audition on account of his wolfish looks – and a crabby old man, Marcel (Christian Bouillette), who is obsessed with talking about anal sex.
There’s a feeling that Leo is bisexual but this seems an option he’s ready to explore rather than a serious predilection. However, he does draw the line when approached by Marie’s father, more from the associative perspective rather than the sexual one. And this power of suggestion seeps through Guiraudie’s narrative for most of the film’s modest running time providing both a rich and seductive vein of dark humour and a ruminative meditation for the audience. As in The King of Hearts, all the male characters here share a fluid sexuality which is both appealing and freaky due to their associative and binding ties, as they are all fathers or father figures.
As the title STAYING VERTICAL suggests, this is a film about coping with what life throws in our direction and particularly in this remote part of France, it explores a poor community forced to get along and make the best of things in often challenging circumstances. Once again it also flags up the narrative of sexuality being an amorphous and moveable feast where comfort and support is often more imperative than erotic desire, and the often graphic sex that takes place is functional rather than heartfelt.
Despite its tonal uneveness, Guiraudie’s film contains some powerful political and societal themes. There are moments of wild beauty in the winding roads and bleak hillsides of this unexplored part of France and to reflect this remoteness, Guiraudie occasionally wanders into poetic scenes where Leo visits an alternative healer (Laure Calamy), and shocking ones where he is robbed by the same homeless people who he has helped during his visit to a nearby port.
The theme of wolves recurs again and again throughout the film. At first, they ravage the sheep, including Marie’s treasured sheepdog, appearing again at the end of the film bringing a satisfying feeling of closure and a chance for redemption for Leo, who up to now emerges as somewhat of a loser, albeit a kind-hearted one. There’s a sense here that men are the lost lambs of contempo society: in their quest to be connected with their emotions, they have ceased to fulfil their expectations as strong protectors of the fold. MT
CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 11-22 MAY 2016