Lie with Me review – a spi­ralling queer por­trait of ardent memory

The ene­my of romance is heart­break, but both are reli­ably sharp tools for a writer as they craft a work of fic­tion from imag­i­na­tive sce­nar­ios that may con­tain just inklings of real­i­ty. It is bet­ter to have love and lost than nev­er loved at all, they say, but Lie With Me pos­es that a haunt­ing romance may, in fact, nev­er tru­ly be over, and ren­der a lover inca­pable of love. Olivi­er Peyon’s queer French dra­ma, based on Phillippe Besson’s crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal nov­el, is all about these mus­ings on romance that are at once defin­ing and devastating.

With round­ed tor­toise­shell glass­es (iden­ti­cal to Besson’s) and a scarf per­pet­u­al­ly wound around his neck, pro­lif­ic romance writer Stéphane Bel­court (Guil­laume De Ton­quédec, aban­don­ing his comedic sen­si­bil­i­ties here) returns to his home­town of Cognac for the first time in 35 years. He’s been invit­ed to pro­mote a local dis­tillery; the his­tor­i­cal com­mune is known for its name­sake bev­er­age, which iron­i­cal­ly Stéphane can’t stom­ach – the burn­ing seems to slide from his throat to his heart with just one sip. These bar­rels of tra­di­tion­al cognac are piled high and left to rest for decades, age­ing qui­et­ly as the world around them con­tin­ues, just like Stéphane. Revis­it­ing home, mem­o­ries of his first love come pour­ing out with irre­press­ible power.

Lie With Me is told with two par­al­lel nar­ra­tives; the present day Stéphane as a local celebri­ty in Cognac, and his youth in 1984 as a 17-year-old adorably dorky stu­dent (played by Jérémy Gillet). Through flash­backs, the all-encom­pass­ing inten­si­ty of young love between Stéphane and Thomas Andrieu (Julien De Saint-Jean), an edgy stu­dent that girls fawn over, is unearthed. Their intox­i­cat­ing affair, clan­des­tine in nature and taint­ed with shame, is a for­ma­tive but heart­break­ing mem­o­ry that Pey­on anchors with vignettes of mount­ing headi­ness in pri­vate bed­rooms, aban­doned gym­na­si­ums and hid­den lakes.

After decades, hear­ing the sur­name ​“Andrieu” is a shock to his sys­tem that ignites a long-dor­mant part of Stéphane’s heart. It’s not Thomas he stum­bles upon, but his lover’s son, Lucas (Vic­tor Bel­mon­do), who shares the same pierc­ing, dis­man­tling gaze. They’re drawn togeth­er, unit­ed in a shared intrigue about the man that aban­doned them both. A cere­bral explo­ration of infat­u­a­tion with its rever­ber­a­tions begins to take cen­tre stage but ini­tial poet­i­cism bor­ders on sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty in the final act with a grand speech that feels all too neat, even for a writer.

Mar­tin Rit’s styl­ish cin­e­matog­ra­phy arrives with roman­ti­cism, but the choice to shoot con­ver­sa­tions from metres away and set heat­ed argu­ments in stark shad­ows dis­rupts the illu­mi­na­tion that Lie With Me oth­er­wise achieves. The film holds sim­i­lar­i­ties to François Ozon’s swel­ter­ing mid-1980s romance Sum­mer of 85, both nov­el adap­ta­tions that wres­tle with gay male romance on the brink of the AIDS cri­sis and lust over a motor­bike-rid­ing lover. Where Ozon com­mits to ten­der­ly unrav­el­ling the emo­tion­al enig­ma of young lovers, Peyon’s young char­ac­ters aren’t afford­ed the same nar­ra­tive space despite their crack­ling chem­istry and exquis­ite per­for­mances. The heartache of wast­ed time and missed love is a famil­iar are­na in queer dra­ma and while Lie With Me rets on clas­sic tropes, it still makes for a mov­ing reflec­tion on ado­les­cent love.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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