one of the publicity videos for Sauvage suggests the word can be translated into english as Savage, Unsociable or Wild ...
there's definitely plenty of savagery in the movie - which isn't surprising given that it's about a "street hustler" !
there's definitely plenty of wildness about the main character - he takes lots of drugs and sleeps on the streets or in parks
but i don't think he's unsociable. i guess two out of three aint bad.
i went to a screening recently with GB where the director did a Q&A - sometimes these events can be fairly dry with the director not wanting to give too much away, but this time the director was really forthcoming.
one of the things Camille talked about was that actors who read the script or auditioned for the role were really worried about the sex scenes, and wanted reassurance from him. he said that if they were worried before filming started, he knew that it would be a problem on the set - so he rejected all of them.
Camille said that the only thing Félix was concerned about was how to convey emotions considering the scarcity of dialogue in the film - he had no concerns about the violent sex scenes !
Félix gained his first major role in 120 RPM - but that hadn't been released by the time Camille was casting his film, so it was something of a leap of faith to cast the unknown as his lead. It worked out well for both of them, with Félix receiving rave reviews - and film currently has a 91% rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes
If you like european films (there's no tidy Hollywood ending), and are ok with rough gay sex scenes, then this is definitely an interesting movie to watch.
2 comments:
The Q&A also had an interesting discussion about whether it was a "gay" film. The director said that he had no problem with it being called a gay film, but said that it doesn't need to be labelled like that because the men who work as hustlers often don't fit into the neat boxes of "gay" or "straight". He had a fascinating example of two street hustlers he met while researching for the film. They both called themselves straight and had wives and kids back in another country, but in France they lived with each other, had a very very strong emotional attachment to each other, and made money by being paid for gay sex. You could suggest that those hustlers were in denial about being gay, but the director thought that a better characterization is that the labels "gay"/"straight"/"bi" etc don't work for people like that!
GB xxx
oh yeah - i forgot about that discussion !
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