Best Friend from Heaven (2017)

Best Friend from Heaven: Directed by Justin G. Dyck. With Derick Agyemang, Peggy Calvert, Brian Scott Carleton, Bob Charters. When a tragic accident takes the life of her dog, Tara is forced to cancel her wedding. With a little help from above, their small town rallies together to make sure these two are able to have the wedding of their dreams.

“Sauvage is the debut film of writer/director u003ca class=ipc-md-link ipc-md-link–entity href=/name/nm1283911/\u003eCamille Vidal-Naquetu003c/au003e, a former professor of film studies, and takes as its subject the daily grind of a male prostitute. Striking a delicate balance between misery porn and objectively delineating the day-to-day of being a sex worker, the film is undeniably bleak, but itu0026#39;s not what you would define as miserablism. Remaining detached from what it depicts, it adopts a clinically dispassionate approach, one that remains always non-judgemental. Intermixing the degrading reality of selling oneu0026#39;s self with unexpected moments of tenderness and warmth, Vidal-Naquet taps into something deeply compelling. Some will be put off by the (very) graphic sex scenes, the passivity of the main character, or the lack of much of a plot. However, for everyone else, although it certainly isnu0026#39;t multiplex fare, thereu0026#39;s a hell of a lot to admire here.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eSet in Strasbourg, Sauvage tells the story of Léo (an extraordinarily committed performance from relative newcomer u003ca class=ipc-md-link ipc-md-link–entity href=/name/nm9029751/\u003eFélix Maritaudu003c/au003e), a homeless, drug-addicted male prostitute, whose name, like those of his fellow sex workers, is never spoken in the film. As the film begins, Léo is attending a doctor (u003ca class=ipc-md-link ipc-md-link–entity href=/name/nm9847405/\u003eLionel Riouu003c/au003e), revealing bruises, a split lip, a nasty cough, and stomach pains. Upon examining him, the doctor appears to begin sexually molesting him. However, all is not as it seems in the scene, which is a genius way to open the movie. The episodic narrative then follows Léo from one sexual encounter to the next, occasionally focusing on his relationship with gay-for-pay prostitute Ahd (u003ca class=ipc-md-link ipc-md-link–entity href=/name/nm0076213/\u003eEric Bernardu003c/au003e), with whom he is in love. Wearing perpetually filthy clothes, he drinks from gutters and eats from bins, has a litany of physical ailments, and on two occasions, other characters comment that he smells bad.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eIn preparation for making the film, Vidal-Naquet joined an outreach charity as a way to meet young male prostitutes. Intending to go on only a few runs over the course of a couple of weeks, he ended up spending three years visiting the men, all the while refining the script to make it as true to life as possible (all of Léou0026#39;s sexual encounters in the film come from stories told by the actual sex workers).u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe film reveals nothing about Léou0026#39;s background – where he comes from, how he became a prostitute, where are his family – and many of the choices he makes prompt more questions than answers, with much of what he does tied to his notions of personal freedom. Even his final choice, which is undeniably selfish and ill-advised, is consistent with the psychology of the character as seen up to that point. He isnu0026#39;t especially interested in a life away from drugs and prostitution, and so he takes the violence, degradations, and humiliations, because every now and then he meets someone who provides him with a degree of transitory happiness.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eLéo doesnu0026#39;t share in the detachment, coldness, or bitterness of his fellow prostitutes, with all of them finding it bizarre that heu0026#39;s willing to kiss clients. However, the important point is that Léo doesnu0026#39;t kiss on-demand, he does so only when it feels right. This in and of itself illustrates how different he is from the others, and how selling himself is not exclusively monetary – he is searching for genuine affection, and he seems incapable of establishing the same boundaries between himself and his clients as the other sex workers live by. He gives much more of himself than them, in the hopes of establishing a genuine human connection with someone. Indeed, Ahd says at one point, u0026quot;itu0026#39;s like you enjoy being a wh-reu0026quot;, which he doesnu0026#39;t actually deny.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eHis fellow prostitutes are healthier, cleaner, more financially independent, more aware of the dangers of their occupation, never allowing emotions to become involved. But Léo is far more tender than any of them, and for all the harshness of his life, there is something Emersonian about him. Indeed, for much of the film, he has a pseudo-transcendentalist soul – he is relatively free of the norms of society and its institutions; he is at peace in and with nature; he lives very much in the moment; he has almost no materialist needs whatsoever; he trusts completely in his own instincts, he never lets go of his hope of finding love. This is why a scene involving a female doctor (u003ca class=ipc-md-link ipc-md-link–entity href=/name/nm0786203/\u003eMarie Seuxu003c/au003e) is so important; treating him with respect and empathy, when she attempts to examine him, he hugs her, and they hold each other for a moment, in an embrace that has nothing to do with sexuality and everything to do with kindness and emotional support.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eObviously, for a film of this nature to be in any way realistic, it must depict sexuality, and Vidal-Naquet doesnu0026#39;t hold back on that front. At the screening I attended, five people walked out within the first half-hour, by which time there had already been three graphic sex scenes (including a threesome with two prostitutes and a disabled man in a wheelchair). Whatu0026#39;s interesting about these scenes, however, is that they never lose their potency, irrespective of how many we see. I think the reason for this is how Vidal-Naquet presents them; far from filming them in a voyeuristic way or as titillation, they are instead presented dispassionately as something that happens to people in this line of work, as normal for Léo as taking drugs or sleeping rough – itu0026#39;s simply a part of his life.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eCinematographer u003ca class=ipc-md-link ipc-md-link–entity href=/name/nm4209382/\u003eJacques Giraultu003c/au003e employs a pseudo-documentarian cinéma vérité aesthetic; the entire film is shot handheld, with an occasional loss of focus, frequent awkward compositions, and even losing the subject momentarily in the frame before picking him up again. This has the effect of neither depicting sexuality as something perverted and dirty, nor valorising it as the most important part of a relationship. By presenting it as simply a part of Léou0026#39;s life, Vidal-Naquet normalises it. He certainly doesnu0026#39;t gloss over the problems of this kind of life, or the sexual perversions one may encounter, but he doesnu0026#39;t present sex work as, in and of itself, fundamentally immoral. Instead, he depicts both sides of the coin; from non-sexual intimacy with an elderly bookseller (u003ca class=ipc-md-link ipc-md-link–entity href=/name/nm2949576/\u003eJean-Pierre Basteu003c/au003e) who simply wants someone to read to him to a demeaning threesome with a couple (u003ca class=ipc-md-link ipc-md-link–entity href=/name/nm4963004/\u003eNicolas Fernandezu003c/au003e and u003ca class=ipc-md-link ipc-md-link–entity href=/name/nm9847406/\u003eNicolas Chalumeauu003c/au003e) who have Léo stand naked in front of them as they discuss how bad he smells, before roughly using a sex toy that would make even the ladies of LegalPorno winch. Indeed, Vidal-Naquet gets his point across about the highs and lows of sex work with a very simple edit – the film cuts from Léo lying peacefully in bed with the bookseller to giving a rough blowjob to a client in a car parked in an alley.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eIn terms of problems, as already stated, many will find the graphic sex scenes too much. Another issue is that Léo is an extremely passive character; he doesnu0026#39;t so much drive the plot as the plot depicts things that happen to him. Coupled with this, he doesnu0026#39;t have much of an arc, and at the end, he isnu0026#39;t overly different from the man we met at the beginning. With him being in every scene, almost every shot, the other prostitutes are very thinly sketched (even Ahd), but this is by design. On the other hand, the depiction of Claude (u003ca class=ipc-md-link ipc-md-link–entity href=/name/nm2455616/\u003ePhilippe Ohrelu003c/au003e), a magnanimous and kindly middle-aged man who takes a liking to Léo and immediately opens his home to him, is open to criticism; in a film founded on realism, he is something of a deus ex-machina, arriving in Léou0026#39;s life just as he reaches his lowest point.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eOn paper, Sauvage should be a textbook case of misery porn, following as it does a homeless drug-addicted male prostitute and his often demeaning sexual encounters. However, Vidal-Naquetu0026#39;s non-judgemental depiction of Léou0026#39;s occupation and milieu allows the more optimistic elements of his personality to rise to the surface, even in the face of seemingly endless degradations. Itu0026#39;s certainly not an easy watch, but amidst the depravity, Vidal-Naquet finds moments of tenderness, moments which mean everything to Léo. Uninterested in titillation, the film depicts sexual activity as something that happens, without judgement or commentary. And by so doing, it avoids, for the most part, the clichés so inherent to films dealing with prostitution. Neither condemning Léou0026#39;s lifestyle nor valorising it, no matter how demeaning or brutal it becomes, he always seems to find a way to keep going. That may be interpreted as tragic, but thatu0026#39;s not the way Léo looks at himself, nor is it the way Vidal-Naquet wants us to look at him.”