It is a creative, lyrical film. One never knows where it is going. Neither, it seems, does Louis the protagonist of Alain Guiraudie's new film, Staying Vertical, which just screened this week at Cannes. We first meet Louis driving along a beautiful country road in southern France, where he stops a handsome boy and indirectly propositions him. Then he drives on and ends up sitting in a field with a shepherdess, discussing wolves. Louis, who should be working on a screenplay, has come to the country to find a wolf, he says. He likes that such ferocious creatures exist. The shepherdess rebuts that she does not: wolves are no good for sheep. The two end up in bed.
The story continues in this meandering manner, with desultory encounters with the previously encountered handsome boy, the grouchy old man the boy lives with, the aforementioned pretty shepherdess and her her dour shepherd father. The only definitive conflict is what to do with the baby that is born. What makes the film alluring is the spontaneous fluid sexual desire that erupts between the characters (male and male, or male and female) the occasional presence of wolves--and the ever-so-often shocking images, including a graphic scene of a baby being born.
"What does the wolf mean in the film?" I asked the easygoing French director, Alain Guiraudie.
"The wolf signifies our fears! It is a mythic creature. In all the fairytales, one is afraid of the wolf."
"But in this film what is one afraid of? What are you afraid of, for example?"
"Many things. The female vagina, for example. Why? Because I came from there. It is the origin of the world! I am also afraid of the birth of a child. In this film, Leo is afraid of the birth of his child. He fears what to do with child: this monster hat comes from the vagina of his female partner."
Leo faces this fear straight on--"standing vertically" as it were. He assumes total partentship of his child. Indeed, his tender relationship with his little son is one of the striking high parts of this film.
Another high point is the unexpected anal-sex scene (warning: plot spoiler) between an old man and a young man. What is beautiful about this scene is the breaking of taboos, and the shot of the old man's hand tenderly on the young man's.
"Age crossing in sex is a great transgression" I noted to the director. "Why this controversial scene of transgression? What does transgression mean to you?"
"It is a personal fantasy. The idea of transgressing a taboo, to do something that gets away from real life. We don't really want to follow all our society's codes. We want to go further, to look a bit farther, to clean our horizons, find new perspectives, express ourselves with liberty. I am not so interested in cinema that is attached to reality. Cinema serves to go farther."
He added: "My film is a dream-state in de-structured time. Leo looks for a utopia, to bring together the lamb and the wolf. I wanted to compose a world of ideals. I like a world in which things that don't exist are possible. For example, that an old man finds a young man to help him [....]"
"All is possible," I said.
The director laughed joyfully.