Playing more like the concluding half-hour of the latest Hollywood sci-fi offering, than a film short, here writer and director Eric Rognard has created a stylish and if anything, a somewhat dark vision of the homosexual future.
For having died in mysterious circumstances, Thomas has been brought back from the dead thanks to Dr Yoko and The Centre for New Life's service of body cloning. Yet something just isn't right. For his memories do not match the reality that his mother greets him with, in the form of an engagement to Helena that is at odds with a series of flashbacks that speak of times spent with boyfriend Kazo and a gay lifestyle that supposedly never was.
Determined to find the man he loved in his previous life, Thomas leaves the protection of The Circle in a desperate bid to locate the streets and restaurants he associates with Kazo but which seemingly never existed, prompting an experience that is destined to reveal the shocking truth to a society divided between genetically modified and non-modified human beings, namely those living within and outside of The Circle and somewhere virtually in between!
Well-executed from start to finish and aided by an imaginative use of contemporary locations and props that belie the modest production values of the piece, Rognard has taken the novel L'amour au temps du Silicium by Jean-Jacques Nguyen and with a fitting score from Jérôme Coullet delivered a first class production. Yet behind the simple but impressive set designs and CGI effects far superior to what many may expect to see, lies the compelling work of veteran French actress Nicole Jamet who excels as a mother who simply wishes her son, finely played by Jalil Lespert, to live up to her expectations.
Yet that is the crux of the matter. For her image of the ideal son is of the heterosexual kind and a chilling narrative that plays to the concerns many feel today, over the genetic advances of tomorrow, by way of a homosexual cure - of sorts. And yet what is notably striking here is the genre itself. For Rognard has superbly produced science fiction with a homosexual bite to it, in a tale that is as much absorbing, as it is alarming. It remains one of the best gay short films for ages. Simply outstanding.
available on DVD as part of the Wolfe Video catalogue - 'Boy Crush' release
screened as part of the 18th London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival 2004
![OEDIPE -[n+1] by Eric Rognard](../stills/090.jpg)
Playing more like the concluding half-hour of the latest Hollywood sci-fi offering, than a film short, here writer and director Eric Rognard has created a stylish and if anything, a somewhat dark vision of the homosexual future.
