![from the short film OEDIPE -[n+1] by Eric Rognard](../stills/200408.jpg)
a short film by Eric Rognard
2003 | 26 mins | France
Jalil Lespert .... Thomas Steiner
Nicole Jamet .... La Mère
Catherine Buquen .... Dr Yoko
Dimitri Storoge .... Kazo
Arnaud Maillard .... Louis
Gurgon Kyap .... Chauffeur de taxi
Géraldine Maillet .... La tueuse
Yann Collette .... Sandra, drag-queen
OEDIPE -[n+1]
a stylish and somewhat dark vision
of the homosexual future
Screened in Great Britain as part of the
18th London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival
- 2004
AWARDS
Connecticut Lesbian & Gay Film Festival
Winner Jury Award - Best
Male Short Film
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With an imaginative use of contemporary locations and props, writer and director Eric Rognard
has created a stylish and somewhat dark vision of the homosexual future.
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 loves, 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!
Based on the novel L'AMOUR AU TEMPS DU SILICIUM by Jean-Jacques Nguyen and with a fitting score
by Jérôme Coullet, this nightmarish depiction of the future plays like the concluding
half-hour of the latest Hollywood sci-fi offering, laced as it is with first class production
values far superior to what many may expect to see in a work of this kind. Yet behind the CGI
effects and impressive set designs, is the compelling work of veteran French actress Nicole
Jamet who excels as a mother who simply wishes her son, aptly 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 is
the genre itself, for Rognard has skillfully delivered science fiction with a homosexual
bite to it, in a tale that is as much absorbing, as it is alarming.
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