The King of Escape (Le roi de l'evasion)

The French born director and screenwriter Alain Guiraudie is best known for LGBT movies and his latest Stranger by the Lake (2013) is no exception offering a refreshingly honest depiction of gay sex and cruising, all wrapped up in a murder mystery. If you enjoyed that movie then I am sure you would enjoy his previous film The King of Escape made in 2009. Although this lighthearted offbeat comedy is nowhere near as dark as Stranger it's equally as entertaining.

 

Will the affair between Armand and Curly last....

The story involves a rather plump 43-year-old tractor salesman who has a sexual liking for mature married men whom he picks up in what can only be described as a cruising lay-by situated just outside the small French town where he lives and works. It's when Armand comes to the rescue of a sixteen-year-old girl who is being harassed by four young thugs that his life begins to take a different direction. Curly not only turns out to be the daughter of one of Armand's work colleague but she also takes a strong sexual liking for our tractor salesman. The movie then asks us to believe that this overtly gay man falls for this rather sexy young woman! But eating some magical roots that he digs up in a nearby forest help this partial transformation. The excitement really takes off when Curly's father persuades the local police to get his daughter back and Armand and the teenager go on the run. Will Armand stay with the girl or will the temptation of randy old men draw him back to his previous life style?

 

....not if her father has his way!

Yes there is a lot of sex and nakedness but never in an embarrassing or offensive way in fact I enjoyed the casualness of the whole movie. The acting is first rate especially by Ludovic Berthillot who underplays Armand Lacourtade to great effect and Hafsia Herzi, who played Samira in House of Tolerance (2011), is great as the horny teenager Curly Durandot. But I must give credit to all the actors involved in this production right down to the smallest of parts who make this story very believable, funny and enjoyable. Never receiving a general release in UK cinema’s its now available on DVD.

House of Tolerance.

L'Apollonide.

Independence comes in many forms and in French film director Bertrand Bonello (Tiresia (2003)) latest offering he suggests, quite controversially in my opinion, that being a prostitute in a Parisian brothel at the dawning of the 20^th century offers twelve young ladies a type of liberation. But to be fair to Bonello he does make an attempt to show the down side to this lifestyle including drug addiction, sexually transmitted diseases and disfiguring violence. 

Crying tears of sperm.

The main star of House of Tolerance (2010) is actual the brothel, L’Apollonide, a lavish stage like set up, that’s like a luxurious but decadent, five star hotel from which the film never strays. We see the girls with their clients and we also see them when ‘off duty’ and learn about their relationships with each other: they’re rivalries, their hopes, that are mainly connected with dreams of marrying their rich clients and their uncertainties associated with the fact that the brothel will be closed down and they will end up on the streets.

Its the women who are at the forefront of this story.

Strangely the film is not really about sex it’s about the final days of a disappearing community. One in which friendships have been forged, not only between the girls, but also between the girls and their clients. The film does however concentrate on the women involved and leaving the men as mere bystanders. A hauntingly sad, and on the whole rather genteel film where your empathy is with the women who choose to earn their living working in the sex trade surrounded with ‘the stink of sperm and champagne’ rather than manual labour in mills and factories which at that time was as equally harmful to your health! A fascinating film in many respects and please do not be put off by the subject matter.