Same
Sex Parents’ teenaged Olympia (Louise Monot) is
no exception. She’s as moody as an eel pressed out of
its underwater home with a stick. In fact she keeps an eel-pout
through out so much of the film that when she inevitably smiles
we feel as if we have been granted three genie wishes. The
French film’s trip hoppy soundtrack, reminiscent of
three or four beats riffed from Portishead and repeated ad
infinitum, plays during emotion-heavy interludes, beating
the viewer over the head with hip-ness, and rendering Olympia’s
total bitchiness somewhat benign: just artsy, oversensitive.
There are multiple scenes of the longhaired, brunette belle
riding her bicycle stubbornly through her rural French town
to bass note backings.
Olympia has it rough, so she thinks. Her
“cool” parent--suave, Range-Rover-driving gay
dad Antonie (Samuel Labarthe of Techiné’s Strayed)--lives
away in a chic part of Paris. Olympia feels stuck with her
uptight, middle-class mom Martine (Élisabeth Bourgine)
and her mom’s live-in lesbian lover Do (Donatienne Dupont)
in a compact apartment in a conservative small town. When
nasty neighbor Geraldine (Julie Fournier), a Liv Tyler look-alike
with the hots for Olympia’s boyfriend Leo, purposefully
feeds the high school gossip mill that Olympia’s mom’s
a dyke, the teen’s war with the world is on.
Regardless
of the fact that she’s unconditionally loved by all
parents and partners concerned, Olympia gets ribbed at school
for being the spawn of “perverts.” She’d
like to act like the barbs don’t hurt, but they do,
and the hurt builds to bursting. The A-student starts acting
out: engaging in schoolyard catfights with Geraldine, cussing
out her mom out with the derogatory epithets she hears at
school, and ditching class to guzzle Heinikens and swap spit
with pushy boys under bridges to prove herself het. Part of
the problem is that Martine hasn’t come out to her yet,
and this fuels Olympia’s sense that her mom’s
lifestyle is shameful, given that mom’s ashamed of it
too. She has no issues with her out dad, but the fact that
she’s being openly tortured about something her mom’s
not open about frustrates the teen. When Olympia walks in
on Martine and Do making love, she literalizes her aggravation,
smashing her arm through a window.
All
of Olympia’s confusion leads to more when she kisses
a girl. And who loops around the corner just in time to spy
her experimentation? Geraldine, of course, who interrupts
Olympia’s romantic smooch with best friend Marion and
wickedly laughs “I knew it!,” causing the school
pariah to flee to Antoine‘s safe haven in the city.
In a Parisian café, Olympia quizzes her dad:
Olympia:
You sure homosexuality isn’t hereditary. Maybe you
passed it to me.
Antonie: (smirking wisely) If heterosexuality isn’t,
why would homosexuality be?
A film about bridging the communication breakdowns
that happen between kids and parents over sexuality, and about
standing up for oneself and one’s family despite what
others say, Same Sex Parents (Des parents pas
comme les autres) was originally produced as part of
French Television station M6’s movie series “The
Rebel Years” by female filmmaker Laurence Katrian. Accordingly,
it has a little bit of that “social topic” feel,
like a made-for-Lifetime movie, but with a French frankness
and edge.
Unfortunately
the histrionics played out by both mother and daughter, while
realistic, cause the viewer to quickly find both of these
main characters annoying. Although it’s easy take consolation
in Do, who knows who she is and who she loves without reservations
or repressions. Mixing a no-nonsense swagger and a proclivity
for motorcycles with a tinge of blonde femme--that European
front-strands-dangling-from-pulled-up-hair do--the sexy in-betweener
deserves more screen time.
We
are also led to wonder why male sexuality, whether straight
or gay, is considered normal, while Martine’s lesbianism
is the cause of so much gossip and stress. Granted, Martine
has kept herself barricaded away in a closet of her own padding
and policing, but she has a point: the locals do seem to treat
female homosexuality as some kind of transmittable disease.
Monied, fashionable Antoine’s gayness is perceived by
all as “no big deal.“ This film drives home how
homophobias can differ according to gender and class differences.
While
the film’s soundtrack begs diversification,
all and all, Same Sex Parents is convincing and complex
enough to fly. Katrian can be commended for creating another
in a growing cadre of teen films, like But I’m a
Cheerleader, Saved!, and D.E.B.S.,
that deal smartly with gay issues.
Get
Same Sex Parents on DVD
|
