Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Maybe "Presque Rien" is not the best movie ever made... But it is better than many of you have said. I still haven't seen a homo-themed movie better than this one.You Americans are accustomed to watch very narrative movies, with a clear beginning, development and outcome. But European movies are less narrative, but makes you think much and feel.Many of you didn't understand the sense of the movie.. The purpose of this one is not show us a simple "summer loving movie", with commercial characters who "fall in love and live happy forever". Summer Holidays and beach are only a background, and this movie is directed to every young boy who may feel identified with those boys.Maybe some of you didn't understand well this movie, because of its 3 parts, showed as flashbacks. These 3 moments are: - Summertime in Pornichet, when they meet and love. - After a year and half living together in Nantes, Mathieu doesn't go to a psychiatric himself. He tries to suicide taking something, and Cedric brings him to hospital. Later, he appears talking with a psychiatrist to find the reason about he done that. - The last part, is when Mathieu come back to Pornichet, in winter, alone.. to think about how his life have changed, how his life become to be, and trying to find himself.It's possible that some people couldn't understand all this well, because all the scenes are mixed among them. But anyway, as I said before... this is not a funny movie. If what someone want to see is meat, for that, we have Belami movies.Presque Rien, what want to show us, is how cruel can be the life, for a young boy who is not sure about his feelings and not sure about what to do in life. Mathieu only wants to go away from home, and try to live the kind of life that he thought could bring him the happiness.. But what seemed perfect at the beginning.. later is not as good as he thought, and he become troubled, and feel that he has lost the way of his life. He is lost and doesn't know what he really wants to do, or what makes him happy. He finally become depressed and tries to commit suicide. So, funny? Is not a funny movie. Very hot scenes? only a few.. but this is not a movie for entertainment. Is all about feelings... friendship, love, happiness, unhappiness, pain, depression, loneliness... I, as many others, feel identified with life and problems of Mathieu, and that is what director wanted to do.. a movie who show us the cruel reality of a boy's life.For me, the best homo-themed movie ever.

PRESQUE RIEN (USA: Come Undone /UK: Almost Nothing) Aspect ratio: 1.85:1Sound format: Dolby DigitalWhile visiting his sick mother in Brittany during summer recess, a teenage boy (Jérémie Elkaïm) falls in love with a local youth (Stéphane Rideau), but their relationship falters as Elkaïm is cut adrift from all that was once familiar to him, with near-tragic consequences.Sébastien Lifshitz's intimate drama chronicles the sexual awakening of a naive teenager over the course of an idyllic summer, recounted in piecemeal fashion as the director cuts abruptly between timeframes, from Elkaïm and Rideau's love affair to the former's subsequent hospitalization following an off-screen suicide attempt, rendered 'naturalistic' by hand-held camera-work and some improvized dialogue exchanges in key scenes. The results are confusing, to say the least: Just as the boys begin to strike out from their families and forge a life for themselves, Elkaïm slips into depression (why?) and appears to reject Rideau (why?), after which he goes looking for him again, only to find solace in unexpected quarters.Anyone hoping for a rose-tinted love story will come away feeling more than a little disappointed, though Lifshitz refuses to compromise the sexual aspects of his own screenplay (co-written with Stéphane Bouqet): Elkaïm and Rideau are completely nude in several sequences, and there's a memorable, full-on sex session amongst the sand dunes which should satisfy all but the most ardent porn-watcher. But the boys' attachment is complicated by their relationship with their respective families, especially Elkaïm, who feels unable to declare his burgeoning sexuality because of a recent tragedy which has driven his father away and confined his mother to her sick-bed. Sad, complex and not a little frustrating, the movie works its magic in quiet ways, but it's a little too cold and dispassionate to satisfy all tastes.Nicely produced on a modest budget, the film also stars Dominique Reymond, Marie Matheron and Laetitia Legrix as the three women in Elkaïm's life (mother, aunt and sister, respectively), along with Nils Ohlund as one of Rideau's former boyfriends, who figures heavily in the narrative's closing stages. The two leads are fine in difficult roles, and both have become iconic figures in European gay cinema: Rideau starred in such well-regarded Queer movies as WILD REEDS (1994), FULL SPEED (1996), TRANSFIXED (1997), SITCOM (1998) and THREE DANCING SLAVES (2003), while Elkaïm - who looks like a Bel Ami porn beauty - also appears in the gay-themed drama YOU'LL GET OVER IT (2002) as the love object of handsome Julien Baumgartner (SEXY BOYS). Director Lifshitz made his feature debut with the French TV production LES TERRES FROIDES (1999) following a series of short films with Queer themes, and his latest entry is WILD SIDE (2004), another perceptive exploration of omnisexual angst.(French dialogue)

Another French seaside relationship story with an incidental background of family hardship.As with the others it's well acted, scripted, directed and interesting to watch.Other than character interest, it's also fairly devoid of any emotion or plot(unless you have a strong interest in gay french holiday romances).French cinema seems prolific in this respect, probably reflecting their otherwise staid perspective on non-holiday relationships, so if you liked this there's plenty more where it came from.

It is never my style to defend a movie just because people disagree with me. Yet looking through all the comments that slam the movie for having no plot, and even those who like the movie are unable to provide any solid reasons other than the encrypted deeply moving or honest, I feel the need to give my two sense. So bear with me.Let me first say that I don't think Presque Rien is the best gay movie ever made. Looking at the cover with two naked young guys, I expect it will offer little more than "tasteful" eye candy. But I came away feeling this is a lot better than I expect, and for the exact reason so many other complain about, the plot.The story unfolds with Mathieu, after suffering from depression; revisit his family summerhouse to pull his life together. It is the same place where two summers ago he met his first boyfriend, someone he just broke up with. Upon arriving, Mathieu pick up a wild cat that's roaming on the street. In the flashback, when Mathieu arrives his family summerhouse for vacation he "picked up" a wild child, Cédric, who basically lives on the street. Instantly we can draw the connection between Cédric and the cat: Mathieu said to the cat "You are cute but you stink". It reminds us in the flashback how he rehearses his introduction line to Cédric to the mirror: "I must admit you are pretty cute". After Mathieu bathed the cat he said you are my little prince charming, just as the carefree and attractive Cédric would be to any gay teenager falling in love for the first time. But there is the less fortune comparison: like the cat, Cédric, as much as he wants Mathieu, is unable to reciprocate the kind of affection Mathieu needs in a relationship.There is one key scene I find surprising that no one mentions is when Mathieu and Cédric visited a historic ruin. Architecture student Mathieu is interested in reading the background of the site but Cedric is only interested in a private intimate moment together - to him it is just a bunch of rock. Mathieu complained that Cédric has single track of mind and he doesn't like it when Cédric is like that. It is a telling sign of the difference between the two and how problematic the relationship could be. However, Mathieu (and many audience I bet) are so charmed by the good-looking and sexually uninhibited Cédric that he (and us) are blinded to the fact that Cédric is unable to bond with Mathieu in a non-physical way. Recall that Cédric was totally oblivious to any of the Mathieu's emotional problem when Mathieu's psychiatrist asked him, except that Mathieu is not interested in having sex in the past month, again only in a physical way.The ending, so many of the comments have criticized, is actually very satisfying for me. While it seems contrive that Mathieu should reach out for his boyfriend's ex, it is not hard to understand what draws him to Pierre. Cédric doesn't believe in family and would rather be a renegade than being introduced to Mathieu's father. But outside of his house, we see the domestic Pierre helping out his mother in setting up dinner. Mathieu himself longingly browsed through the family photos, including his pain-in-the-ass sister, the first thing he arrived his family home in years. When Mathieu asked Pierre why he didn't have his own place, Pierre as-a-matter-of-factly said "Why? To be All Alone?" The Mathieu who impulsively moved in with Cédric to a total strange city can certainly understand that sentiment. (When Pierre asked Mathieu if he think he is lame, Mathieu replied that he thinks he seems `really together')The movie concluded with Mathieu and Pierre coming across a lonely child in the beach (presumably his dad is also present but he was intentionally excluded from the frame). Pierre showed his paternal side by teaching the kid how to play football/soccer as Mathieu knowingly looking on. In the flashback, the naive and love-struck Mathieu was totally captivated by Cédric as he sang and danced in the buff at the beach, the post-depression, wiser and more mature Mathieu (something Pierre didn't fail to notice), once again sitting on a beach, now saw the side of Pierre that he knows he wouldn't find in Cédric.I don't dare to say my interpretation is THE interpretation. But I hate to see people dismiss scenes as pointless and boring, went on to accuse the movie has no plot and provides no answer when the very scenes they dismiss provide the clues they are looking for. For that, I feel I have to put down my view.