re:mote voices

Title: Presque Rien
Cast: Jérémie Elkaïm, Stéphane Rideau, Dominique Reymond, Marie Matheron, Laetitia Legrix
Director: Sébastien Lifshitz

Presque Rien is translated in English as Almost Nothing, which kind of sums up what actually happens in this French drama. The film starts in a sparse manner, following the young man Matthieu as he travels to his parent’s summer home, where he is going to spend the winter. From there the film flashes back to a year before, to a summer where he set out on his first relationship with another man.

The film stumbles back and forth, fleshing out to some degree the character of Matthieu and Cedric who he becomes involved with. The basic plot is that Matthieu has tried to commit suicide as a result of depression, his relationship with Cedric is over, and he recalls how the pair met. How things got to the point where Matthieu was suicidal is never explained, and as such Presque Rien is a film which seems to be full of gaps.

Matthieu is an unsympathetic character. He is reluctant to come out of the closet and declare that he is gay, so he pushes Cedric away when it suits him. He makes all sorts of accusations about the problems he is having with his family; his depressive mother, his annoying sister, and bossy aunt. Instead we see Matthieu behave in a petulant fashion, rejecting all his sister’s attempts at friendship. Cedric isn’t much better, he is pushy and possessive and while Matthieu perhaps doesn’t deserve sympathy, Cedric should be more conscious of the situation. The other characters are kind of secondary, and the film never particularly goes anywhere.