GERONTOPHILIA

Canada, 2013, 82 minutes, Colour.
Pier- Gabriel Lajoie, Water Borden, Katie Boland, Marie- Helene Thibault.
Directed by Bruce Las Bruce.

Bruce La Bruce has had a long career in making films that were sexually explicit, in his native Canada as well as in the US. Those who know his films will be surprised at this one as it moves more towards mainstream cinema-making.

While sexual issues are still significant, the film is more reticent in its language, in this visual presentation of sexual activity and nudity. It is a film that many audiences could watch with some interest.

The central character is a teenager called Lake (Pier- Gabriel Lajoie), French- Canadian who lives with his mother, a heavy drinker who dances at a club but loses her job. She gets a new job working in a home for the elderly and organises a place for her son.

Lake is emotionally involved with a young woman, Desiree, and thinks that he is in love with her. However, his not sure of his sexual identity and is very surprised at his sexual reaction at a swimming pool where he works and he has worked on the body of a man whom he has rescued from the pool but who is dead. Some girl bystanders laugh at him. He also has a sketchbook and, when he takes up the job at the residence of the elderly, the sketches quite a number of the elderly men. Desiree is puzzled.

He becomes involved with his work at the residence, is told not fraternise with the residents, but he gets into discussions with them, is kind in his work with them.

Most significantly, he encounters a man, who turns 82, who has had a life in the theatre, is gay, has a marriage which lasted only a short time, a son whom his mother took with her but who pays for his father in the home. Lake becomes very friendly and spends a lot of time with Melvyn (Walter Borden), listening to his reminiscences, becoming attracted to him, sketching him nude, looking after him, stripping while talking and playing cards with him, having a sexual reaction – and is caught by the nurses, to the anger of his mother who says that everybody is gossiping in the residence, especially when he is seen by a fellow worker who finds working with the old people repulsive.

Ashamed but finding that he is falling in love with Melvyn, he has conversations with Desiree, whho is partly understanding and sympathetic, but feels that they have to separate.

One of the episodes is Lake taking Melvyn for a drive, taking him out of the institution, going on the road, planning to go to the Pacific, talking with him, having meals, moments of jealousy when Melvyn actually talks to other men, especially one who sidles up to him in a bar. At a motel, Lake consummates his relationship with Melvyn, only to find the next morning that Melvyn has died.

There are many films about behaviour which seems sexually aberrant or, at least, unusual. Lake uses the language of fetish when he is describing his feelings for Melvyn. Lake is at the beginning of his life and it is difficult to know how this experience will have affected him and what his future will be.

In the meantime, Bruce La Bruce has given us a different film, less provocative than his usual films, but more thoughtful.