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Jan 25, 2017 By Kyle Turner Web Exclusive

The funny thing about being cast in neon red is not only its obvious electric and entrancing visceral qualities, but on a logistic formal level, the color bleeds. In the Parisian gay sex club that serves as Paris 05:59: Theo and Hugo’s meet cute locale, details, in the traditional sense at least, are obscured in favor of large, brash brushes of feeling. The light and color look kind of patchy, super saturated, and the only textures that matter are the ones that reveal themselves through chiaroscuro. It swirls, and arguably, the harshness of the red and blue causes traditional notions of texture in frame to explode and disappear, then becoming an intoxicating deluge of hues.

The lighting scheme of the sex club is as unfussy and unmanageable as, perhaps, desire itself, less concerned with the minutia necessarily and more with a macro picture. That is, until, Theo and Hugo finally see one another face to face. It’s a twenty odd minute scene of explicit sex, but directors Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau (The Adventures of Felix) are keen on dichotomizing the experience for both of them, though not within “good/bad sex” binary. Theo, mildly hirsute, had been hitherto navigating the sex party awkwardly, his eye always on Hugo. There’s a level of disassociation to the expression Theo has throughout his transient encounters with other men in the scene.

It’s only when he’s with Hugo – even before they have sex, bathed in heavenly light – they he looks completely engaged, perhaps enamored even. That they see each other “completely” as well as under the red lights feels like a convergence of the inherent eroticism of the space and the intimacy that both may or may not be seeking.

But perhaps that’s another question to be explored, and one that the film asks: what, in 2017, does queer intimacy look like? “Do you always keep your eyes shut?” Theo asks Hugo in the midst of sex. “I’m with you. It helps me be with you. I want to look at you,” Hugo replies, in reverie. And they do look at one another, outside of the sex club, walking around in the night. For Theo and Hugo, intimacy is fluid.

To find romance or agency at a sex club is, I think, unusual primarily because of the history of queer visibility on screen and, well, sex club visibility. Debauchery is always capital B-bad, and modern love for the queer must find itself in the margins of art cinema (which, technically, this film qualifies as, I suppose). But sex clubs are a space for transgression, and their presence in a contemporary world remains interesting, given that, even in the scenes in the film, communication is based on the language of cruising: looks, glances, and touches that articulate what words cannot.

Paris 05:59: Theo and Hugo fits snugly in a rather classical sense, whatever that may mean. The ways in which they express affection or whatever approximation of love they have for one another exists in both the language of codes and explicitness. It is, stylistically, not unlike Andrew Haigh’s Weekend or Richard Linklater’s Before Trilogy: we, the audience, follow to people as they learn more about one another and process how they’ve learned about themselves through the encounter.

The degree to which they must know one another is heightened, as what brings them together, beyond the sex party, is an STD scare. They have unprotected sex and Theo must negotiate two things: what his life will be should he be diagnosed as HIV positive and what it is like to fall for someone who is HIV positive. It’s a sensitively drawn series of conversations, allowing both characters to express real anxieties without necessarily perpetuating stigma.

It is, admittedly, curious to see a film like this, one that can embrace the (sort of) modernity of a sex club (especially in a marriage equality focused gay culture) as well as sweeping, swoon-worthy romance that feels tangible and real. When Theo and Hugo are not clutching one another in some move of passion, you wait for it to happen. Without naiveté, Geoffrey Couet’s Theo is sweet, endearing, and Francois Nambot’s Hugo a little more gregarious and effusively romantic. They embody a school boy charm, a snickering kind where you find another like yourself after doing something naughty.

The film is made with such sweetness, finding that desire is a beast of a vehicle that can transport one to inexplicably iron clad bonds between those filled with fear or neuroses. Theo and Hugo see something in one another that they haven’t seen in anyone else, and Theo and Hugo ebulliently attempts to explore that kind of queer magnetism. My own wish for this film is for it to be longer: to see their characters feel more live in, for the conversations to meaner and ramble on and on, for Theo and Hugo to amble around the streets for more hours, and for the spark between the two to remain a burning ember long after the running time ends.

Author rating: 8/10