Man at Bath

Beware – this is no-holds-barred filmmaking in the age-old French tradition of tell-it-like-it-really-fucking-is. Omar, a young filmmaker living in the Parisian projects, heads to New York for work, leaving behind the muscular Emmanuel (François Sagat) and the remnants of their broken relationship. On different sides of the Atlantic the men react to the breakup in unique ways – Emmanuel with a succession of energetic encounters and Omar in the flirtatious company of a young film student. As Omar discovers NY and the pleasures of his new friend’s body, Emmanuel is having an altogether less tender time, including a verbally debasing episode with a crabby ‘intellectual’ john. There is an underscore of recklessness in Honoré’s film, but it’s a quiet nihilistic streak rather than an all out scream of excess, making it yet more disturbing. Honoré’s film is a brutal comment on the role and limitations of sex as a release and panacea, playing out against a backdrop of obsession, loss and the price of sexual freedom. It’s a film for the liberated – unflinchingly honest Honoré has a knack of reaching the parts few filmmakers dare to approach.