Just a Question of Love (2000)

good back-story, and good acting

Excellent, a Must See

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

this is its impressive virtue - the simplicity. nothing original but presented with high care for details. nothing revolutionary but impressive for the credibility of a relationship like many others, for the fascination of the young man to the older one - who reminds the institution of ephebes from ancient Greece - and the confrontation of family. the option to not be a demonstration or an obvious pledge represents the big good points. well cinematography, coherent story, it has the special virtue to be a beautiful love story first. and this detail is the cause to appreciate it as a nice, touching story because, ignoring the ambition to impress its public, it has the science to give a charming story.

the plot is highly predictable, characters are one dimensional, then the story ends!every character (except Laurent) in this story is so transparent and stolid you can guess their reactions far in advance. Laurent is so over the top in his self abusive emotional explosions i could not believe Cedric would become his lover. their attraction is not explained - it just happens. and the wooden parents of Laurent move like mannequins through the entire film.the only believable character is Carole as she actually brings he character to life! and she is beautiful ! ! ! the Cedric character is for sure eye candy, but the Laurent character runs around in such bad attitude i just wondered whats the deal with him?no --- i didn't care for the film.

Laurent (a vibrant Cyrille Thouvenin) is a 23-year-old agricultural student in Lille (with a passion for poetry) who knows he's gay but lets his parents think he's straight and that his roommate Carole (a sweet Caroline Veyt) is his future wife. He's held in this bind by the fact that a gay cousin, Marc, who was like a brother to him, came out only to wind up dying rejected by his parents, an example of in-family homophobia that seems to have been all too well accepted by his own mother and father. Laurent has been on a downward spiral in school ever since Marc's death. Marc's parents are around at family parties, the mother a basket case on tranquilizers, the father stolid and still unforgiving. This angers Laurent, but the trouble is that his mom and dad, who run a pharmacy, are very dear to him. He loves his parents; he loves family; and he loves kids. But he's stuck in a charade. It's already hurting Carole, who's more than a little in love with him, though she knows full well about his sexuality.All this has to change when Laurent is attached as a trainee (stagère) to a nursery and lab run by the slightly older Cédric (sexy, soulful Stéphan Guérin-Tillié) and they fall in love.The more grown up and independent Cédric is impatient with Laurent's playing the "little hetero to mom and dad." When he came out to his mother Emma (Eva Darlan) 11 years earlier on the death of his dad, Cédric said she could "take it or leave it." Laurent's pretense is exploded from an unexpected source. The film takes us sympathetically through the pain of Laurent's parents and Emma's efforts to help.The special virtue of Just a Question of Love is its balance. If it's primarily from the point of view of Laurent, and secondarily Cédric, and takes pains (though it's joyful, not painful) to make their love real (without any explicit nudity or sex though, just passionate kissing), it's just as much about the parents' difficult journey toward understanding of their sons' sexuality.A beautiful gay coming-out-to-the-parents film that had an unusually high viewership and almost universally positive response when shown originally on French TV, this has meant a lot to a lot of gay men, especially young ones thinking about love and conflicts with parents and the kind of "intense love relationship such as I dream of having and regret not to have had up till now," as one young French blogger typically put it. In IMDb comments that rate it, it has gotten nothing but a 10/10: enough said? Splendid performances by everybody, especially Thouvenin, Guérin-Tillié, and Darlan; this is far more than a "TV movie" and like some of the best contemporary French films, manages to be both elegant and emotionally direct.With his looks and personality, Cyrille Thouvenin is irresistible in the film: he's always running and leaping, troubled, acting out, but also bursting with youthful energy and smiles. The restrained but warm Eva Darlan is also very memorable. This is the kind of film a gay man can watch over and over, with much pleasure and some tears. Doing so is also helping my French quite a bit.

"Just a question of love" is no doubt a well-acted film with a rich story. Previous reviews have dealt with the story and the very heartwarming interaction between the two main characters, Laurent and Cédric. This love story alone would make this film great. I thought that in my review I address two other features of the film which in my opinion further adds to this film and making it even greater.This film made me reflect over the difference between Europe and north America with regard to "gayness". I am under the impression (possibly a false impression) that in north America the "coming out" is much more connected to the acceptance of a gay identity with its various attributes. In this film the two main gay characters are a student of agriculture and a researcher in microbiology, hardly occupations associated with "gayness" as, for example, actor and florist. This absence of acceptance or display of stereotypical gay identity may very well give this film a rather radical gay political message, namely that the coming out does not need to involve a "coming in" to a more and more commercialized (americanized?) gay identity. Politics is hardly a central theme of this film, but with the current debate about the political limits and self-imposed restraints of the gay identity in mind, this film got me to think about this political issue.That said about the "centre" of the film, the film also explicitly "speaks" to parents. In the film there are a total of five parents who in different ways relate to the homosexuality of a child of theirs. On the one hand there is the widowed mother of Cédric who has come to accept her sons homosexuality, not by principle but rather out of love for her son. By no means perfect (why should she be?), she is clearly the most sympathetic of the parents who refuses to sit by and watch the joy between her son and Laurent be destroyed. She plays an important role in how the parents of the central character Laurent relate to their sons newly revealed homosexuality. On the other side the uncle and aunt to Laurent stand; they rejected their son, Laurent's cousin, when he came out -- a son who later would die (not of AIDS, though, gay men can die of other things also!). In the film, the aunt is a depressed figure who through most of the film either swallows tablets (presumably anti-depressant) or utters odd remarks, except at one instant where she urges the devastated mother of Laurent to ask herself what "we" parents really mean when we says we love our children, a very important scene in the film as I see it. Both Cédric and Laurent are aware of and fairly secure in their homosexuality, the ones who have to come to terms are the parents of Laurent, they are the ones who have to make the greatest "transition" during the course of the film.The film thus manages to address many relations and questions and does so very well. Well worth to see and as noted above not only addressed to gays.