Theo & Hugo (French)

You will never be able to forget the opening of the film. An explicit sex scene is a dungeon of the club is not something many movies start with, but I think this film wanted to make a statement and it sure did. Thankfully the 15ish minute scene, although very graphic (with actual penetration scenes), is never meant to arouse the audience, rather wen the film progresses, you realize why the whole build up. More on that later.

Starting in a sex club in Paris, curly haired Theo has his eyes set on Hugo, who is engaged in a passionate sex act with a random boy. You can tell that Theo is so mesmerised with him that he wants him at all cost and eventually he manoeuvres his way through to him in that orgy of the sex club. The two have crazy instant chemistry, physically and passionately (and the scene that depicts this is absolutely fantastic). They both leave club and still can’t get enough of each other. Remembering their passionate sexual act, they soon realise that they had unprotected sex, which is even more of a problem, given that Hugo is HIV positive. Even though Theo was active and Theo has undetectable viral load, he is still at risk now. Hugo forces Theo to go to the emergency room and even stays with him throughout as his support. As expected Theo is going through all sorts of emotions of anger, love and confusion. To be honest nothing much significant happens after this. The two walk around the city for sometime, getting to know each other better and still feeling that warm fuzzy feeling for each other which only happens when you really are falling in love for someone. Neither of them wants to leave each other’s side but they are also both aware that they should not appear too pushy. The film just ends with them wishing to spend more time together till they do their follow up appointment with the hospital and then take it from there.

I have mentioned a lot already about the beautifully directed sex scene in the beginning of the film, so I am gonna move on from there and talk about other things. After the couple comes out of the club, this is where the real flirtation begins. I loved the way Theo still keeps looking into Hugo’s eyes because he is still under the same spell of his charm as he was inside the dungeon. Yes, things change when he discovers what a blunder they have made by having unprotected sex and this causes for more extreme confused feelings. We also witness Hugo falling in for Theo. He can’t stop raving about how much of a good time he had and how he thinks that “they actually made love and contributed to world peace!” Their conversations move from physical to emotional and intimate. A chance to really get to know each other. Hugo is more experienced and somehow more mature among the two and stands up every minute with Theo to support him. First half of this film till about the point they leave the hospital is amazing. It has light hearted scenes and breezy mushy moments that I absolutely loved. Personally for me the film went into a no-zone when they just randomly explore Paris looking for food to eat and are just walking around talking stuff. Its important to build their relationship but as a viewer I started to get a bit bored by how heavily dominated the dialogues were in this section. Even the chemistry was not so passionate as it was in the first half of the film. Anyway, the two actors in the film were brilliant and shared an unbelievable great chemistry. And since the sex scenes were explicit and we saw everything, their penises were also damn beautiful :)

The film set in about a time interval of 2 hours is totally believable. Yes towards the last 30 minutes (and hence a bit of low rating), I lost touch; but i completely got a warm fuzzy feeling when two strangers meet, feel an instant connection and how they continue to talk about random things just to get to know each other while unable to keep their hands off each other. The HIV scare just gives another edge to the whole situation. (7/10)