Conservative beauty standards are back with a vengeance which means it's especially important to go out this summer with bellies out and bodies unshaved. Also be unapologetically disabled with mobility aids and wearable medical devices and stim toys and ear defenders and all that stuff. You need it. People need to see it. Everyone needs to be reminded that life is unquestioningly more enjoyable when you're not living inside an arbitrary set of rules created by people who are offended by all the wrong things.
Happy pride month to all non-binary people who don't/can't medically transition yes you are allowed to call yourself trans yes you are allowed in trans spaces and if you do choose medical transition you are not "stealing resources" from "actual trans people" because you ARE an actual trans person
the idea that every summer will be as hot if not hotter than this for the rest of my life is unbearable i need to (remembers suicide jokes are bad for my mental health) murder an oil executive
you have to consciously unlearn racism and continue to watch for it because it will come out without realizing. because so much of society is structured around it. shrugging and going "i dont care" or "i dont know how else to say it" means you are okay with being racist and hurting other people with how much you dont give a shit about them.
I wrote down my thoughts as soon as I could after watching because I wanted to ramble about this movie very badly in here. These are some of them:
- The fact that this entity works so well because the teenagers can’t even tell “trusted adults” about it. Religion has a hold of this community, everyone knows everyone, you’re effectively trapped in a nightmare and you can’t talk about it because then they’ll find out that who you desire most is another boy. Naim tells someone and the lady not only doesn’t believe him, she immediately betrays his trust. He tries multiple times to get his mom’s help but she refuses to listen and the twist being that Naim’s own mother knew all along and let it happen? I was flabbergasted. She kept saying how fear is something you need. Live your life in fear, who in this community hasn’t heard that one before. It was absolutely revolting to watch. No adult actually cares, they seem to know about this practice and allow it. Even if they didn’t know, as long as the “cure” worked I don’t think they would mind. Would the police even care? It’s wild.
- It works like a chain of outing. One kid tells on someone and then another kid tells on someone else and it keeps going and going. When your church rewards you for exposing your peers, either because you were raised homophobic as hell or you’re trying very hard not to give yourself away, I can imagine how terrifyingly effective that ends up being. Izzie appears to be on their side only to lead them into being hate-crimed ffs 😭
- Naim in NO WAY knew that a whole ass demonic entity would end up cursing them just because he snitched on Ryan and Hunter, please give that boy so much grace. He’s like 17 or something? At most he thought they would make them stop seeing each other! Which is what his impulsive teenage self wanted because he felt hurt! Not even Hunter and Ryan were too worried when they brought them to the church for the ritual, thinking it was going to be some bullshit spectacle. Naim also clearly doesn’t have experience with living in a place like this before and it’s so apparent. Small towns make you turn on each other by design, I won’t stand for anyone calling Naim a villain when the clear villains are right there! Like the Deliverance Healer and all the adults? I know there will inevitably be some people who dislike Naim for outing them, I understand it as your first emotional reaction, but that in no way should be what you come out of the movie with. Hopefully I’m fighting ghosts and no one hates my boy 🙏
- Hunter talks about how the ritual actually worked for a couple of people, who ended up having kids and living the “normal” life. I was gagged again by how the concept of conversion therapy via demonic entity works so well. The entity makes you afraid of the person you desire most, it drives a wedge between you, tainting your love. Naim licks Ryan’s ear in one scene and as the audience your heart is fluttering, but then on the very next scene the entity bites Ryan’s ear in the exact same spot, leaving him bleeding and terrified, and your heart breaks for these two who can’t have one good thing. The entity uses that growing affection to learn how to best manipulate you. It gets better at imitating touch the more time you spend with the person, like the girl said. Eventually the only way to save yourself is to cut the other person off and that is so viscerally tragic.
- Ryan said “I want it to look like you” and I knew this was a true horror-romance. They choose each other at the end, they choose loving and staying together in spite of everything. It’s not like all their problems have been solved now, because sure they have lighters to defend themselves with and they may develop some countermeasures, but the entity remains. They will have to keep living with some modicum of fear for the rest of their lives and work through the feelings of hurt and betrayal between them. And yet! And yet they have each other. They have that sweet, sweet love that no one can take away from them anymore. Their entities will keep looking like them as yet another symbol of their affection. Those people didn’t succeed in making them give up their love and that is so important to me.
- The entity actually stopped when Naim caressed it? Can I hear everyone’s theory about this? Because it’s probably the thing I’m most curious about. Can it… feel affection? Does it have a need for it? I don’t even know man.
- The way Hunter and Ryan can only communicate through aggression is such a contrast to Naim and Ryan’s relationship. Their repression manifests as hurting each other, while Naim and Ryan are hesitant but they don’t want to hurt each other. They want to explore and be soft and sometimes playfully rough, and it’s clear enough that their relationship is just instantly deeper and stronger. I’m sorry Hunter 😔 Ryan was already seeing the entity as Naim, who I’m sure he met fairly recently compared to you (I think they may have grown together?)
- The tragedy of Hunter is very obvious to me however. Being the pastor’s son in a church like that? Yeah I would also develop some psychosexual tendencies. They didn’t need to show me his head ugh
- I love how they made a point of Naim being constantly scared. He’s scared of the snake, he’s scared of heights, and he’s scared of letting Ryan give him a handjob, jolting as soon as he looks at his reflection while in the middle of the act. Fear is a central theme of the movie, “they wanted us to be scared”. Naim has to overcome so much to reach that moment in which he is able to confront the entity head-on, and a big part of that journey is thanks to Ryan and how much Naim cares for him. It’s what leds him to investigate the situation in the first place, to confess his involvement in the whole thing and to try to save Ryan. He’s able to finally let go and offer himself to the pleasure at Ryan’s hands in that bus scene, growing a little with each experience. At last, he confronts the entity and we see him look completely at peace on that final scene, heading to who knows where with Ryan’s head in his shoulder.
- Frank Ocean needle drop was perfection 💯
- Sustained long shots are one of my favorite filmmaking techniques and that’s basically 60% of this movie so I was delighted by the cinematography.
- Maybe I’ve gotten better at horror than I thought because I wasn’t really scared, I was just sad and appalled all the time lol. I think part of it is that I had already spoiled myself on all entity Ryan appearances except for one (which did get me to jump a little).
- I need so many post-canon fics cuz I’m pretty sure they won’t be making a sequel for this (fingers crossed though) and I’d like to read Ryanaim live as happily ever after as they can after all that.
- The one scene the five people at my screening laughed at was Naim asking the cashier to stay with him while looking completely out of his mind, tbh I also chuckled and I think that was the intention anyway lol
- Ryan is such a fascinating character, I really thought for a second he might leave Naim to be beaten after that revelation, but he didn’t. Everything is told from Naim’s perspective so Ryan remains a little mysterious throughout it. I wish this was adapted from a book so I could just go and read all his inner monologues.
- It could’ve done with a longer runtime and a bigger climax but I understand budgeting and it’s incredible this was made in the first place. I loved it all the same. Unlike some reviews I’ve seen, I don’t think I needed the entity to be explained more than it was. A final appearance from the Deliverance Healer is what I felt missing but tbf that only makes it creepier, the idea that he’s still out there, just cursing more gay people oh god
- it’s not quite like It Follows, now that I think about it. In It Follows the entity has to walk the distance and it shows up regardless of if you’re alone or not.
- Joe Bird’s talent truly is shedding tears while still looking pretty af, Stacy’s talent is looking fantastic while covered in blood <3
- Naim’s name being from the actual Leviticus is such a neat detail that I need everyone to know.
Okay, at this point I’m just rambling, I have so many more thoughts to write down but I seriously need to do a second viewing first! Please give me all your analysis and essays too, I’m so excited now that everyone in the U.S will be able to watch it soon
There’s something I’d like to say about Oscar Wilde. First of, Wilde used to be my favourite writer throughout my teens and he still holds a special place in my heart. Back when it was still possible, I even went to Paris and placed a rose at his grave. That’s how much I adore Wilde. I’m sure he did some problematic stuff. I actually know he did. He was a Victorian after all. But there’s this one thing that keeps happening over and over and I’d like to see it stop. “Oh my god, Oscar Wilde was so sexist.” That. That right there. I see this backed up with quotes like, “Women are a decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly.” I also see this quote and other sexist quotes attributed directly to Oscar Wilde on websites and such. But please, consider this:
Oscar Wilde never said this. You know who said this? Lord Henry Wotton did. “Who exactly is Lord Henry Wotton?”, you might ask. Well, Lord Henry Wotton is a character from Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, published in 1891. He is an important character and you should really read the novel if you want to know more about this, but the question is: Are we supposed to like Wotton? Many modern readers sure do. They love him. He is portrayed by Colin Firth in the 2009 film adaption and shown to be the real hero of the film (this is very different in the book. Just saying in case you only know the film). Truth is, I think you’re not supposed to like him. He is sexist. He talks about rebelling against society but he never does, just tells his friends to and watches whilst they crash and burn. And he is safe, never risking anything, never stepping out of line. There’s a subtle irony to whatever he says and does and I don’t think it was lost on Wilde’s fellow Victorians as it is lost on most modern readers.
Lord Henry Wotton, witty Henry Wotton who everyone seems to adore these days with his sexist comments and boasting personality is not supposed to be liked at all. I’m pretty sure a lot of interpretations of his character tell you exactly that – whatever he says in these books, whatever he does, the advice he gives leads to absolute catastrophe in the end. Lord Henry is not supposed to be taken seriously and actually listened to. And yet I see him quoted all the time and – worse – I see his quotes attributed to Oscar Wilde as though he said these things, as though he really believed them, when in fact he never did. We, as modern readers, read Dorian Gray differently from how Victorians read it. Society changes, it’s perfectly normal. But I think this is well worth knowing before we go: “Ugh, Oscar Wilde was such a misogynist.” He was very much not.
I don’t want this post to continue on forever, so let’s just look at some stuff: When Oscar Wilde became the editor of the Lady’s World magazine, he renamed it Woman’s World and instead of just writing about fashion as the magazine did before, he added articles about politics, culture and the likes. Topics that in Victorian England were thought to be too much for a woman’s mind, topics that were not thought of as women’s topics at all. Wilde, along with his wife Constance, also was an advocate of rational dress – meaning dress that didn’t endanger women’s health and lives. Oscar Wilde lost both his half-sisters when their impractical, wide skirts caught fire during a party and they burned to death, so I guess he knew what he was talking about here.
And Lord Henry Wotton’s quotes? I guess it’s safe to say that Wilde fully intended each and every thing Lord Henry says to be utter rubbish. Victorian England was sexist and Lord Henry Wotton is supposed to be a mirror of that exact society – Wilde however (who never fit in himself) held a mirror up to exactly that society. The whole of Dorian Gray is actually just Wilde saying: “This is you, this is our society and this is what it does to people.” And Victorians understood that. There’s a reason Dorian Gray was harshly criticised after it was published and contrary to popular belief it was not just about the homosexual subtext (which also plays into Wilde’s critique of Victorian society as a whole) but also about how Wilde was not playing by the rules of Victorian society which made the book “immoral” in the eyes of many a reader.
So before going and declaring Oscar Wilde a big old misogynist maybe consider this and consider too that the sexist quotes you can find attributed to Wilde were actually said by his characters and meant to criticise the exact thing modern readers accuse Wilde of. There’s this lovely quote (this time by Wilde himself) about how Lord Henry Wotton is how people see him, Basil Hallward is how he sees himself and Dorian Gray is what he would like to be – in other ages perhaps. And we still make that mistake today: We take Lord Henry Wotton to be a carbon copy of Oscar Wilde himself when in fact the two are nothing alike. And I think people should know this. Oscar Wilde is often mistaken as some kind of air-headed, shallow hedonist, when in fact he was highly critical of his own society and its morals which led to his spectacular downfall only a few years after Dorian Gray was published.
I’m pretty sure all of this has been said before and said better than I ever could too but it’s been bothering me lately. I saw Wilde being misquoted and people holding up Lord Henry Wotton as some kind of witty, lovable character a lot lately and this just feels so wrong. I could say so much more but this is already too long so I’ll stop right here. Please note that I’m no literary critic, I’m a historian who really loves Wilde and researched him, his works and his significance to Victorian society and social changes a lot. I’m no literary critic but I know this: Authors and their characters are not the same thing, they’re not interchangeable. Characters are more like tools writers use to communicate messages. Lord Henry Wotton is not Oscar Wilde. Lord Henry Wotton is Wilde’s tool to criticise Victorian society and I think it’s a shame that so many people keep misreading this.
“Why don’t you use ai” idk man beyond the obvious environmental and “this machine causes psychosis and encourages people to kill themselves” thing I think asking the equivalent of a solid D student who is also a pathological liar if they can answer my question/do the work for me seems pretty fucking stupid
(This time with a higher quality because i didn't switch to capcut just so i could have subtitles, tbh i don't think anyone needs subtitles for it amyway)
Anyway, this is a birthday gift for my wonderful oomf @blorbotown . They chose the song and I portray their vision of Ivan pov in this edit. Also shout out to my sweetie pie for analysing some lines with me :))
Also if anyone wants an edit to a specific song, tell me in the comments! I may or may not end up doing it 👀
(This time with a higher quality because i didn't switch to capcut just so i could have subtitles, tbh i don't think anyone needs subtitles for it amyway)
Anyway, this is a birthday gift for my wonderful oomf @blorbotown . They chose the song and I portray their vision of Ivan pov in this edit. Also shout out to my sweetie pie for analysing some lines with me :))
Also if anyone wants an edit to a specific song, tell me in the comments! I may or may not end up doing it 👀
François Arnaud project (Françoiject) reviews: Just the Queer characters
If you’re entering the Françoinematic Universe via Heated Rivalry, you may be scrolling through this bisexual icon’s lengthy IMDB page and wondering: which ones are queer? Look no further.
(Check out my Masterpost of Françoiject reviews here)
This tour of FA’s fruity roles includes the following information:
My pithy commentary (free of charge)
🌈/ out of five: How explicit is the character’s queer identity, and how relevant is their identity to the overall story?
💔/ out of five: How much sadçois should you be prepared for as it relates to the character’s sexuality?
This rating system gives away a little more about the characters than my previous reviews, so spoilers ahoy, including spoilers for the on/offscreen death of queer characters (of which there are relatively few!)
A caveat: This list has set out to identify FA roles which are textually queer (Check out my honorable mentions at the bottom for some popular fanon interpretations). Obviously, the way this typically happens on screen is for the character to share intimate/romantic scenes with a same-sex partner or have their same-sex attraction referenced in dialogue, in place of or in addition to scenes or dialogue which reference attraction to other genders. Those are the characters getting included on this list. With that said, it would be a completely legitimate reading to give the queer benefit of the doubt to any FA character that doesn’t specifically identify as heterosexual (i.e. all of them). So go forth and interpret as you see fit. This list is just for fun and to celebrate queer rep on screen.
The OG:
Antonin Rimbaud (I Killed my Mother): FA’s first queer character was in his first real film. I Killed My Mother premiered at Cannes to rave reviews in 2009, when scenes of same-sex intimacy were still a rarity (and they still are!). Young handsome Antonin’s easy relationship with his sexuality and easier relationship with his slightly flighty mother are a balm and a foil to his character’s boyfriend, the angsty Hubert. Antonin put FA on the map and remains a piece of queer cinematic history.
🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈: Antonin is the love interest of the main character, and while this isn’t the kind of movie where characters say identity labels at the screen, the young men’s intimacy is the emotional catharsis of the film. If you haven’t seen the gifsets of the painting scene, just scroll tumblr for a while. You’ll find them.
💔💔: This movie is serious cinema about a young man’s fraught relationship with his mother. His being homosexual is a factor in that (and the fact that he’s accidentally outed to her without his knowledge). That said, the conflicts in the movie are largely internal, and the relationship of Antonin to Hubert has moments of real sweetness. General angst, minimal sadçois.
Period Pieces:
The most distinct thing about these queer characters is their relationship to the specific historical moment in which they exist (yes, I am including Heated Rivalry here. It’s a period film about the 2010s. Deal with it lol)
Scott Hunter (Heated Rivalry): If somehow you found this list, have an interest in seeing FA play an absolutely shredded gay man with sad eyes who finds the love of his life, and haven’t seen Heated Rivalry, I have great news for you. This is possibly the greatest day of your young life. Exit this list, get your friends HBO Max password and go watch Heated Rivalry right now. Go!
🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈: Heated Rivalry is a gay romance show. Scott is in this show because he is gay. His problems are because he is gay, and his ultimate happiness is a result of him being gay. Good for him. Good for Scott Hunter.
💔💔.5: This is a romance about professional athletes, which means it is a show about the closet, and the hard choices that entail coming out of it (if at all). For me the HEA (for Scott) makes the sadçois moments (and boy are they sad) a delicious part of a journey. Overall it’s a show about queer people finding happiness together, and while the specter of homophobia is very present, the setting of HR (see it is a period piece!) makes this a gentler world than others on this list.
Paul (Yellowjackets): Paul, you exquisite document of late 90s gay fashion. The high-waisted jeans. The silk VEST. The EARRING. It’s incredible to behold in the brief foray Yellowjackets takes into the past and wishful hallucinations of Coach Ben. Paul is the boyfriend poor closeted Ben left behind in order to accompany a girl’s soccer team to nationals, only to have their plane go down in the Canadian wilderness. I’ll be honest, I don’t know much else about the show. Paul’s appearance is brief, strewn across a few episodes of season two, but FA delivers.
🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈: Paul exists in order to show us the out and proud gay possibilities that Ben is too timid to pursue. He’s queer, tender, and I can’t say enough about his clothes. Remember in 1996 how everyone was dressing like a lesbian? Good times. Ben’s wishful imaginings of couples activities with Paul like playing charades are sweet moments of queer joy with a historical flavor.
💔💔💔💔💔: Nothing bad happens to Paul, who lbr mostly only exists on screen as part of Ben’s fever dreams. That context is enough to make this queer character fairly sad. However, this is also Yellowjackets, and uh, from what I hear, things don’t go great for Coach Ben (though his character’s fate isn’t due to homophobia). Paul’s final appearance is juicy sadçois, and whatever happens to Coach Ben in the wilderness takes place much later in the show. My advice if you aren’t into Yellowjackets: watch the Paul scenes as a sweet short film with a bittersweet and ambiguous ending and call it a day.
Curtis Bailey (Quantum Leap): I enjoyed the tenderness and hopefulness of this character, who admittedly does hit some of the more traditional sad historical gay beats common to network television. A one-off guest spot on a show about time travel, Curtis is an American soldier in 1978 who because of his accidental outing following the death of his partner (implied to have died towards the end of the Vietnam War), has been assigned to a suicide-squad-type secret mission. Curtis is a well-meaning attempt at a queer Born of the Fourth of July scenario (he feels betrayed by his country despite trying to serve it) but the show isn’t really dark or political enough to get too deep into all that.
🌈🌈🌈🌈: Curtis is definitely gay, and definitely loved his boyfriend very much. He says this in monologues at least three times. Those monologues aren’t bad, I just have to take one rainbow away for the show’s slightly cheapskate commitment to “tell don’t show.” Like one good flashback to Curtis’ happier times with his partner would have made all the difference.
💔💔💔💔: the premise of Curtis is that he loved and lost, and that his partner’s unexpected death directly led to him being outed to the military. That’s some heavy stuff. However, I want to give credit to the hopeful beats given to this character, who tries to sacrifice himself for the group and in a pleasant subversion of the Bury Your Gays trope (Heroic Flavor) gets rescued through the power of non-homophobic teamwork. It was a little saccharine but it did my heart good. Some valuable sadçois brought depth to a character that could have been expected and bland.
Gays with Ethically Questionable Business Practices:
If I had a nickel for every time François Arnaud played a gay guy with very few moral boundaries when it came to getting ahead in his corporate job, I’d have two nickels, which isn’t much, but it’s weird that it happened twice.
Patrick Landry (Plan B): Patrick is a dedicated family man who I think would really benefit from a Xanax. This bilingual lawyer is the third billed character in a remake of a Quebecois sci-fi show where the (terrible) main character uses a time traveling service to go back in time and try to make the perfect life. Patrick goes through some really interesting iterations thanks to this process, but his motivations are always to get ahead at his law firm in order to better support his family (so he says). This includes some ethically dubious shit that at one point puts him and his family in (threatened) danger. That said, he’s a great brother and a great dad and he holds a special place in my heart.
🌈🌈🌈: Patrick has a husband who he kisses on screen and two beautiful (surrogate?) children. For plot reasons he literally says “I’m gay. I have a husband” to another character. This is as textual as it gets. That being said, other than a little extra mustard that FA puts on some of his line deliveries Patrick’s sexuality isn’t super relevant to the story. It’s important that his character have a spouse, not a husband. It made me wonder, and what do you know, in the original Francophone Plan B, the Patrick character has a wife and kids instead. The switch isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I’d be curious to do a side-by-side watch someday and see what making Patrick gay does to change his story, if at all.
💔💔:This is a tough call, because infidelity is a factor in Patrick’s story, but not in the way you might expect. It is very clear that Patrick sees his actions as coming from a place of devotion toward his family. Frankly, as far as tragic shit in this show goes, Patrick and Eric’s marriage is doing great. This show also features some fantastic sadçois that is unrelated to Patrick’s sexuality.
Harrison (Surface): Surface is not about Harrison, the male lead’s work friend (possibly best friend, which is sad) who just so happens to be gay (and everyone is fine with it. Seriously!! No need to discuss it AT ALL, bro.) Harrison’s role in the show is “do borderline financial crimes to help the main character.” He doesn’t even have a last name, but look! He has a boyfriend! This show appeals to many demographics! Memorable sad line (i’m paraphrasing): “c’mon let’s get you out of the house. I’ll even suffer through a strip club with you.”
🌈:This is just a hunch but I think at some point in production they realized “oh this show is set in San Fran. we’re legally obligated to have a gay character” and Harrison was the only guy with blank spots on his “Traits and Abilities” sheet. The difference between Harrison and Dan Moody is a few hundred grand in net worth.
💔: I feel sadness in my heart for this underdeveloped character, but neither Harrison nor the people who wrote him seem to clock that his life is tragic.
Scene-y LA guys:
The name of this category is a JOKE based on a JOKE that FA made in an interview ONE TIME. It is TONGUE IN CHEEK. That being said, these are very contemporary characters living in big cities who seem to be very comfortable with queer culture and have little to no relationship to the closet. Good for them!
Sebastian Raine (Schitt’s Creek): Every actor should have a self-parody character, and I believe in my heart that this is François’. Every doubt in his mind telling him he’s abandoned good, noble Montreal in order to chase shallow fame in LA lives in Sebastian Raine, whose mild villainy is only outdone by his atrocious and no doubt expensive sweater. He takes his sexuality (and his sexiness) for granted. People are just material to be churned into his artistic vision. I love him. He appears in one episode of Schitt’s Creek as David Rose’s dreaded ex, and he should have won an Emmy for the accent alone.
🌈🌈🌈: Sexuality is never much of an issue on Schitt’s Creek, so it’s not like Sebastian needs to worry about homophobia. Whether he’s gay, bi, or pan is left to the imagination as far as i recall, but he and David definitely get up to something offscreen and they verbally and hilariously acknowledge their past relationship. Sebastian being queer is by far the least objectionable thing about him, so it’s not much of a role in the plot.
-💔: negative broken hearts, because Sebastian’s therapist says he should never feel sorrow.
Sam(my) (Twinless): First of all, go watch this movie. It rules. Secondly, we have Sammy, essentially a cameo and a comedic lesson in why straight people shouldn’t introduce the only two gay people they know and assume they’ll fall in love. Sammy in a short time has some funny lines in a great movie set in Portland that explores a few different (admittedly cosmopolitan and upper-middle class) facets of gay life in the 2020s. You get to see FA in a sexy mailman costume. It’s great.
🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈: Sammy is “the gay guy” Roman knows from work. He should totally introduce you! Shout out to Sammy’s sexy halloween costume and his upfront acknowledgement that he’s not into “nice.”
💔: one broken heart as fair warning that this movie is about the death of a queer character. That death has nothing to do with FA’s role, and I hope it doesn't turn you off of this movie. It would be unfair to apply Bury Your Gays to a film thats really about the complex relationships between its characters, several of whom are queer.
Connor Fontaine (Paint): Okay, I’m going to be real: I’m not actually sure that this character is meant to be understood as queer. HOWEVER, according to a strict reading of the text, at least one woman and one man verbally confirm having sucked his dick. That’s good enough for me. I didn’t really love the rest of this movie because (shocker) the art market sucks. Connor pops up a little over halfway through, tells some inappropriate stories, does some cocaine, and tries to hook up with one of the female artist characters who briefly debates whether she wants to fuck him or sell him paintings (and girl you are valid).
🌈🌈: Again, while I believe in my heart that Connor is bi based on dialogue, his role in the movie is about class, not sexuality. He’s there as the heir to an art collector who reminds the artist characters that there are people out there who just play by different rules because of money they were born into. He does wear a cunty earring.
💔: eh, again whether or not he’s queer has little to do with the fact that Connor is kind of a dick. It’s not clear how seriously the audience should take a story he tells that implies his father once touched him inappropriately as a kind of macho bullying.
Honorable Mention: The Subtext Gang
These characters are not textually queer. However, for the discerning viewer, there is some very Modern Literature available on Ao3 speculating on various queer identities they might be referencing via subtext, costuming, or just pure transformative efforts by their fans.
Cesare Borgia (The Borgias): Shoutout Lucrezia, but Cesare is on here because of Micheletto. The Borgias canon gay character has a relationship of deep trust with FA’s Cesare, and when he departs after the death of his lover in season 3, Cesare’s grief is very real. Toss in a lot of homoerotic sword fighting, cute banter (Cesare meets Micheletto’s mom!), and tense dialogue over Micheletto’s other partners and you’ve got the recipe for a classic slash ship.
🌈: A courtesy rainbow, for “you must keep on loving this boy.”
💔: *closes wikipedia* haha nothing bad ever happens to Cesare Borgia! Jesus loves him!
Manfred Bernardo (Midnight Texas): Manfred the medium/fortune teller/scam artist is on this subtext list for two reasons: 1) there’s just no way he’s heterosexual and 2) He spends all of season one of Midnight Texas wearing ace rings. So we have two equally fun (and not contradictory) subtext possibilities here. Whether it was a happy accident in the costuming department or an intentional shout out to a niche community, we have the possibility that Manfred isn’t interested in sex, and that he’s definitely curious about many of the beautiful men and women that inhabit a sleepy and supernatural Texas town. Anything is better than poor Creek.
🌈🌈: please Manfred. You have so many choices. Please.
💔: A courtesy broken heart for Manfred’s obvious comphet.
François Arnaud project (Françoiject) reviews: Just the Queer characters
If you’re entering the Françoinematic Universe via Heated Rivalry, you may be scrolling through this bisexual icon’s lengthy IMDB page and wondering: which ones are queer? Look no further.
(Check out my Masterpost of Françoiject reviews here)
This tour of FA’s fruity roles includes the following information:
My pithy commentary (free of charge)
🌈/ out of five: How explicit is the character’s queer identity, and how relevant is their identity to the overall story?
💔/ out of five: How much sadçois should you be prepared for as it relates to the character’s sexuality?
This rating system gives away a little more about the characters than my previous reviews, so spoilers ahoy, including spoilers for the on/offscreen death of queer characters (of which there are relatively few!)
A caveat: This list has set out to identify FA roles which are textually queer (Check out my honorable mentions at the bottom for some popular fanon interpretations). Obviously, the way this typically happens on screen is for the character to share intimate/romantic scenes with a same-sex partner or have their same-sex attraction referenced in dialogue, in place of or in addition to scenes or dialogue which reference attraction to other genders. Those are the characters getting included on this list. With that said, it would be a completely legitimate reading to give the queer benefit of the doubt to any FA character that doesn’t specifically identify as heterosexual (i.e. all of them). So go forth and interpret as you see fit. This list is just for fun and to celebrate queer rep on screen.
The OG:
Antonin Rimbaud (I Killed my Mother): FA’s first queer character was in his first real film. I Killed My Mother premiered at Cannes to rave reviews in 2009, when scenes of same-sex intimacy were still a rarity (and they still are!). Young handsome Antonin’s easy relationship with his sexuality and easier relationship with his slightly flighty mother are a balm and a foil to his character’s boyfriend, the angsty Hubert. Antonin put FA on the map and remains a piece of queer cinematic history.
🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈: Antonin is the love interest of the main character, and while this isn’t the kind of movie where characters say identity labels at the screen, the young men’s intimacy is the emotional catharsis of the film. If you haven’t seen the gifsets of the painting scene, just scroll tumblr for a while. You’ll find them.
💔💔: This movie is serious cinema about a young man’s fraught relationship with his mother. His being homosexual is a factor in that (and the fact that he’s accidentally outed to her without his knowledge). That said, the conflicts in the movie are largely internal, and the relationship of Antonin to Hubert has moments of real sweetness. General angst, minimal sadçois.
Period Pieces:
The most distinct thing about these queer characters is their relationship to the specific historical moment in which they exist (yes, I am including Heated Rivalry here. It’s a period film about the 2010s. Deal with it lol)
Scott Hunter (Heated Rivalry): If somehow you found this list, have an interest in seeing FA play an absolutely shredded gay man with sad eyes who finds the love of his life, and haven’t seen Heated Rivalry, I have great news for you. This is possibly the greatest day of your young life. Exit this list, get your friends HBO Max password and go watch Heated Rivalry right now. Go!
🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈: Heated Rivalry is a gay romance show. Scott is in this show because he is gay. His problems are because he is gay, and his ultimate happiness is a result of him being gay. Good for him. Good for Scott Hunter.
💔💔.5: This is a romance about professional athletes, which means it is a show about the closet, and the hard choices that entail coming out of it (if at all). For me the HEA (for Scott) makes the sadçois moments (and boy are they sad) a delicious part of a journey. Overall it’s a show about queer people finding happiness together, and while the specter of homophobia is very present, the setting of HR (see it is a period piece!) makes this a gentler world than others on this list.
Paul (Yellowjackets): Paul, you exquisite document of late 90s gay fashion. The high-waisted jeans. The silk VEST. The EARRING. It’s incredible to behold in the brief foray Yellowjackets takes into the past and wishful hallucinations of Coach Ben. Paul is the boyfriend poor closeted Ben left behind in order to accompany a girl’s soccer team to nationals, only to have their plane go down in the Canadian wilderness. I’ll be honest, I don’t know much else about the show. Paul’s appearance is brief, strewn across a few episodes of season two, but FA delivers.
🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈: Paul exists in order to show us the out and proud gay possibilities that Ben is too timid to pursue. He’s queer, tender, and I can’t say enough about his clothes. Remember in 1996 how everyone was dressing like a lesbian? Good times. Ben’s wishful imaginings of couples activities with Paul like playing charades are sweet moments of queer joy with a historical flavor.
💔💔💔💔💔: Nothing bad happens to Paul, who lbr mostly only exists on screen as part of Ben’s fever dreams. That context is enough to make this queer character fairly sad. However, this is also Yellowjackets, and uh, from what I hear, things don’t go great for Coach Ben (though his character’s fate isn’t due to homophobia). Paul’s final appearance is juicy sadçois, and whatever happens to Coach Ben in the wilderness takes place much later in the show. My advice if you aren’t into Yellowjackets: watch the Paul scenes as a sweet short film with a bittersweet and ambiguous ending and call it a day.
Curtis Bailey (Quantum Leap): I enjoyed the tenderness and hopefulness of this character, who admittedly does hit some of the more traditional sad historical gay beats common to network television. A one-off guest spot on a show about time travel, Curtis is an American soldier in 1978 who because of his accidental outing following the death of his partner (implied to have died towards the end of the Vietnam War), has been assigned to a suicide-squad-type secret mission. Curtis is a well-meaning attempt at a queer Born of the Fourth of July scenario (he feels betrayed by his country despite trying to serve it) but the show isn’t really dark or political enough to get too deep into all that.
🌈🌈🌈🌈: Curtis is definitely gay, and definitely loved his boyfriend very much. He says this in monologues at least three times. Those monologues aren’t bad, I just have to take one rainbow away for the show’s slightly cheapskate commitment to “tell don’t show.” Like one good flashback to Curtis’ happier times with his partner would have made all the difference.
💔💔💔💔: the premise of Curtis is that he loved and lost, and that his partner’s unexpected death directly led to him being outed to the military. That’s some heavy stuff. However, I want to give credit to the hopeful beats given to this character, who tries to sacrifice himself for the group and in a pleasant subversion of the Bury Your Gays trope (Heroic Flavor) gets rescued through the power of non-homophobic teamwork. It was a little saccharine but it did my heart good. Some valuable sadçois brought depth to a character that could have been expected and bland.
Gays with Ethically Questionable Business Practices:
If I had a nickel for every time François Arnaud played a gay guy with very few moral boundaries when it came to getting ahead in his corporate job, I’d have two nickels, which isn’t much, but it’s weird that it happened twice.
Patrick Landry (Plan B): Patrick is a dedicated family man who I think would really benefit from a Xanax. This bilingual lawyer is the third billed character in a remake of a Quebecois sci-fi show where the (terrible) main character uses a time traveling service to go back in time and try to make the perfect life. Patrick goes through some really interesting iterations thanks to this process, but his motivations are always to get ahead at his law firm in order to better support his family (so he says). This includes some ethically dubious shit that at one point puts him and his family in (threatened) danger. That said, he’s a great brother and a great dad and he holds a special place in my heart.
🌈🌈🌈: Patrick has a husband who he kisses on screen and two beautiful (surrogate?) children. For plot reasons he literally says “I’m gay. I have a husband” to another character. This is as textual as it gets. That being said, other than a little extra mustard that FA puts on some of his line deliveries Patrick’s sexuality isn’t super relevant to the story. It’s important that his character have a spouse, not a husband. It made me wonder, and what do you know, in the original Francophone Plan B, the Patrick character has a wife and kids instead. The switch isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I’d be curious to do a side-by-side watch someday and see what making Patrick gay does to change his story, if at all.
💔💔:This is a tough call, because infidelity is a factor in Patrick’s story, but not in the way you might expect. It is very clear that Patrick sees his actions as coming from a place of devotion toward his family. Frankly, as far as tragic shit in this show goes, Patrick and Eric’s marriage is doing great. This show also features some fantastic sadçois that is unrelated to Patrick’s sexuality.
Harrison (Surface): Surface is not about Harrison, the male lead’s work friend (possibly best friend, which is sad) who just so happens to be gay (and everyone is fine with it. Seriously!! No need to discuss it AT ALL, bro.) Harrison’s role in the show is “do borderline financial crimes to help the main character.” He doesn’t even have a last name, but look! He has a boyfriend! This show appeals to many demographics! Memorable sad line (i’m paraphrasing): “c’mon let’s get you out of the house. I’ll even suffer through a strip club with you.”
🌈:This is just a hunch but I think at some point in production they realized “oh this show is set in San Fran. we’re legally obligated to have a gay character” and Harrison was the only guy with blank spots on his “Traits and Abilities” sheet. The difference between Harrison and Dan Moody is a few hundred grand in net worth.
💔: I feel sadness in my heart for this underdeveloped character, but neither Harrison nor the people who wrote him seem to clock that his life is tragic.
Scene-y LA guys:
The name of this category is a JOKE based on a JOKE that FA made in an interview ONE TIME. It is TONGUE IN CHEEK. That being said, these are very contemporary characters living in big cities who seem to be very comfortable with queer culture and have little to no relationship to the closet. Good for them!
Sebastian Raine (Schitt’s Creek): Every actor should have a self-parody character, and I believe in my heart that this is François’. Every doubt in his mind telling him he’s abandoned good, noble Montreal in order to chase shallow fame in LA lives in Sebastian Raine, whose mild villainy is only outdone by his atrocious and no doubt expensive sweater. He takes his sexuality (and his sexiness) for granted. People are just material to be churned into his artistic vision. I love him. He appears in one episode of Schitt’s Creek as David Rose’s dreaded ex, and he should have won an Emmy for the accent alone.
🌈🌈🌈: Sexuality is never much of an issue on Schitt’s Creek, so it’s not like Sebastian needs to worry about homophobia. Whether he’s gay, bi, or pan is left to the imagination as far as i recall, but he and David definitely get up to something offscreen and they verbally and hilariously acknowledge their past relationship. Sebastian being queer is by far the least objectionable thing about him, so it’s not much of a role in the plot.
-💔: negative broken hearts, because Sebastian’s therapist says he should never feel sorrow.
Sam(my) (Twinless): First of all, go watch this movie. It rules. Secondly, we have Sammy, essentially a cameo and a comedic lesson in why straight people shouldn’t introduce the only two gay people they know and assume they’ll fall in love. Sammy in a short time has some funny lines in a great movie set in Portland that explores a few different (admittedly cosmopolitan and upper-middle class) facets of gay life in the 2020s. You get to see FA in a sexy mailman costume. It’s great.
🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈: Sammy is “the gay guy” Roman knows from work. He should totally introduce you! Shout out to Sammy’s sexy halloween costume and his upfront acknowledgement that he’s not into “nice.”
💔: one broken heart as fair warning that this movie is about the death of a queer character. That death has nothing to do with FA’s role, and I hope it doesn't turn you off of this movie. It would be unfair to apply Bury Your Gays to a film thats really about the complex relationships between its characters, several of whom are queer.
Connor Fontaine (Paint): Okay, I’m going to be real: I’m not actually sure that this character is meant to be understood as queer. HOWEVER, according to a strict reading of the text, at least one woman and one man verbally confirm having sucked his dick. That’s good enough for me. I didn’t really love the rest of this movie because (shocker) the art market sucks. Connor pops up a little over halfway through, tells some inappropriate stories, does some cocaine, and tries to hook up with one of the female artist characters who briefly debates whether she wants to fuck him or sell him paintings (and girl you are valid).
🌈🌈: Again, while I believe in my heart that Connor is bi based on dialogue, his role in the movie is about class, not sexuality. He’s there as the heir to an art collector who reminds the artist characters that there are people out there who just play by different rules because of money they were born into. He does wear a cunty earring.
💔: eh, again whether or not he’s queer has little to do with the fact that Connor is kind of a dick. It’s not clear how seriously the audience should take a story he tells that implies his father once touched him inappropriately as a kind of macho bullying.
Honorable Mention: The Subtext Gang
These characters are not textually queer. However, for the discerning viewer, there is some very Modern Literature available on Ao3 speculating on various queer identities they might be referencing via subtext, costuming, or just pure transformative efforts by their fans.
Cesare Borgia (The Borgias): Shoutout Lucrezia, but Cesare is on here because of Micheletto. The Borgias canon gay character has a relationship of deep trust with FA’s Cesare, and when he departs after the death of his lover in season 3, Cesare’s grief is very real. Toss in a lot of homoerotic sword fighting, cute banter (Cesare meets Micheletto’s mom!), and tense dialogue over Micheletto’s other partners and you’ve got the recipe for a classic slash ship.
🌈: A courtesy rainbow, for “you must keep on loving this boy.”
💔: *closes wikipedia* haha nothing bad ever happens to Cesare Borgia! Jesus loves him!
Manfred Bernardo (Midnight Texas): Manfred the medium/fortune teller/scam artist is on this subtext list for two reasons: 1) there’s just no way he’s heterosexual and 2) He spends all of season one of Midnight Texas wearing ace rings. So we have two equally fun (and not contradictory) subtext possibilities here. Whether it was a happy accident in the costuming department or an intentional shout out to a niche community, we have the possibility that Manfred isn’t interested in sex, and that he’s definitely curious about many of the beautiful men and women that inhabit a sleepy and supernatural Texas town. Anything is better than poor Creek.
🌈🌈: please Manfred. You have so many choices. Please.
💔: A courtesy broken heart for Manfred’s obvious comphet.
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