In 2008, United Artists released Francois Truffaut's 'The Wild Child'; a film about a child, around 12, roaming the forests in 1789, untamed and wild, unable to speak any human tongue, as though he emerged from the dawn of time.
Camille Vidal-Naquet' 'Sauvage' or 'Wild' brought back to mind the Truffaut film.
In Vidal-Naquet's protagonist Leo, 22, is a male prostitute, poorly educated, who lives by his wits in the street, on the highways, the bridge selling his body.
His 'love' is Abd, a boxer of sorts, bi-sexual who protects hims; nonetheless Abd is looking for a port in a storm, an older man, who can pleasure him and make life comfortable for him.
Leo is by inclination homosexual, who looks to please and to be coddled. His trysts are graphic, described in strikingly vivid colors rarely seen out of porno picture house, be oral or anal intercourse, or submitting to a giant dildo until he bleeds or a sadomasochistic trick. Or being beaten; eating poorly...a vagabond life, relieved by sex for money.
Living on the street, with other male prostitutes, he smokes crack, marijuana, drops meth. He tags team with others for a menage-a-trois, goes along with
petty thievery.
His health suffers: from asthma, early signs of TB, decaying teeth. With a touch of irony, 'Sauvage' opens with a man we take for a doctor examining a naked Leo., and suddenly he is masturbating him; we are witnessing play acting for money.
Saying this, thanks to a good health care system that does take good care of Leo when his health suffer.
And then Leo finds an older man, in his 50s, who offers him a stable life, a home and no money worries in St. Jerome, Canada. A safe haven in a stormy life.
And just as they are at the airport, Leo bolts and make his way back to the forest, and as the sunlight filters through the leafy grren shade of the trees, mother earth receives her body as he drifts off to sleep, as he finds
Vidal-Naquet uses her camera as an voyeur, an eye that records and espy the second oldest trade of the world. as Leo finds refuge to his feral nature.
We are in a dog-eat-dog world, where the so-called straight world find refuge in kinky sex, degradation and living out fantasy.
'Sauvage' skates on the edge off 'cinema verite'. It's not a film forthe faint of heart. Yet, Vidal-Naquet deserves praise for treating a slice of life that deserves treatment.
Review of Sauvage / Wild
