"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.
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.