Sauvage ***½ (2018, Félix Maritaud, Eric Bernard, Nicolas Dibla, Philippe Ohrel) – Classic Movie Review 12,435

Félix Maritaud is extraordinary as big city young hustler Léo, in the heart-breaking 2018 French drama film Sauvage [Wild]. Léo may be longing for love but is on the fast track to an early grave.

Félix Maritaud is absolutely extraordinary as big city young male sex worker Léo, in writer-director Camille Vidal-Naquet’s agonising, heart-breaking 2018 French drama film Sauvage [Wild], giving it his all, and then a bit more.

Apparently the director hesitated to cast Maritaud because he was looking for a younger, sicker-looking actor and thought he would be too strong for the role. But then he saw ‘the tenderness and fragility I wanted, he had them in the way he walks, the way he moves, the way he performs’ and that Maritaud could communicate emotions without dialogue, as Léo ‘doesn’t talk much’. The choice was right, Maritaud seems born to be wild.

He plays the self-destructive 22-year-old gay male prostitute Léo, who may be longing for love but is on the fast track to an early grave. A few folks offer to help, but that’s obviously no good to him. Sex and drugs, on the other hand, are. There’s one guy he likes, but that guy has found an older man to look after him, and isn’t gay anyway, pushing Léo away, forcibly. He’s destroying his one major asset, his handsome body. If his body is a temple, it is a temple of doom. He’s desperate for love, tenderness and affection, but looking in all the wrong places, and in any case, he is Sauvage [Wild]. Vidal-Naquet says Léo is ‘untamed. He’s a wild animal. Léo reminds us that we live by rules of society, those set by modern cities. We’ve all been tamed.’

Are we meant to admire Léo’s untamed nature? Yes we are, even though he’s headed for an early grave. The film is a cry for freedom, actually a scream. at whatever cost. He has a sort of survival instinct, but how can he actually survive? Léo is so wild he is happy to drink water from the street gutters, sleep in the streets and eat garbage from bins. Not really a health or career life plan. We fear for the actor in these scenes, and the sex scenes, but there he is, giving it his all. You really want Léo to survive, prosper, be fulfilled and have a ‘better’ life, but that isn’t the point of this film at all.

It is very strong material, with frequent explicit sex scenes, concealing nothing and holding nothing back. It’s quite a horrible film to watch, made much worse by being so well, so realistically, so convincingly done. It is very well made too. The camera work by director of photography Jacques Girault is meticulous and impressively striking, under difficult circumstances.

It is produced by Emmanuel Giraud and Marie Sonne-Jensen, and also stars Eric Bernard, Nicolas Dibla and Philippe Ohrel.

Sauvage premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2018, where it won the Rising Star Award and was nominated for three other awards.

The cast are Félix Maritaud as Léo, Éric Bernard as Ahd, Nicolas Dibla as Mihal, and Philippe Ohrel as Claude.

Sauvage is Vidal-Naquet’s first feature film, drawing on his experience working with the Catholic charity Aux captifs la libération.

Félix Maritaud also stars in the 2018 film Jonas [I Am Jonas].

Félix Maritaud was born on 12 December 1992. He gained recognition after starring in French independent films, most notably BPM (Beats per Minute) (2017). The French LGBT magazine Têtu called him ‘the new hero of French queer cinema’.

© Derek Winnert 2023 – Classic Movie Review 12,435

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