Les Amis - Call Me By Your Name by the 1970s French Riviera

Gerard Blain’s cult masterpiece revered by Truffaut but unpopular with the public tells the story of a same sex friendship-relationship in 1971 France with elegance and sophistication. Les Amis is a film to watch for its stunning aesthetics and deep message.

Luca Guadagnino’s 2017 film Call Me By Your Name, among other remarkable features, certainly stands out as the work that crowned 24-year-old Timothée Chalamet one of the new leading faces of European cinema. Guadagnino’s sophisticated yet captivating plot, the carefully balanced characters’ personae alongside Chalamet’s enigmatic beauty, surely contributed to enhance the film’s beautiful but otherwise dull provincial northern Italy setting. 

What if, though, the film was set in Chalamet’s motherland? Maybe by the French seaside? Normandy – with its beaches evoking caustic feelings when compared to Cote D’Azure glamour – is actually the setting of a film that much resembles Call Me By Your Name, 1971 Les Amis.

Set between Paris and Deauville, Les Amis is Gérard Blain’s directing debut. Despite being presented at Cannes Film Festival and awarded with a Golden Leopard for Best First Work at the Locarno International Film Festival, this much-revered cult film always struggled to obtain widespread success. It’s bittersweet fate well mirrors its director’s career. Successful as a budget film actor in the 1950s and 1960s, at the turn of the decade Blain decided to switch side of the camera determined to fulfill his artistic ambitions, rather than cash out on an easy fame. 

Philippe and Paul are friends and secret lovers in Gerard Blain’s Les Amis - Metrograph

Les Amis tells the story of 17-year-old working-class teenager Paul (Yann Favre) who, raised by his mum alone, looks to Philippe (Philippe March) a mature, wealthy man, for the emotional comfort of a paternal figure. At the centre of the film is their tender friendship and mutual respect, rather than an explicit celebration of homosexuality. Philippe is a friend and lover who supports Paul’s acting ambitions and guides his cultural growth. When Paul, whilst on holiday with Philippe, starts hanging out with young girl Marie-Laure, the men’s secret relationship is threatened by the ghosts of disillusionment. That’s the psychological drama around which the film revolves until an unexpected finale puts an end to the lovers’ story.  

Les Amis is a film that, although unsettled bourgeoisie audiences of the time and faced a ban threat, seems more committed to sophisticate narrate the universality of private and delicate feelings rather than shock. The absence of explicit sex scenes, along with the characters’ charming manners and slick early 1970s fits, graces the film with the right elegance to successfully address the theme of homosexuality. Blain plays with feelings to show how frail humans can be, regardless of sexuality or social class. His insight into the relationship is a raw portrait where no one is blamed or absolved. There’s time to reflect about love and simultaneously on the absurdity of a relationship that technically borders paedophilia. 

An admirer of Robert Bresson and Carl Dreyer, Blain’s long static shots give time to savour scenes, implicitly hinting but leaving the audience to reach their own conclusions and find their own meanings. Such slowness – along with François de Roubaix bubbly and eerie score – creates a nearly suspended atmosphere around characters and conversations, highlighting their emotional isolation from the rest of French society.

The elegance of Blain’s dialogues and storytelling finds its juxtaposition in the costumes, especially those of main character Paul. The teenager displays a suave balance of late mod cuts and early 70s casual fits typical of the youth style of the days, when psychedelic patterns met more sophisticated cuts of modernist heritage. In the opening scene Paul, who is having his boots polished, is the epitome of coolness wearing a three-buttoned striped suit (slightly reminiscent of John Coltrane’s on Giant Steps album cover), a typically early 70s pale blue pointed collar shirt counterbalanced by the colour explosion of a paisley-patterned tie and matching pocket square, and ribbed yellow socks. The contrast between the city and the seaside is highlighted by the lessening of formality. On the Normandy coast, whilst enjoying an aperitif, both Paul and Philippe get rid of their ties, displaying sports blazer with slightly wider than usual lapels matched by turtlenecks or button-down shirts. 

Les Amis’ aesthetics looks ages away from the 1980s Lacoste and Converse galore of Call Me By Your Name, but the same feeling of sophistication and attention for a sober yet hip elegance stays. Sophistication, whether in the garments or feelings, is certainly was bonds these two films together, regardless of their shared theme of friendship, frailty and love.