Closing Night Gala: Baby Love (Comme les autres)

A well-off established Parisian gay couple, a lawyer and a doctor living in trendy Belleville, split up when the doctor (Lambert Wilson) decides he wants to raise a child. But making the decision is only the beginning of a comedy of errors which takes our hero (a paediatrician) on a surprising journey. Gay adoption is illegal in France so he is forced to consider surrogacy but finds it impossible to find a potential mother or lesbian couple who share his lefty bourgeois world view. When he meets a young Argentinean woman by crashing into her car it seems he has found his perfect match. Nothing is simple, but this delicious and affecting film gives a brilliantly entertaining insight into the emotional highs and lows of gay parenting and its pitfalls. The sometimes comic tone is wonderfully balanced by the deadly serious intent with which the fathering instinct inspires our hapless hero. Lambert Wilson heads a talented cast who attack their roles with gusto. And just when it seems that everything is going your way, nature and human frailities have a way of throwing you into confusion. This modern comedy shows how everyone can be overwhelmed in different ways by the profound experience of trying to have a baby. Behind the comic façade we learn about just what it means to be a lover, a friend or a family.
Brian Robinson