Lie With Me: a French love story with a discreet charm

We get that novelist Stéphane Belcourt was never destined to remain in his home town in the Cognac region of France, given the fact that he can’t stomach booze. This visceral aversion to the pride and joy of his native land isn’t the only reason he didn’t fit in, but a somewhat on-the-nose metaphor for a more general sense of being out of step – a sense predominantly conveyed in relation to his homosexuality and his artistic bent. Stéphane’s understanding of these attributes of his own character comes in for challenge and reconsideration as he undertakes a sentimental journey.

In the present, we join the middle-aged Stéphane (Guillaume de Tonquédec) as he returns to his home town for the first time in 35 years to undertake a promotional gig for the cognac industry and read from his skimpy recent writing output. (He’s blocked.) Meanwhile, in flashbacks to 1984, we witness the timid teenage Stéphane (Jérémy Gillet) as he embarks on an intense relationship with classmate Thomas (Julien De Saint Jean), the smouldering, conflicted son of a local farming family. A discombobulating bridge between these periods is ­provided by Lucas (Victor Belmondo), who is overseeing the logistics of Stéphane’s visit on behalf of the distiller, and who also happens to be Thomas’s son.

Written and directed by Olivier Peyon with assurance and discreet charm, Lie with Me is adapted from a 2017 novel by Philippe Besson. As an inside picture of a successful jobbing writer feeling his way around a strange situation, it feels plausible, if a tad indulgent, Stéphane’s nostalgia and insecurities playing off awkwardly against the demands of interested locals and the peculiarities of visiting American cognac distributors. These background characters certainly aren’t caricatured grotesques, but nor is Stéphane’s predicament here particularly burdensome in the scheme of things.

The main plot also comes with an undertow of self-regard: as the story of young Stéphane and Thomas’s passion unfolds, we come to see it as the tale of, on the one hand, a sensitive and talented young artist destined for great things and, on the other, a pitifully tormented labourer destined for frustration and misery who is nevertheless thankfully able to serve the interests of his star-dusted lover and become a tragic cautionary tale. These understandings are later synthesised by the artist in a rousing climactic speech which chastens and inspires his home town while confirming his writer’s block is shifted too. Santé!

And yet such a critical reading – though not unjustified – feels rather ungenerous when there is much to appreciate about the film as well. The performances are all satisfying, with de Tonquédec bringing a balance of worldliness and vulnerability to the returning writer. There’s a pleasing resemblance between him and Gillet, who enjoys good chemistry with De Saint Jean in their teenage scenes, Stéphane’s wide-eyed watchfulness playing off against Thomas’s more impulsive energy and building to a convincing mutual attraction that grows beyond the physical. They cover plenty of ­terrain, from a rough shag in an abandoned gym to bucolic skinny-­dipping to carefree bedroom headbanging. The rural setting glows in the flashback scenes, conveying not only the limitations of the region but its beauty and scale – an aptly striking locale for that one summer of love that changed everything. The details of the 1980s setting are nicely captured too.

The present-day plot plays out through the older Stéphane’s relationship with Lucas, which begins with mild hints of such tales of morbid obsession as Vertigo (1958) or Death in Venice (1971) but resolves into something more reassuring, even wholesome. The complexity of Lucas’s position gradually emerges as we realise that each man is in pursuit of information only the other can provide: ultimately, the film argues for the comforting knowability of ourselves and others, if only we can access the facts. 

The original title, Arrête avec tes mensonges, or ‘stop with your lies’, is something Stéphane’s mother used to say to him when he started writing fiction, an admonition that identifies storytelling with deception. The film suggests we can have it both ways: that the uncovering of hidden truths can be a route to the resolution of conflict and upset; and, at the same time, that art excuses such lessons from being tied to the specific. 

 ► Lie With Me is in UK cinemas now.