What We Have

CinemaSerf6/10

Apr 3, 2022

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Frenchman Maxime Desmons ("Maurice") relocates to a remote Canadian community where he picks up his acting career. The wages are poor, so he tries to supplement them by teaching folks French. That's where he alights on keen, but shy, swimmer "Allan" (Alex Ozerov). Try as they both might, they struggle to fit in with their respective peers, but they do gradually begin to bond together. The former an outwardly gay man, the latter still preparing for his own journey into manhood. When "Maxime" intervenes during an incident with a bully, the younger man starts to believe that the two could have a future. This is when, using flashbacks and good old community gossip, that we discover just why the actor is now all but hiding in this provincial backwater. Desmons is pretty convincing here, as is Ozerov, but I found the writing a bit pedestrian and there is something distinctly unsatisfactory about the conclusion. The production is good though, the story evolves at a reasonable pace and it does present us with an interesting observation of behaviour that when looked on retrospectively, makes you wonder why people make some of the most basic of human errors when the heart and hormones take over.