Vincent (Julien Baumgartner) is a good-looking swim team champ and big man on campus whose biggest concerns should be math tests and girls, but he has other things on his mind. Constantly struggling with the secret of his homosexuality, he gets a little relief by sneaking out of town to visit an older lover, but back at home, a strict code of silence is in effect.
When Benjamin (Jérémie Elkaïm), a new boy at school who makes no secret of his homosexuality, starts to pal around with Vincent and then accidentally outs him, the merde hits the fan. Vincent is stared at, his locker is vandalized, and his loyal teammates scatter like the wind, reappearing only to harass him in the locker room and proclaim that they don't even want to swim in the same water as him.
At home, Mom and Dad are stunned into silence, but Vincent's older brother, an unemployed layabout, reacts with both disgust and jealousy, as if Vincent has done yet another thing to steal the parents' attention. It's a funny and very real reaction. Most confused of all is Vincent's girlfriend, Noémie (Julia Maraval), who tries to be cool about everything but is clearly shaken to the core by her own ignorance and continuing desire to be with him. What, she wonders, is she supposed to do now?
Once everyone gets past the initial shock, things calm down quite a bit, almost too much to keep the film moving forward. After a couple of clichéd speeches about determination from the swim coach (who's done nothing to punish Vincent's teammates, by the way), Vincent plunges back into the pool to train for the big meet. Do you think he'll win the race? Mom and Dad work it out, big brother fumes in the corner, and Noémie ponders her new reality. Vincent seems surprisingly OK, even empowered, though not necessarily in a good way. He has the audacity to scoff at a teacher who confesses his homosexuality to him but must keep it secret to protect his job. Vincent seems to think that now that he's gone to all this trouble, everyone else should follow his lead tout suite.
Only a trip to the gay district of Paris can shake Vincent's new confidence. Wandering in and out of bars for the first time, he's shocked and appalled as he's hit on again and again by lecherous queens. It's a weird but realistic moment in a movie that preaches tolerance. Some gays are dirty old men who should be avoided. And some gays are high-school swimming stars. C'est la vie.
Aka À cause d'un garçon.
We're over it already.
