Avant que j'oublie (2007)

User Rating:

6.6/10   

Director:

Jacques Nolot

Writer:

Jacques Nolot (writer)

Release Date:

17 October 2007 (France)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

A potrait of a 58-year-old man battling his inner demons on the search for self-discovery. |

Plot Keywords:

Psychotherapy | Male Nudity | Gay Sex | Medicine | Male Full Frontal Nudity

Cast

Jacques Nolot	...	Pierre Pruez
Jean-Pol Dubois	...	L'homme
Marc Rioufol	...	Paul
Bastien d'Asnières	...	Marc
Gaetano Weysen-Volli	...	Le beau gosse du resto chinois
Bruno Moneglia	...	Bruno
David Kessler	...	Le psy Manosky
Rémy Le Fur	...	Le commissaire-priseur
Jean Pommier	...	Georges, le notaire
Lyes Rabia	...	Khalid, le livreur
Lionel Goldstein	...	David
Bernard Herlem	...	Richard
Claudine Sainderichin	...	Femme assurances
Albert Mainella	...	Toutoune
Jean-Paul Chagniot	...	Willem
Isabelle Boudot de la Motte	...	Marie-Odile
Josianne Daussy	...	Femme exposition
Florence Bouteau	...	Capitaine Laforge
Raphaëline Goupilleau	...	Voisine Toutoune
Isabel Arias	...	La femme de ménage
Alimata Camara	...	La concierge
David Lefèvre	...	Flic atelier
Yann Gohiec	...	Responsable Prisunic

Directed by
Jacques Nolot

Writing credits (in alphabetical order)
Jacques Nolot		writer

Produced by
Pauline Duhault	....	producer

Cinematography by
Josée Deshaies

Film Editing by
Sophie Reine

Production Design by
Gaëlle Guitard

Sound Department
Jean-Pierre Laforce	....	sound mixer
Jean Mallet	....	sound editor
Fred Mays	....	post-synchronization
Jean-Louis Ughetto	....	sound

Camera and Electrical Department
Marianne Lamour	....	gaffer

Editorial Department
Jimmy Christophe	....	colorist
Tuong Vi Nguyen-Long	....	assistant editor

Production Companies

• Elia Films
• Centre National de la Cinématographie (CNC) (participation)
• Procirep (support)
• Angoa-Agicoa (support)

Distributors

• Homescreen (2008) (Netherlands) (DVD)
• ID Distribution (2007) (France) (theatrical)
• Peccadillo Pictures (2008) (UK) (all media)
• Strand Releasing (2008) (USA) (theatrical) (subtitled)

Also Known As:

Before I Forget (USA) (literal title)

Runtime:

France:108 min

Country:

France

Language:

French

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.66 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Filming Locations:

Paris, France

Company:

Elia Films

Trivia:

Chosen by "Les Cahiers du cinéma" (France) as one of the 10 best pictures of 2007 (#07, tied with "Les Amours d'Astrée et de Céladon" and "Honor de cavalleria")

Drier than dry

Another Cannes 2007 Directors' Fortnight film, Jacques Nolot's latest continues a distinctive body of work in which an apparently dry, ironic, openly gay French point of view predominates. Nolot himself, a rather handsome Mediterranean type in his late fifties, stars as Pierre, a blocked writer, former gigolo, HIV-positive for 24 years (which seems rather unusual), reveals himself starkly in dark opening scenes where he tosses and turns, vomits, and exhibits a sagging chest and protruding belly. (He still has all his hair and a tan and looks stylish in his clothes.) He pees into the sink and orders up a call boy for fellatio. All this is surprisingly elegant and even witty as the film progresses from conversation to conversation, cigarette to cigarette in a diaristic look at the artist as a jaded gay man who sees one friend who's maintained him for years die, another inherit a fortune in art work, and arranges at the end with a muscular gigolo to act out his wildest fantasy.

Pierre sees a shrink three times a week--a younger gay man who encourages him to go with younger gay men, believing it will give him a boost. Nolot is frank about his own sexuality, which seems to be of a well-off bourgeois kind, but he doesn't show gay society as we know it in America. Where are the gay parties, gay bars, gay couples, or even just gay support groups? The solidarity available to urban gay men in the US seems missing here, where French gays have full intellectual self-acceptance but don't seem to envision the possibility of a positive lifestyle--of political action, for example, longtime companionship, adoption (or fun?). Depressed coping is the rule of the day. To what extent is Nolet/Pierre's aloneness self-imposed? There is also a fascination with money, who has it, how to get it, how to keep it. One sequence given climactic position is of the auction where the big art collection is sold off.

Pierre talks about considering suicide. Life is a string of cigarettes, or cups of coffee taken with a world-weary air. Pierre copes, but he does not thrive. Where are life's enthusiasms? All in the past, it seems. He reads aloud a love letter from the Eighties with slightly tearful wistfulness. Lost perhaps in the hedonism of a vanished youth, he can't get a positive grip on the present, but won't let it go either. This is a very urbane and European treatment of a life that's been reduced to mechanical coping. But isn't it a bit of a pose, since Nolet has the energy to produce a distinctive sequence of works--to act in 65 films and direct four of his own--the 1986 Manège, the 1998 Arrière-Pays, the 2002 La Chatte à deux têtes,/Porn Theater, which had limited US distribution; and this, which, "low-budget" or no, did cost 400,000 euros to make?

Avant que j'oublie/Before I Forget: seen at MK2 Hautefeuille, Paris, October 2007. Also featured at the even more art-house-focused MK2 Beaubourg, where handsome large posters of Nolot's last three films are on display.