That's a small little fascinating film even if it is too slow in many ways and with too many close-ups instead of action and dialogue. Yet it is an important film because of its subject.
Can a 15 year old boy fall in love with a man twice his age, hence 29 years old? The answer is of course and the distance between the two is nothing really since it will proportionally become smaller and smaller with time.
Can a 15 year old boy know for life who he wants to live with, to sleep with, to cry with, to laugh with, etc.? The answer again is yes. No one would object if it were a girl? A little bit young maybe but that's all and anyway the parents would either refuse that love, which I doubt, or more probably accept it and keep it in store for a while waiting for a wedding. That's what engagement is all about. What is shocking some in this situation is that it is a boy. Hence they are homophobes.
The question though is what can and must society do to avoid what is in a way a perversion, pedophilia. But there is a fair difference between a man under 30 falling in love with a boy over 15, and an older man having a relation with a boy or a girl under puberty. The line is difficult to define and in this particular case a court with a jury would probably without thinking too much send the man to prison.
But is it sane? We all know that some young people between 15 and 20 can fall in love desperately, without any alternative, mad with their love for the object of that love, for the person their love has decided to target. That's where this film could have been stronger.
Of course a 15 year old person cannot go to a foreign country without his/her own passport, so eloping to Denmark or The Netherlands is out of the question. But the film should have gone a lot farther than just running away to some other state within the US.
The two people, the boy and the adult, should go to a judge of some kind, or to a court for a judge to decide not on a crime but on a particular case. We could even think of the adult voluntarily and with the consent of the teenager taking the risk of going to prison by making the relation public and if love is what it is the teenager would have waited and suffered from his environment till his man-friend came back.
It requires a lawyer. Sure. But this treatment of the subject would have been pedagogical for the public: two people of marrying age have the right to fall in love and have a relation. Society is supposed to set a certain age over which intimate relations are an accepted right, no matter what kind of relation or how deep and sentimental. Marriage is possible before 18, and marriage is not a nunnery. The sexes of the partners are only a side-kick for voyeurs.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
Can a 15 year old boy fall in love with a man twice his age, hence 29 years old? The answer is of course and the distance between the two is nothing really since it will proportionally become smaller and smaller with time.
Can a 15 year old boy know for life who he wants to live with, to sleep with, to cry with, to laugh with, etc.? The answer again is yes. No one would object if it were a girl? A little bit young maybe but that's all and anyway the parents would either refuse that love, which I doubt, or more probably accept it and keep it in store for a while waiting for a wedding. That's what engagement is all about. What is shocking some in this situation is that it is a boy. Hence they are homophobes.
The question though is what can and must society do to avoid what is in a way a perversion, pedophilia. But there is a fair difference between a man under 30 falling in love with a boy over 15, and an older man having a relation with a boy or a girl under puberty. The line is difficult to define and in this particular case a court with a jury would probably without thinking too much send the man to prison.
But is it sane? We all know that some young people between 15 and 20 can fall in love desperately, without any alternative, mad with their love for the object of that love, for the person their love has decided to target. That's where this film could have been stronger.
Of course a 15 year old person cannot go to a foreign country without his/her own passport, so eloping to Denmark or The Netherlands is out of the question. But the film should have gone a lot farther than just running away to some other state within the US.
The two people, the boy and the adult, should go to a judge of some kind, or to a court for a judge to decide not on a crime but on a particular case. We could even think of the adult voluntarily and with the consent of the teenager taking the risk of going to prison by making the relation public and if love is what it is the teenager would have waited and suffered from his environment till his man-friend came back.
It requires a lawyer. Sure. But this treatment of the subject would have been pedagogical for the public: two people of marrying age have the right to fall in love and have a relation. Society is supposed to set a certain age over which intimate relations are an accepted right, no matter what kind of relation or how deep and sentimental. Marriage is possible before 18, and marriage is not a nunnery. The sexes of the partners are only a side-kick for voyeurs.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU