It's a great little movie, this is. It reminds me of a similar encounter of mine, as a grown up, with a seductive girl.
Claude, rather a typical h i s t r i o n i c youngster with apparent bisexual interests watches the slightly older Philippe with sighing admiration. Philippe responds to Claude's pass at him by overtly falling in love with the boy.
There's a lot of shy mutual caressing, yet they do not kiss, and when Claude brings up the sex issue, the context is less homo-erotic than out of ordinary adolescent curiosity: "Do you masturbate? Have you measured your dick?" However, they end up in bed anyway. Splendid French sensuality!
Alas, Claude sees a girl when out camping with Philippe and loses interest in his friend, all of a sudden and all in a very immature fashion.
The inscrutable final scene where Philippe pays his former friend for sex, as well as an early scene that indicates that Claude had an adult admirer/partner previous to Philippe, really don't fit with the juvenescent romantic overture, and lends a contradictory ambiguity as to the maturity of Claude's character and his motives. Either he's a modest and inexperienced teenager struggling with his awakening sexual feelings or he's a precocious histrionic, adept in hustling, but he cannot be both at the same time. I choose to label him a histrionic due to his attention seeking by means of a seductive approach.
The portrayal of Philippe makes much more sense though: he appears strong, self-confident and masculine to begin with, but gradually he loses all these qualities, as he yields to the unexpected seduction, and gets infatuated.
It's almost as if it was the point that the relationship made the two of them switch roles.
The b/w footage is quite suggestive, and the arguably low budget hampered to a great effect fancy additions and digressions.