Hard-Core Goes Mainstream: Olivier Ducastel & Jacques Martineau on 'Paris: 05:59'

The first segment of "Paris: 05:59" blurs the line between porn and the queer indie. During its 18-minutes, scruffy 20-something Th�o (Francois Nambot) sees Hugo (Geoffrey Cou�t), another 20-something, across the floor of a Paris sex club.

As the scene progresses, Th�o moves across the room, finally hooking up with Hugo in a sexual encounter that plays like a hardcore Pierre et Gilles photograph come to life. The film's directors -- the team of Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau -- don't flinch from being explicit, which may be why their film is being compared to other equally graphic queer titles as "Blue is the Warmest Color" and "Stranger by the Lake."

The film opens in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Fort Lauderdale on January 27. For information about its release, visit the Wolfe Releasing website.

Compared to 'Weekend'

Reviews have also compared it to "Weekend," Andrew Haigh's intimate chronicle of two men that fall in love over three days. "Paris: 05:59" compresses that time frame even tighter, telling the story of how the men hook-up then spend the next two hours together in a nocturnal journey across Paris. At first they're ecstatic in each other's companies as they ride along the streets on bikes; but when they realize they had unprotected sex -- Th�o fucks the HIV-positive Hugo without protection -- the mood changes dramatically. A call to an AIDS hot line sends Th�o to a nearby hospital for emergency prophylactic care. Th�o dismisses Hugo, but he comes along anyway and slowly the two bond.

Filmed in beautifully saturated color in the hours before dawn, "Paris: 05:59 "is both a sweet romance and cautionary tale -- one in which the anxieties of HIV infection in the age of sex clubs and internet hook-ups is balanced with a dreamy tale of new love. In Europe, where it premiered at the Berlin Film Festival and won the Teddy Audience Award, its title is "Th�o et Hugo dans le m�me bateau (Th�o and Hugo in the same boat)" -- a canny distillation of the film's underlying themes.

The film will also likely bring long overdue attention in the States to the films of Ducastel and Martineau, the filmmaking team and real-life couple who met in the late 1990s when they shared a common interest -- the work of director Jacques Demy. Their meeting was, as in this film, a case of love at first sight. "I was an editor and Jacques was a literature teacher," explains Ducastel. "I had directed a short film, a musical in homage to Jacques Demy, and Jacques was inspired by Demy when he wrote "Jeanne And The Perfect Guy." He wrote the script for friends without the intention of directing the film himself."

The couple met at the film's composer's home on a sunny March day. "We fell in love on that Sunday, but we waited a few days to see each other again. Then, rapidly came the idea of directing the film together. And since then we manage to imagine, write and direct films together."

In the same boat

After collaborating on "Jeanne and the Perfect Guy," a romantic musical film that evokes the Demy's dreamy style, they made "The Adventures of Felix," a road movie that follow the journey of young, gay HIV-positive Frenchman of Arab descent in search of the father he never knew. There subsequent films include the romantic comedy "C�te d'Azur" (2005) and "L'Arbre et la for�t (Family Tree)" (2010), a historical drama based on the life of Pierre Seel, an Alsatian homosexual deported to the work camp during World War II.

Over the years, one topic they didn't shied away from is HIV. Initially "Jeanne and the Perfect Guy" was called "Olivier has AIDS," a title they discarded for being too provocative. "Paris: 5:59" deals with the subject with blunt objectivity -- it turns out that the AIDS virus is what puts Hugo and Th�o in the same boat.

"We don't know if we can say that making a love story with AIDS in the foreground was an impetus for this new film, but the AIDS issue was there from the beginning, even if in a very different form," recalls Martineau. "We think there's still a lot to say about being HIV+ and very few directors do. We probably try to catch along the years the evolutions of the epidemic in our societies, the mental images, its importance in relationship and love stories."

What will likely make this film provocative is that opening sequence, set in the real-life Parisian after hours club L'Impact that is as close a non-porn narrative film has comes to capturing the heightened experience of a sex club. "We wanted to immerse the audience in the atmosphere of that particular sex club," says Ducastel. "We had two goals: to narrate how Th�o and Hugo meet each other, how love at first sight can happen; but we also wanted to give to the audience (gay or not) who doesn't know that kind of place to experiment with this particular atmosphere."

Very spontaneous and very cerebral

Filming in the club wasn't without difficulties. "The shooting was really dense, the place is really narrow: so we had a very small space for the lighting and the camera," Ducastel continues. "What also proved difficult was having his cast perform sex on camera. "They weren't sex performers, so we have to be careful to be ready when they where ready. At the end of the three days we all agreed that (the experience) was really fun, sexy, and funny like it can be in that club. Except that generally you don't spend eight hours downstairs immersed in it."

Much of the success of the film comes with the chemistry between its lead actors, Francois Nambot and Geoffrey Cou�t, whose nurturing romance feels organic and spontaneous -- no small feat considering how they must convey sexual intimacy on-camera, as well as post-coital vulnerability as they get to know each other. "I think it was an incredible chance we met Fran�ois Nambot and Geoffrey Cou�t in the very same moment," recalls Ducastel. "Without them maybe the film would never have existed. We needed their generosity, their sense of acting -- the fact that they both can be very spontaneous and very cerebral. Both have done stage work. That helped a lot to achieve what we wanted."

That spontaneity, though, came with much preparation with the actors. "We spend a lot of time in reading the script together, talking about the way we wanted to shoot the sex scene, answering any question from the actors," explains Martineau. "And we prepared the shooting very precisely, like a dance scene. During those readings, we all understood that what was the most challenging was that we had a story to tell. Filming the sex was not a piece of cake, of course, but we had to be focused on the journey of the characters during that first scene, their emotions, the love at first sight, etc."

A vivid look

Once Th�o and Hugo hit the streets, the film takes on a wonderfully vivid look -- a dreamy urban landscape captured in saturated colors that's expressionistic and dreamy -- not tourist--familiar Paris, but an out-of-the-way neighborhood bathed in a sulphuric glow. "Manuel Marnier (the director of photography) and Yannig Willmann (the colour grading man) worked together to achieve this look," says Ducastel. But for the scene in the sex club they took a more rigorous approach to achieve a harder look by using a palette of just red and blue. "Marmier convinced me that we needed to establish a strong, back lit ambiance. In reference to Fassbinder (probably) he proposed to add blue to the red, which is the regular colour of the place (L'Impact) and that I really wanted to keep."

Another intriguing aspect is how the film is told in real time with graphic time stamps used to break the film into chapters. "That idea came by instinct," says Martineau. "When I began to write the script, I felt the necessity to follow the character of Th�o and never let him go, maybe to try to catch that very fragile process of falling in love. Both characters are entering the weird but delicious space of love. Each step is important.

"After that first impulse, we discussed a lot about real time filming. Olivier was convinced after seeing Locke by Steven Knight. We went back to 'Cl�o de 5 � 7' by Agn�s Varda and were sure it was the best option for our story."

Reviewing the film at the recent Berlin Film Festival, the Hollywood Reporter describes the film as "'Shortbus' meets 'Weekend,'" both titles the directors acknowledge are pertinent comparisons. They also mentioned other films and filmmakers that influenced them. "We can add 'Intimacy' by Patrice Chereau (2001), really first time we were both convinced by a sex scene in a movie and 'Stranger by the Lake' by Alain Guiraudie, for the freedom to film naked men."

While "Paris: 05:59" is already getting great responses from audiences at the LGBT film festivals it's been screened at since premiering at Boston's Wicked Queer Film Festival last April where it won the Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature. Nor have there been any issues at film festival screenings with its sexual explicitness. Not so at the International Film Festival of Guadalajara in Mexico this past March.

"The festival moved to another city, a well-known gay destination, Puerto Vallarta on the Pacific Coast," recalls Martineau. "People from the festival organized an open air screening, which is quite a daring idea for such a film. Someone complained to the police and a policeman tried to stop the screening, which was totally illegal since the screening was approved by the authorities. It lasted a few minutes and the screening went on.

"At the end, it wasn't such a big deal, but the incident was a good opportunity for people of the festival to make a statement about gay rights in Mexico and freedom of expression, especially because the authorities asked for cuts in another movie of the festival which was supposed to be shown on the next night. As people from the festival refused to do any cut, the screening was cancelled."

"Paris 05:59" won the festival's Maguey Award for best LGBT film.

And while the film ends with Hugo and Th�o starting a relationship, it is also bittersweet, suggesting it comes with a termination date. Hugo explains that they will likely stay together for 20 years, then break-up. "Like everyone else. And we'll be sad but that's life," he tells Th�o.

Asked why the ended the film this way, the directors were quick to answer:

"That's true of any relationship," Ducastel says.

"But it's also very personal," adds Martineau. "We split after 19 years! No secret."

"Paris: 05:59" opens in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Fort Lauderdale on January 27. For information about its release, To stream the film, visit the film's website and download the Vimeo app.