Lie with Me

A well known writer returns to the town where he was born; he has been invited to speak at the anniversary of a cognac company. There he meets a man and works out who he is: the son of Thomas, the boy he was secretly with thirty years ago in school. That relationship was never spoken of, never came out, and the writer has in truth written all his books about it. The son wants to know about his father's life. Olivier Peyon directs. The source is Philippe Besson's novel, which rests on the author's own life. The narrative runs in two times: the secret relationship in a provincial school in 1984, and the present, with the writer's return. The subject is not love but silence. Thomas could not accept the relationship, stayed in the town, married and carried that life on; the writer left and wrote. The film reckons the cost of the difference between them. The making of cognac and the town itself sit in the narrative as a weight; the distance between the place stayed in and the place left for is kept present. Its weakness is the present day sections; the scenes in the past are stronger and the present resolves too easily. Who it is for: viewers who like French literary adaptations and drama built on a return to the past. Who it is not for: the pace is slow, the emotional register is measured, and almost nothing happens.