Our Paradise

Surprising love story, completely free of stereotypes
I enjoyed this movie a lot more than I expected to based on other online reviews. There is a good bit of nudity, but not a lot more of Dimitri Durdaine than anybody else, and (in contrast to at least two others, including Stéphane Rideau) none of him that would qualify as "full frontal" - "full side" is more like it, and even those rarely show much except skin. Some other reviews give the impression that he almost never wears clothes and that the camera examines every square inch of his body, neither of which is true at all.

What there IS more of in this movie than most is naked middle-aged and older men, which may bother some people but delights me. Except for Durdaine, all of the naked men in this movie have pot bellies, including Rideau (who's getting comfortably close to middle age himself), which is wonderfully refreshing in an age when only bronzed and hairless gym bodies under 30 ever appear in American gay movies (Can we say BOR-ing?).

Now that...

Original French Gay Drama
Our Paradise (Notre Paradis) is the latest film from Gael Morel of `Le Clan' fame. It stars Stephane Rideau (`Presque Rien') as Vassili, an ageing rent guy who cruises the streets of Paris looking for tricks. He is also a dab hand at `finishing his clients off' and I do not mean in a `professional' way - yes he's a murderer. Then one wet, Parisian night he stumbles across a young man who has been attacked and robbed. He decides to help him and ends up taking him home. The boy has no name and says no memory of before he met Vassili.

So they decide to give him a name and hit upon Angelo (Dimitri Durdaine in his big screen debut). They then start a passionate relationship that does not exclude paying clients. Then they start to work as a team, but Angelo is attracting most of the attention and Vassili can't let his own proclivities stay dormant for too long. They end up seeking their paradise which will involve others, with unexpected consequences.

This is a really...

Great dark movie
I absolutely loved this very dark movie.Love can be strange at the best of times - and this is one of those movies.trust the French to create beautiful movies

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