A Radical Proposal
[Hideaway (Le Refuge) ](http://www.strandreleasing.com/films/film_details.asp?BusinessUnitID={7533CDA9-E7C5-4586-AAA5-14ABF2E3F6B2}&ProjectID={843EEC1E-B337-4F2D-B1A8-9D3B00E5FFF5})
Directed by Francois Ozon
Runtime: 90 min.
At the heart of Francois Ozons Hideaway (Le Refuge)the story of Mousse (Isabelle Carré), who goes to the country in the final months of expecting a child and takes in the late-fathers brother Paul (Louis-Ronan Choisy) director Ozon asks an excellent question: What do a pregnant woman and a gay man have in common?
If this were a Hollywood movie, that question would be a marketing point and its provocation would surely affect the movies structure like the predetermined culture-war politics of Lisa Cholodenkos sitcomy The Kids Are All Right. But Ozons artistry transcends politics and explores the essential issues of his characters personalities: Mousses unyielding selfishness and Pauls own displaced affections; both are unsure what to do with their unconventional feelings. Appreciating that commonality makes Ozons dramatic proposition a bold, excellent premise. He finds surprising truth and recognizable beauty in Mousse and Pauls uneasy empathy.
Ozon has progressed from being artcinemas taboo-breaking bad boy (his 1997 debut See the Sea). Hes grown into a more original, deeply felt, firstrate artist. His interest in renegade characters and disturbing life situations has gained a distinct spiritual generosity (as in last years literally fantastic familyangel comedy Ricky). Mousse and Paul are depicted without sensationalism or provocation, but with an exploratory acceptance that is never merely P.C. The title Hideaway (Le Refuge) indicates an escape from propriety to what is spiritually necessary. Ozon arrived at this philosophically astute destination through an improvisatory collaboration with Carré, begun during her actual sixth month of pregnancy, and with French singer-songwriter Choisy, who also contributed the ironic disco scene tune We Dont Need People To Be In Love.
Through Ozons always-reliable eye for the most alluring actors (Carré recalls Kirsty MacColl and Choisy is a ringer for Melvil Poupaud), Hideway more deeply explores womanly and gay male feelings. It achieves the absolutely ethical vision that earlier filmmakers had struggled toward like the 1979 Canadian film Outrageous, which paired a runaway pregnant girl with a drag queen, and Tony Richardsons 1961 film of Shelagh Delaneys play A Taste of Honey, which teamed a Liverpool unwed teen with a gay man.
Advancing from those past but notobsolete social protests, Ozon finds some affinities that might even challenge contemporary feminist shibboleths. Yet Mousse and Paul are never at war and their separate adventuresPauls romance with the caretaker Serge (Pierre Louis-Calixte), Mousses hook-up with a married man (Nicolas Moreau) who fetishizes pregnancycomplement each others needs and temperament. Every sequence is an etude, but not obviously so. Ozon expands our awareness of human affection, evoking the remarkable narrative symmetry of Rodrigo Garcias Mother and Child and a beach confrontation with Marie Riviere as a maternity fanatic recalls the eerie grace of Rivieres mentor Eric Rohmer.
Its importantand maybe even controversialthat Ozon avoids the propagandistic narrowness of The Kids Are All Right, which seems to have dangerously set an aberrant moralizing norm. Cholodenkos phallo-phobic polemics (where Annette Bening casts out sperm donor and willing parent Mark Ruffalo) argued that a male is irrelevant to family stability. This recalls a narrowminded Village Voice review that castigated Ozons 2006 Time to Leave because its gay male protagonist desired to father a child. Hideaway continues Ozons brave apostasy that procreation (parenthood) is our nature. Its undeniably part of what unites Mousse and Paulrenegades who dont opt out of their humanity. This isnt a Conservative argument; nor is it anti- Paternity. It extends and enlarges Ozons gay-friendly vision. The iconic shot of a gay man and pregnant woman bonding in the ocean is a rich, embracing image, akin to the seduction scene where a robust male sensitively submits to Mousses innocent request.
In these scenes, Ozon has loosened his early, postmodern tension and pessimism. Hes now open to greater feelingnot ever sappy, always inquiring, as in the moment Paul wrestles with awareness of his own adoption then remembers his late brother (a cameo by Melvil Poupaud). The two edited close-ups arouse the sensitivity of that extraordinary Neyo lyric: I fell asleep in your eyes. Radical Ozon achieves the ultimate humanism where the oddest relationships are the most human. Nothing that is human is alien to Ozon.