Description
The Swimming Trunks 2013
Le maillot de bain (original title)
21min | Short, Drama | 24 August 2013 (Canada)
Storyline:
On holiday on a campsite by the seaside, Remy, 10, is fascinated by Stephan, 35, the father of one of his playmates. This is a new, confusing feeling for him. Nobody knows what he is going through especially not handsome Stephan.
User review:
Le maillot de bain of Mathilde Bayle is a French short fiction film present in the international competition of the Cortex – Short Film Festival taking place in Sintra at Centro Cultural Olga de Cadaval.
Rémi (Roger Manning) is a ten-year-old who during a holiday in a campsite develops an unexpected fascinated by Stéphane (Stanley Weber) a 35-year-old man and the father of a friend.
While everyone ignores this unknown feeling of Remi, including Stéphane himself, the young child wanders through the park while observing the behavior of her friend’s father and dreams of an affectionate closeness to it.
Mathilde Bayle introduces us this short film that recovers an idea of ”summer cinema” where during a vacation between friends or family develops a passion almost always secret or forbidden. That same summer where all feelings are put to the test and where (re) discover an innate ability to love and to want to be loved. Love that, however, is “doomed” to the few months in which the summer season lasts and that after it will be forever safeguarded in the memory of those who have lived it.
It is then in this spirit that Bayle makes us live the discovery not of a “love” but of a personification of desire through the thought of this young child towards someone who is, in his idea, the one who awakens his sexuality. This context which, on several occasions, touches very closely a relationship that is not assumed becomes dangerously illegal but sought by the youngest in a secret that only we viewers know to be for him “lived.”
In a context in which all the characters around him become merely decorative, Roger Manning’s “Rémi” is not only one that determines the whole continuation of the plot as it brings us closer to a story that has something dangerously sinister mixed with the usual story of discovery and sexuality. Not forgetting that this is a child with a mere ten years of age, Manning manages to portray with his solid interpretation, a story of desire, idealization and almost persecution that initially captivates us by his honesty but quickly moves to a dangerous field that for “Stéphane” could jeopardize his entire life.
Weber, is assumed to be an object of a desire and beauty forbidden in the eyes of a young man who wants to ignore (or ignore) any kind of barriers that must keep them away and always try to be close to what has to be forcibly hidden and that the own does so that nobody notices it.
Bayle manages to re-create an atmosphere that is so fascinating by the approach to discovery and sexual and sentimental identification that gives the character of “Rémi” as disturbing and frightening when we realize that this awakening does not stop with another child with whom it passes his days, but rather to an adult who is almost unaware of his existence, thus managing to have one of the strongest and intriguing short films of the international section to the point of being left uncomfortable with the consequences that could be established for the characters present here, , at the same time, reflects on the discovery of the “I” seldom approached in a person of so young age, constituting therefore a remarkable interpretation of the young Manning.
A brief highlight for the photography direction of Nicolas Mesdom, who is quite effective in recovering the summer environment and the colors and contrasts of light of a hot summer as well as in the capacity to fiction a dream of a young child who tries to discover himself and the your desires, playing with the lights and uncertainties of thoughts and images to insert us into your dreams and whims.
Director: Mathilde Bayle
Writer: Mathilde Bayle
Stars: Roger Manning, Stanley Weber, Inès Giardino
Country: France
Language: French
Release Date: 24 August 2013 (Canada)
Also Known As: The Swimming Trunks
Peter (verified owner) –
Robert (verified owner) –
This is a short film about a boy on vacation who becomes enamored with the father of another kid on the beach likely because the man does lots of fun things with his daughter while the boy’s parents are pretty stiff and leave him on his own a lot. Before the man and his family leave the beach, the boy secretly makes off with a memento…