Pierre-Joseph (Antoine Pirotte, voiced by Grégory Gadebois), a horticulture apprentice. Alberto (Vincent Barré, voiced by Mathieu Amalric), the master gardener. Adrien (Pierre Barray), the land owner.  Françoise (Manon Schaap, voiced by Françoise Lebrun), his wife.  Moïse (Bruno Martin), their first son, a hunter.  Kutta (Chiman Dangi), their second son, an Indian prince.  Together, they make up a tapestry of life for Pierre-Joseph as he tends carefully to the garden of his own life, fostering relationships with his mentors, often sexual, in the shade and secret from prying eyes. 

Pierre Creton directs A Prince, a beguiling French queer romantic drama he co-wrote with Vincent Barré, Mathilde Girard, and Cyril Neyrat.  Featuring a wonderful score by Jozef van Wissem, the film runs a brief 82 minutes and is told almost entirely through voiceover.  It premiered at the 2023 edition of the Cannes Film Festival under its original title Un Prince as part of the Director’s Fortnight and was distributed through Strand Releasing, though it reaches its widest audience as part of The Criterion Channel.   

Creton presents something unlike that of which we have seen before, an almost alien experience that is especially unique in a romance as the success of the film hinges on connecting with the chemistry displayed on the screen.  Despite being terrestrial set, the camera team of Pierre Creton, Léo Gil Mela, and Antoine Pirotte capture the dirt and the moss in such a way that it feels strange, yet inviting.  Coupled with how the film handles its major theme of gerontophilia in such a tender way, Creton et al really force us to look at the aging body as something of a work of art and not something to be written off and disgusted by as is often the case in modern media. The lighting of the film as it captures these bodies feels almost raw, as if shot on an overcast day where just enough light breaks through the clouds so it does not seem too dark evoking a languid feeling inside of us. Assembled by Félix Rehm, the film is not strictly structured into chapters, but that does not mean it is without form.  It is not quite meandering, nor is it flowing, these loosely defined chapters find Pierre-Joseph seeking the comfort and affection of the men around him, often much older.  Creton’s film is structurally and formally challenging, yet it presents a rather thin – though, to call it thin feels slight – story. What is important to note is that these relationships – encounters? – are almost all initiated by Pierre-Joseph and not predatory in nature, though it is unclear as to why the younger man is doing this.  In real life, attraction does not require anything else, but in a narrative, audiences need a motive to better understand the characters they are spending their time with.  That there is not one here makes A Prince feel like a much longer exercise as it is always building up towards something, but seldom does it seem that progress is being made towards any one goal. 

It is not until late in the film that we begin to get any kind of payoff.  The film jumps forward in time with Creton now representing the older Pierre-Joseph who is hired by a man to tend to the gardens of his newly purchased, crumbling estate.  His new employer is Kutta; long talked about but never seen by audiences until he walks naked into the frame.  Not only is he naked, but the film takes a sudden turn into the surreal as Kutta’s genitals are hydra-esque, with many moving heads.  After an evening of consummation, Kutta goes to lay in the garden, disappearing, fading away into the moss.  It is a strange ending, to say the least, calling to question how much of what we saw previously to this encounter was real or imagined.  Was this all a fantasy of a young man seeking the care and compassion of those around him, scared to act but free to dream?  It is unlikely as all of the relationships have their times to flourish and they work within the context of what little narrative there is in the film. Further, elements around those relationships are referenced by the other characters in their voiceovers, but this sharp turn into that fantastic really fogs our understanding of the story and loosens our grasp on what we are seeing.  Creton does little to guide or inform us, he remains on his pedestal, separate and away from the audience, as the author of this tone poem which equates the patience of gardening to the patience of age, asking us to find our own conclusion.