Lie With Me

5 April 2023

Director: Olivier Peyon

See

Him: Arrête Avec Tes Mensonges is about celebrated writer Stéphane (Guillaume de Tonquédec) who returns to his small town as a Cognac ambassador, where he unexpectedly meets Lucas (Victor Belmondo) the son of his first love.

Think

Him: Two timelines play out concurrently, the present day, wherein Stéphane is drawn to Lucas, but neither initially wants to reveal too much,

“I don’t like raking over the past, most likely you feel nostalgic, or disappointed,” says Stéphane.

“I like nostalgia,” replies Lucas. 

The other is a Proustian remembrance of things past, with a young Stéphane and Lucas’s father Thomas (Julien De Saint Jean) falling in love.

Feel

Him: The subject and style of whole cloth scenes makes me think of Before Sunset, with the moment Jesse (Ethan Hawke) sees Céline (Julie Delpy) at a book signing. And The Place Beyond the Pines, with the intergenerational motif of a motorcycle being inherited and the son wanting to know the father, and thus himself. It did make me think of my one parent not talking about the other.

Stéphane’s subject is longing for lost love, and going back to that place enables him to write again about its resolution. As novelist Philppe Besson did, and Olivier Peyon adapted.