Just A Question of Love

Made for French TV, this run-of-the-mill coming out story centres on Laurent, an agriculture student whose female flatmate poses as his girlfriend to appease the family who disowned his late gay cousin. Falling behind in his studies, he takes an internship with (and falls in love with) Cedric, who lives with his much more understanding mother. Naturally, tensions arise, but the film takes an interminably long time to get where it's going, and by the time it reaches its last reel of revelations, you’ll wish the whole film had focused on the parents and not the frankly bland and irritating lead. It’s not terrible: there are some nice turns and a few decent individual scenes (such as Laurent’s pharmacist father bantering with two condom buying customers), but the narrative is so conventional and outright mechanical you can almost smell the rust off it, while the imagery never rises above an unadventurously and predictably comfortable TV aesthetic (a bit Midsomer Murders). [Lisa Bourke]