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Bookmark this pageBefore I Forget (2007)
Director: Jacques Nolot
Movie review
From Time Out London
With Raymond Depardon’s ‘Modern Life’ still visible in the wing mirror and both Bent Hamer’s ‘O’ Horten’ and Andreas Dresen’s ‘Cloud 9’ peeping over the horizon, it looks like 2009 could be a vintage year for films tackling the pleasures and pains of old age. Writer-director-actor Jacques Nolot (below) delivers a bold, searching and open-hearted turn as the subject of this confessional study of life as an elderly gay gent in the French capital.He plays Pierre, a world-weary former gigolo who has been HIV positive for 24 years and still has little idea what the response to his state should be. The plaintive, artful direction (reminiscent of André Téchiné at his most sombre) and ashen palette work wonders in fleshing out this enigmatic husk of a man as he flits, ghost-like, between friends, acquaintances and male prostitutes, trying to recapture the youthful spirit of his decadent past as well as attempting to comprehend the ramifications of his impending mortality. Recommended.
Author: David Jenkins
Time Out London Issue 2017, 16-22 April 2009
Cast & crew
Director: Jacques Nolot
Cast: Jacques Nolot, Marc Rioufol, Jean-Paul Dubois
Duration: 108 mins
UK Release: Apr 17 2009
US Release: Oct 17 2007
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