Gaël Lépingle Collection ( Seuls les pirates / Une jolie vallée / Des garçons de province / Julien ) ( The Time of the Pirates / A Pretty Valley / Smalltown Boys / Julien )

Gaël Lépingle Collection (DVD) (*)

$40.99

Original Title: Seuls les pirates / Une jolie vallée / Des garçons de province / Julien
Alternate Title: The Time of the Pirates / A Pretty Valley / Smalltown Boys / Julien
Screened, competed or awarded at:
Other Film Festival Awards

Language Selections:
English ( Dolby Digital 2.0 )
French ( Subtitles )

Product Origin/Format:
France ( PAL/Region 0 )

Running Time:
305 min

Aspect Ratio:
Widescreen (1.78:1)

Special Features:
2-DVD Set
Collectors Edition
Featurette
Filmographies
Interactive Menu
Photo Gallery
Scene Access
Special Edition
Booklet

Movie filmed in 2010-2022 and produced in:
France ( France, Benelux )

Directed By:
Gaël Lépingle

Written By:
Gaël Lépingle

Actors:
Ludovic Douare ..... Géro
Delphine Chuillot ..... Emilie
Renan Prévot ..... Léo
Georges Gay ..... Kostia
Christa Fromet
Sophie Jude
Marcel Khaled
Jérôme Marin
Nadine Girard-Douard
Léo Pochat ..... Jonas
Serge Renko ..... Mathieu
Yves Batek Mendy ..... Youcef
Edouard Prévot ..... Le garçon aux talons
Thibaud Boursier ..... Pascal
La Big Bertha ..... Daddy Darling
Mikarambar ..... Lola-Coca
Olivier Normand ..... Princesse
Jérôme Marin ..... Gentiane
Cathy Cerda ..... Lucie
Gilles Carré ..... L'oncle
Dimitri Defontaine ..... Amoureux éconduit
Aliocha Lambert ..... Le petit frère
Julian Lemaire ..... Le régisseur
Tanya Lopert ..... Mme. Girard
Marie-Florence Senectaire ..... La vendeuse

Synopsis:

The Time of the Pirates: Following an urban redevelopment project, Géro is about to be evicted from his home and his small theatre, where he no longer plays since he lost his voice. A nephew he barely knows suddenly settles in his home. He wants to write. A Pretty Valley: A musical, today? Such was the audacious challenge Gaël Lépingle set himself - to paint a picture in period cinema of the French middle classes: so great in number and yet so rarely depicted on the silver screen. A coming-of-age story about a teenager in la Beauce. The setting: a village in the Tarn region in summer. The protagonists: the villagers. The story, however, is more hectic, the plot wending its way in vibrant colours through familiar territory - The Three Musketeers. In this musical, Dumas' celebrated characters - the musketeers, the queen, Richelieu, etc., swoon in living rooms with TVs on garish sofas, talk in the wistful quiet of the pedestrianized streets with ready-made ruins laid on, debate in the pharmacy, party in the miserably dingy village halls, their words sung in an attempt to contaminate the bleak surroundings. A blatantly political project takes shape through this collective adventure. Smalltown Boys: We were already familiar with Gaël Lépingle's taste for provincial small towns, and with his precise, insistent, and often generous interest in their inhabitants and their lust for adventures, as shown in his work, from Julien (FID 2010) to Seuls les pirates (FID 2018). Provincial towns are shown here through the prism of the journey of boys who like boys, narrated by Gaël Lépingle like three tales set in three different places, three slices of life involving choices. In each of these tales, the director portrays in delicate touches various ways of living as a homosexual, in places where it is possible, or sometimes unthinkable, but always steering clear of the usual drama and clichés of the genre. In the opening scene, a young man seems to be dreaming of a reality different from the business he is about to take over and the married life that goes with it; he is drawn to the spicy life of a queer vaudeville troupe performing in his village. Then we follow the wanders of a teenager, the unlikely experience of his slender figure walking the streets of his village. Finally, we catch a glimpse of the fetishist passion of a respectable teacher, before he is sent back to his path of renunciation. These three portraits end up composing a fresco. Gaël Lépingle becomes the cartographer of uncharted areas of desire, in landscapes that are devoid of qualities and sharpness, but filled with the dreadful banality of preordained destinies. So many paths to take and decisions to make for these provincial boys. Lépingle subtly delineates dead ends and openings, and lingers on the in-between: in between words and bodies, in between desire and bleak life, in between bodies and landscapes, searching for the right distance between beings. With dressing-up and its possibilities as a secret formula that connects them all. Julien: Teenagers playing knights. They dream of a future far from their native village of Beauce. A loving and poetic glimpse of the young people and their surroundings, the French countryside. Julien prepares to leave his friends, his parents and the landscape of his childhood.

This product was added to our catalog on Thursday 11 December, 2025.