Catherine Chabot in Follies.TIFF/Supplied
Follies (Folichonneries)
Directed by Eric K. Boulianne
Written by Eric K. Boulianne and Alexandre Auger
Starring Eric K. Boulianne and Catherine Chabot
Classification N/A; 101 minutes
Opens at the TIFF Lightbox April 10
Critic’s Pick
Two couples saunter into a single hotel room: one pair fidgety and plainly nervous, the other composed and familiar in the space. It’s evident they’re going to have sex, if only they can overcome the dry pleasantries.
The seasoned swingers recount their international attachment to hotels (Tuscany, Tokyo, Marrakech) while the fledglings listen intently, searching for their footing somewhere in these erotic tales. They periodically turn to each other, saucer-eyed, as if looking for permission or a quick getaway. When asked what turns them on, the male novice answers “leather and latex,” to the evident horror of his partner. “I don’t even have lingerie and you’re into latex?” she rejoins, one of many early signs that this couple has skipped a few rungs on their sexual journey.
In Eric K. Boulianne’s Follies – a follow-up to his similarly themed 2023 short film Making Babies – François (Boulianne) and Julie (Catherine Chabot) decide to open up their 16-year marriage in an effort to resuscitate their dormant sex life. The film, which had its world premiere at the 78th Locarno Film Festival, catches the glint of kink in everyday routine, at once embracing and interrogating its pervasiveness in modern dating. Although inconclusive about whether polyamory is something to grow into or out of, Follies is a shrewd, rompy revision to the marital rom-com.
Divided into five concise acts, Follies rides the choppy tides of François and Julie’s marriage as they engage in ménages à quatre, casual hook-ups and new relationships. For some inscrutable reason, the couple immediately inform their strikingly perceptive tweens, Lili and Louise (Simone Bellemare-Ledoux and Agathe Ledoux, both wonderful), that they are dabbling in non-monogamy. (Presumably for the payoff of having Louise initiate a playground polycule that illustrates the folly of her parents’ forthrightness, but this still feels excessive.)
The pair furnish the particulars of their open marriage while unpacking old Christmas decorations, a double intimacy that may read as both absurd and tender. Here, Julie declares a rule, which François quickly deems too new age-y: “Always preserve our couple’s aura.” A soft ochre glow rounds the contours of their bodies as a literalization of this connection – a motif seen in pivotal moments to remind the couple of their continued commitment.
Their escapades are traced through their phone screens, where they set up twin profiles on Feeld, a dating app for people interested in kink and ethical non-monogamy – Julie ticks pansexual and François ticks bicurious. This flings them onto “the scene,” which looks different for them both. She fends off unsolicited nudes while he struggles to land replies, until Julie is accosted by a queer couple, Suzanne (Florence Blain Mbaye) and Maxine (Sarah Chouinard Poirier), at a party she is catering. A bubbly, sensual throuple ensues, while François eats poutine in the foyer of a sex club and continues to interpret his depressive symptoms as long COVID.
A still from Follies.Supplied
Shot on 16 mm by François Messier-Rheault (a regular collaborator of Denis Côté), Follies manages to at once evoke today’s pervy virtual aesthetics and the “maple syrup porno” style of softcore 1960s and ‘70s Quebecois B-movies. The theme of modern bed-hopping is well posed against a more classical backdrop that pays homage to both silent cinema – through the coy stationing of stylized intertitles and Ziegfeld Follies tunes – and ’90s erotic thrillers like Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut.
One sequence emulates the latter film’s masked orgy while also managing to slip in a second Kubrick reference. In any other film, this would surely be overkill, but Follies riffs on it beautifully, poking at the little conspiracies the couples indulge in both films.
This flavour of Queb-polyamory serves a larger dialogue around how gender is performed in and outside of monogamy and parenthood. What struck me both times I saw it is the editing by which Myriam Magassouba juxtaposes images of sex acts and of child rearing – a push-pull that places us in the uncomfortable seat of sexual exploration and parental obligation.
“I miss the old metal keys,” says François at the hotel. He gets his metal keys soon enough, though the film’s abrupt and unresolved ending doesn’t let on whether this is sustainable or a stopgap.