Winter Boy review – teenage grief made beautifully stagnant

No matter how many films we may watch, grief is something that never looks the same twice. Christophe Honoré’s combination of angsty teenage puberty and well-intentioned family relations in Winter Boy feels like its own thing, marinading in its own cesspit of pretentious reflection. Taking into account the film’s protagonist – teenager Lucas (Paul Kircher), who is typically accustomed to spending his days at boarding school – it’s a staunch choice. Coming to terms with suddenly losing his father, the film is as dense as the days that are left in the wake of death with little opportunity to breathe.

In the bigger picture, Honoré's vision mostly comes to fruition. It’s painstakingly beautiful to watch the tortured Lucas navigate the days immediately after finding out the news. Mistakes are frequently made, new perspectives are found, and emotions are faced head-on through direct feelings and conversation. The relationships are what make the film’s meaning particularly refreshing. Queerness is navigated as an entire entity, rather than being pigeonholed into an awkward family coming-out story that’s framed through shame and self-deprecation.

Lucas plays with hookups and potential relationships, tries to find feelings with inappropriate new connections (namely his brother’s roommate), and ultimately figures out that the best version of himself is one that’s left to grow individually. Between the French suburb where his mother (played by Juliette Binoche) lives and his brother’s (Vincent Lacoste) flat in Paris, he discovers the most important truth of them all – being queer is just as messy as life itself.

Despite its well-rounded emotional examination and crisply bleak visuals, there are a few too many narrative loopholes involved in the telling of this tale. Lucas’ father dies in a car accident the same morning he has an (albeit very underwhelming) brush with vehicular death, with Lucas being a passenger at the time. It’s an unlikely enough scenario for the idea of suicide to suddenly be introduced in the film’s closing minutes, not touched on or delved deeper into after the moment it's spoken into life. Relationships are often not classified, leaving the audience to reach for what the dynamics or surrounding context might be. The saving grace of which is Lucas’ genuinely wholehearted concern and appreciation from his mother, never once straying into the Oedipus stereotype perhaps assimilated with notions of sexuality.

Undoubtedly Winter Boy is a film that needs to be watched – only it comes with a few catches. Save it for a day with robust morale and a mindset occupied enough to not question the intricacies of how we work.

Winter Boy is now available to stream on MUBI.