BEFORE I FORGET / AVANT QUE J’OUBLIE (2007)
Directed by Jacques Nolot
108 minutes
In the 1970s, Pierre was one of the hottest hustlers in Paris, spending his nights with clients who kept him financially comfortable. But the glory days don't last forever, and in 2007, where BEFORE I FORGET begins, Pierre's life is very different. He's in his 60s, a long-time HIV survivor who struggles with his health and deep financial instability now that his regular benefactors are gone. He finds comfort in going through the motions with young hustlers he hires, and connecting with old colleagues. But the question remains: what will become of him? The final entry in actor-screenwriter-director Jacques Nolot's "partly autobiographical" trilogy is as unique as it is beguiling, and probably hits different depending on your own place in the gay food chain. Nolot himself saw the film as an important chance to show sides of gay life that few films show, telling Dennis Lim, "The gay community doesn't appreciate it because it sees itself as always irresistible. I have nothing to do with the typical gay cinema. In fact I'm against it. I choose not to comfort the spectator." Gays who do appreciate Nolot's film include iconic director John Waters who called it "the best feel-bad gay movie ever made", and "brave, funny, gayly incorrect, and smart as a whip," while Ira Sachs said BEFORE I FORGET "reads like a diary entry and is just as intimate…. The film chronicles…like few films I've ever seen, the experience of being alone. The ending is a bravura moment of self-discovery…as defiant a metaphor of queer filmmaking as any I know."