French Gay Animated Comedy Tells Old Jokes

One goes to Cannes to see the highest of high-minded cinema, bold and searing visions from the world’s foremost auteurs. We peek in on the social upheavals of contemporary Romania, explore the fringes of city life in Tokyo and Seoul, roam the lonely foothills of Anatolia, experience the bustle of Dakar, examine the fraught history of Chile. It is an enriching experience, to see what the planet’s premier and emerging film artists have newly dreamt up.

Sometimes, though, one needs a little break from all that heavy stuff. Which is just what the French animated comedy Jim Queen offers this year. Directed by Nicolas Athane and Marco Nguyen, Jim Queen is a crass, profane, giddily stupid romp through a heap of stereotypes about gay life in Paris. It’s teeming with jokes about prostate orgasms, about tops and bottoms, about fetishes and bodily fluids and G’d out party bois. It comes as a welcome shock to the system here at this august, black-tie film festival. I just wish the movie was funnier and fresher than it is. 

Jim Queen follows the travails of Jim Parfait (Alex Ramirès), an Instagram hunk of the highest order who is lusted after by all who come into contact with him — online or irl. He’s got the ideal physique, the ideal amount of hair (on his face, chest, and head), and he’s as bitchy and cliquey as one would expect from an alpha gay at the apex of the pecking order. Only a steroid-addled rival, Pavel, dares to question Jim’s position. (He’s voiced by gay porn icon François Sagat, for those in the know about such things.)

Down at the bottom of the hierarchy, or really not ranked at all, is Lucien (Jérémy Gillet), a fey and cosseted twink of privilege who longs to meet Jim but is kept at home, safely away from anything gay, by his domineering mother. We see — in a musical number amusingly evoking “Part of Your World” from The Little Mermaid — that Lucien has amassed a staggering array of the props of gay life, mostly sex toys. Only, he has no one to use them with, and is too insecure to do much of anything on his own. He seems destined to remain stuck in the virginal, satin-lined closet, pining hopelessly for Jim and the out-and-proud existence he represents. 

But fate brings Lucien into Jim’s orbit at the onset of a pandemic sweeping the gay community, a disease called Heterosis, which turns the afflicted into something shockingly hideous: straight men. Perhaps the most chuckle-worthy aspect of the film is the fun it has imagining what turning straight might look like: a sudden interest in football, an urgent desire to breed (in the biological sense, fellas), a complete ignorance of any queer culture. Jim tests positive and, much to his horror, sees his abs winking out of existence one by one. Before long, he is totally shunned from the scene that once adored him. Only Lucien, still with a massive crush, will help Jim on his wacky, dangerous quest to track down a cure. 

Here Athane and Nguyen rather carelessly traffic in AIDS allegory, which clangs badly against the movie’s otherwise silly, lighthearted demeanor. The filmmakers have, I suspect, seen their fair share of South Park, and they are trying to mimic the edgy, point-driven provocation of that show at its best. But their comedy isn’t sharp enough to thread that tricky needle. They are better suited to naughty sight gags and broad satire of the gay milieu (as they see it, anyway). Though I could certainly do with a slightly less condemnatory tone about drug use; the film has a curiously conservative streak in that regard, which undermines its egalitarian, one-love message.

The movie’s chief mission is to tear down the walls that, in the film’s rigid schematic, hopelessly divide the gay (male) world. Jim must learn to accept a skinny femme like Lucien, while Lucien learns the valuable lesson that Instagram hotness is sometimes attached to a vain, rotten personality. (Duh, kid.) Jim Queen feeds into (and off of) the trite tribalism of so much creaky gay fiction, but ultimately wants to tear down that paradigm and establish a healthy kind of pluralism for all M4Ms. 

Which is a noble aim, though the parable might register more potently if Athane and Nguyen looked beyond the most obvious of clichés. Too often, Jim Queen feels like a 101 primer for straight people, albeit one that is plenty blunt about particular sexual mechanics. Gay audiences will likely crave more nuance and originality; we’ve seen some version of Jim Queen’s basic homosocial taxonomy many, many times before. If you’ve watched any edition of Drag Race, from anywhere in the world, in the last 17 years, you already know these jokes by heart. 

Credit to the animation, though — bright pops of artistry that alternately evoke Steven Universe and Rick and Morty. It’s not terribly sophisticated, but Athane and Nguyen do a lot with a fraction of the average Pixar movie’s budget. They show a particular flair in the action scenes toward the end of the film, which take on true cinematic heft in convincing mock-blockbuster fashion.

I’m eager to see what these filmmakers do next, now that their gay fantasia on irrational themes is done. May any upcoming project break new ground, rather than sifting through the waste bin of decades of gay comedy and pulling out the hoariest bits. I think we’ve well and truly figured out what bears and daddies are by now. Class dismissed, forever hopefully.