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Beautiful boys and unfulfilled homoerotic desires, which have become a subgenre in recent French cinema, are nicely exemplified in Franck Guerin's feature debut, "A Summer Day." Although pic is well-made and handsomely mounted, its gradual exposure of hypocrisy in a small town takes a backseat to the much more tangible yearning at pic's core and Guerin doesn't offer needed novelty or insight. Gay fests will be likely takers, with possible play in art cinemas.
The sun is high and the hormones raging in a well-to-do provincial town in western France, where Sebastien (Baptiste Bertin) lives and works with his father (Philippe Fretun) in the local garage. Sebastien, however, would prefer lounging around with best friend Mickael (Theo Frilet, astonishingly like an erotically-charged Botticelli angel).

Soon, a freak soccer accident involving faulty goalposts leaves Mickael dead, the town in shock, and the mayor (Jean-Francois Stevenin) keen on avoiding city accountability. At first Sebastien isn't interested in laying blame, he's just trying to sort out his feelings.

Also struggling is Mickael's mother (Catherine Mouchet), reeling from her loss and trying to understand the conflicted relationship she had with her son. In Sebastien she finds a substitute, and he finds the mother-figure he's been missing.

Though nowhere nearly as old fashioned, or tragic, in feel as Rodolphe Marconi's "The Last Day," Guerin's take on unmanifested gay desire still feels backward for France in 2006. Glances are everything in the film: eyes that avoid and ones that beckon. But the love story is never allowed to emerge.

The camera certainly adores the leads, caressing Bertin's naked torso -- beautifully lit by the open door of a refrigerator -- and Frilet's sexual come-hither face. (Variety)