Lionel Baier
- 2008
One man's inability to understand contemporary cinema leads him into a strange new world in this offbeat comedy drama from Swiss writer and director Lionel Baier. When his girlfriend Christine (Elodie Weber) gets a job teaching school in a small country town, Francois (Robin Harsch) moves with her and finds himself looking for work. Francois stumbles into a job at the tiny local newspaper, and the job of writing movie reviews falls to him. Francois doesn't know the first thing about cinema, and for his first review he plagiarizes a negative review from a highbrow film journal. The venomous notice gets Francois banned from the local movie house, so he begins traveling to Lausanne, where he attends press screenings with a handful of noted Swiss critics. Francois tries to convince the other writers that he's a knowledgeable peer, though his attempts to mimic their academic analysis of current movies are clumsy at best, and his efforts to impress beautiful critic Rosa (Natacha Koutchoumov) lead to a severe public humiliation. However, Rosa finds herself sexually attracted to Francois despite his foolish appearance, and he begins living a double life as an intellectual while still writing inconsequential filler for his small-town journal. Un Autre Homme (aka Another Man) was an official selection at the 2008 Locarno Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- 2007
Upon discovering that his paternal grandfather was from Poland, a gay Swiss man sets out on a frantic mission to connect with his Polish roots. Lionel (director and co-screenwriter Lionel Bair) has recently unearthed the truth about his distant grandfather, and now he'll stop at nothing to completely immerse himself in Polish culture. From cheering the Polish soccer team to abandoning his longtime boyfriend to shack up with an illegal Polish au pair, Lionel is determined to embrace his Polish heritage. Though his mother and father are entirely supportive of the curious endeavor, Lionel's disapproving sister Lucie (Natacha Koutchoumov) thinks her brother has finally fallen off the deep end. Later, after Lucie drives the pair to Warsaw in order to discover the truth about their family lineage, Lionel becomes hopelessly stranded in Auschwitz and befriends a gay film student named Stan (Michael Rudnicki). In the following days Stan does his best to reacquaint Lionel with his true sexuality, and in the process also helps to bring Lionel and Lucie closer together than ever before. What Lionel discovers as his journey draws to a close will prompt both he and his sister to look back into the past with an open mind and a newfound willingness to embrace the past no matter how strange it may seem in the present. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Lionel Baier, Natacha Koutchoumov, (more)
An aimless gay teenager begins to realize the effect he has on others in this Swiss drama. Loïc (Pierre Chatagny) spends his days laying around watching television, and hooking up with anonymous johns he meets on the Internet. Leaning heavily on the support of his roommate and best friend, Marie (Natacha Koutchoumov), he shows little interest in any sort of vocation or job; that is, until he meets a thirtysomething man named Lionel (writer/director Lionel Baier). Unlike his other tricks, Lionel does not want sex from Loïc, but companionship, and the two share a series of intimate, challenging conversations -- recorded on Lionel's video camera -- that compel the young man to start finding direction in his life. As he begins to explore a burgeoning interest in photography, Loïc has some emotional growing pains, specifically in terms of his jealousy over the fact that Marie has found a boyfriend. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Pierre Chatagny, Natacha Koutchoumov, (more)
