The Lost Boys review: A sensual French juvenile drama

A clunky piano scores the opening scenes of a youth correctional facility in The Lost Boys. Gloomy shots of high brick walls, barbed fences, and CCTV cameras paint a setting where romance seems unlikely. As storm clouds float above, grey blankets Zeno Graton’s film which finds a spark of hope amid institutional confinement. 

The Lost Boys follows the potent infatuation of two young lovers trapped in a hopeless limbo. We meet 17-year-old Joe (Khalil Ben Gharbia) who has 3 weeks before a judge will hopefully grant him freedom. It’s visiting day and he watches as his fellow young delinquents are greeted with hugs from loved ones.

Joe, however, has no visitors. Instead, he’s reminiscing on a winter walk he took with his mother. He recounts that he saw fish in the lake, frozen beneath the ice, staring up at the sky. A fish caught in the ice will inevitably die, stuck in place but gazing at the outside. It’s an early metaphor for Joe; he’s that fish trapped in the glacial facility waiting for the ice to thaw so he can escape. 

“A queer drama rendered through the eyes of a young man who’s an outcast among outcasts”

Joe has been waiting six long months for his freedom but with the arrival of a new inmate, the troubled William (the superb Julien De Saint Jean), his hunger to leave dissipates. Rumour has it, William stabbed a man but Joe is enamoured by his hardened intensity, chiselled face, shaved head, and dark tattoos. 

They speak for the first time over a shared cigarette, passing it back and forth as they confide about incarceration and parental abandonment. Deep brown eyes stare into pale blue irises and William’s gasp isn’t just from the cold.  

They spend late nights listening to the radio and knocking against the connecting wall of their side-by-side bedrooms. Their chemistry sizzles in the air, radiating through intense stares as well as fleeting moments of privacy. Though their intimate connection is quietly formative, the volatility of Graton’s approach is occasionally unsteady between explosive romance colliding with tentative vulnerability.

Ultimately, Graton’s film rests on Gharbia and Jean’s wonderous performances to sell the characters’ passion in this hostile space. Aiding their connection, Olivier Boonjing’s cinematographic flourishes imbue the teen’s most amorous moments with unexpected sensitivity. The camera pushes close as Joe softly brushes face paint over William’s cheeks, caressing his skin.

“A movingly intertwined tale of longing, loss, and liberation”

Then, on a cross country race, they veer off track and tumble among the crispy autumn leaves. Gratin lingers on Joe’s face, pushing close as Willian’s kisses trail down his chest. He gasps as thunder booms and a torrential downpour begins, a release from the sky accompanying this outpouring of yearning.

Amidst the romance of Graton’s script, written by Clara Bourreau as well as Maarten Loix, the cruelty of the justice system is looked at from the inside out. Perhaps slightly simple in its judiciary details, the film is mostly poignant showing Joe as a teen lost to the looping cycle of the criminal system in which he is trapped.

The Lost Boys is a queer drama rendered through the eyes of a young man who’s an outcast among outcasts. It’s an impressive debut that uses Graton’s lyrical handling of ferocity as well as sensitivity. Rendering this queer coming-of-age story through the criminal justice system, The Lost Boys is a movingly intertwined tale of longing, loss, and liberation.

The Lost Boys is screening at the 2023 London Film Festival and is released in UK cinemas on 15 December.