Un prince

Cult filmmaker Pierre Creton is also a working farmer and has always made plants, animals and farming life an integral part of his oeuvre. Included among Cahiers du Cinema’s top ten of 2023, his break-out film UN PRINCE is no exception, which tells the story of a young trainee gardener called Pierre-Joseph and the various people he comes into contact with (a botany teacher, the boss of a plant nursery, a mysterious Indian prince) in windswept Normandy, most of whom in a sexual capacity. In these rural environs, men sleep with men as a matter of course, the age differences between them are entirely irrelevant and the natural world is an endless source of erotic potential: cum that tastes of beechnuts after a day in the forest, botanical drawings superimposed over sketches of tumescent penises, the irresistible thrill of the hunt. Narrated largely in voiceover (by Mathieu Amalric among others) Creton’s  wistful, playfully transgressive autofiction is quietly utopian in its casually limitless conception of desire. (jl)