Jim Queen: Raunchy French Animated Film Seeks a Queer Antidote to Heterosis
By Liam Lacey
Rating: B-
Given that one person’s “bad taste” is another’s idea of food-spitting hilarity, there are sure to be mixed reactions to the French raunchy animated film, Jim Queen.
Created by the French duo of Marco Nguyen and Nicolas Athané, the film, which made its debut in Cannes midnight section last May, follows a Muscle Queen gay influencer, Jim, and a closeted twink, Lucien, who unite who join forces to defeat, a lab-created virus unleashed by conservatives to forcibly convert the gay community into heterosexuality.
The fact that this “gay disease” has deliberate parallels to the real-world devastation of the AIDs virus may make some potential viewers vote in advance: “Not for me, ever.” But fans of the rude satire of South Park, will appreciate Jim Queen’s willingness to go where you’re not supposed to go for laughs and political points. The idea that some conservative zealots would be eager to erase gayness by medical means is hardly science fiction.
Not that Jim Queen is that earnest: In fact, it is, intermittently, a musical, that begins with an electronic dance musical number at a gym, a place portrayed as a churning meat-locker full off ham-sized arms, balloon buttocks, and abs that pop like egg cartons, all attached to various men’s heads.
The unchallenged star of this cluster of pumped-up gym bunnies is. Jim Parfait (voiced by Alex Ramirès), a red-bearded, chisel-jawed social media influencer, who champions the lifestyle of pumping weights and ingesting supplements all day at the Temple Gym, the better to party hard all night at the PowerBoyz nightclub.
One of Jim’s most passionate fans is a scrawny 23-year-old virgin, Lucien (Jérémy Gillet), whose domineering mother Christine (Elisabeth Wiener), wearing a helmet of white hair, is a right-wing government minister. Like Ariel in The Little Mermaid, Lucien hides in his closet and sings a yearning ballad about his dream to go where the (gay) people are. But Jim’s world is soon becoming much less fabulous than Lucien imagines.
When his “24-pack” abs start to deflate into a beer belly, Jim learns he may have caught a terrifying new sexually transmitted disease breaking out in the gay community: Heterosis. His best friend and club pal, Nina (Shirley Souagnon) tells him that things have got so bad, a man she knows who used to run “a fisting club caught it — Now he can’t even insert a suppository.”
Jim begins showing progressively more disturbing hetero-positive symptoms — like knowing sports scores, staring at Nina’s breasts, and fantasizing about raising a family in the suburbs. As Jim’s alpha-gay status begins to wane, Jim’s fan base defects to his rival, Pavel (François Sagat), a steroid-using fraud.
Only Lucien remains staunchly loyal and he seeks out his idol at PowerBoyz nightclub to befriend him. Tough initially scornful of this hairless shrimp, Jim gradually grows close the Lucien, and the two go through the tour of Paris’s gay nightlife quest to find the mysterious Dr. Ragout, who may have the cure for hetero positivity.
More silly than pointedly satiric, Jim Queen turns into a gag-filled quest of the Parisian gay subcultures, introduced by a drag queen godmother figure named Glamydia (Harald Marlot). There is, for example, a “bear bar”, which is not for burly, hairy gay men, but men who actually dress like bears and enter a cage to compete in karaoke contests. The term “gaydar” is a literal super-power that causes its’ possessors to glow like a radioactive comic book hero.
The quest leads them to the discovery of a creepy Cronenbergian facility, where a mad scientist harvests and grinds up prostate glands with a giant power drill called the Pro-Stator. In the end, this frisky pastel-coloured fantasy resolves with an almost conservative romantic sweetness that belies its superficially transgressive edge.
You could almost think of it as a coming-of-age Disney film, but with prostate orgasms.
Jim Queen. Directed by Marco Nguyen and Nicolas Athané. Written by Nguyen, Athané, Simon Balteax and Brice Chevillard. Voiced by Alex Ramirès, Jérémy Gillet, Shirley Souagnon, Elizabeth Wiener, Francois Sagat, Alex Brik, Harald Marlot, Philippe Katerine.
Screenings: The Rio in Vancouver (Oct. 20); Oct 21 and The Park (Oct.21); Toronto’s Cineplex Yonge Dundas (Oct. 23-30) and the Paradise Theatre (Oct.26 & 28); Whitby’s Landmark Whitby (Oct. 22,24 & 25); Kanata’s Landmark Kanata (Oct.22, 24, 25); Edmonton’s Landmark City Centre (Oct. 22, 24, 25); Calgary’s Landmark Country Hills; and New Westminister’s Landmark New Westminster (Oct. 22, 24, 25).