Color, 1979, 72 mins. 30 secs.
Directed by Wallace Potts
Starring Karl Forest, Cedric Dumont, Franc Chazal, Philippe Renaud, Carmelo Petix
Altered Innocence
(Blu-ray & DVD) (US R0 HD/SD)


After salvaging a Le Beau Mecdreamy masterpiece of adult filmmaking with one of its earliest releases, Equation to an Unknown, label Altered Le Beau MecInnocence returns to similar terrain with another striking work from the same cinematographer, François About. A plotless portrait of a unique figure in the '70s French gay scene, Le Beau Mec is basically a stylish, explicit ode to Karl Forest, a hustler, actor, aspiring director, and club performer who became an icon of sorts thanks to his eye-catching role in the classic film Johan. Intrigued, he became the subject of this directorial effort from the globe-hopping Wallace Potts, a lover of Rudolf Nureyev for whom he became a tireless archivist. Already familiar with the porn world after doing 1976's More, More, More, he became far more ambitious with this film, incorporating a striking club dance routine for Forest choreographed by Nureyev and infusing all of it with a barrage of incredible visuals and superb soundtrack cues. Another of Potts' lovers, Oscar-winning cinematographer Néstor Almendros, even paid a visit to the shoot one day and reputedly may have filmed the outdoor love scene, a prospect up there with the accounts of Orson Welles reportedly participating in the editing of the hardcore classic 3 A.M. The hypnotic result here became something of an underground gay adult cult favorite, though its availability only in low-quality VHS copies hampered any real appreciation until Le Beau Mecthe 2024 Blu-ray release from a stunning 4K scan of the original 16mm materials. As for Potts, he would devote much of his life to Le Beau MecNureyev's legacy and would go on to write and direct none other than Psycho Cop.

Built around interview sessions with Forest translated and dubbed into English, Le Beau Mec features dramatizations of pivotal sexual encounters in his life as well as candid images of him at ease, his live show, and the sex worker milieu around him. Among the sequences are a depiction of his initiation into sex with a fellow soldier as a young man (watched from a distance by a German officer), his turning tricks at a hotel, engaging in a (role play?) scenario involving guns and cop paraphernalia, picking up a guy at a gym, going anonymous in a dark sex club, and finally doing a stylized routine in front of a mirror.

The fact that Forest would pass away a few years later in his thirties gives a melancholy feel to this portrait, which is very much filtered through the sensibility of its subject who wanted to make something different from the average adult film. On that front it definitely succeeds as the approach varies from documentary realism (including some random pick-up shots at a sex shop that the cinematographer didn't even intend for the final product) to glittering surrealism. The approach here isn't far off from what Wakefield Poole had done in his Le Beau Mecmasterpiece Bijou, though here the idea of fixating on one central person instead of a Le Beau Mecgathering of attendees gives it a distinctive feel that some might find narcissistic (for better or worse). Incredibly, the film was considered lost outside of its ancient video master until the original elements were discovered in Potts' home after his death by his brother. As with Altered Innocence's other rescues on home video, it's a vital piece of gay adult history that 's also a potent piece of filmmaking. The presentation here is magnificent and also sounds excellent with a crisp DTS-HD MA 2.0 English track and optional English SDH subtitles.

The film also comes with a new audio commentary by Elizabeth Purchell and Adam Baran who do a very solid job of parsing out the film's structure, its rarity before this point, the participation of Almendros, the blurring of porn fantasy and reality when it comes to our leading man and his "character" presented here, the relationship between bodybuilding and gay eroticism, and the personal sexual philosophy at play here. A new interview with About in conversation with historian Hervé Joseph Lebrun (17m7s) is a very bemused look back at the film including Forest's attempts to impose his own direction on the filming, the director's relationships with Nureyev and Almendros, the incident that briefly landed him in police custody, France's shameful treatment of homosexuals during that era, his own personal pickup practices, Forest's response to the film, and having a drink at a cruising spot cafe with Jean Marais. Also included are a gallery of print materials and photos (5m19s) including an American campaign you could never do today, a new trailer, and bonus trailers for The Fred Halsted Collection, Passing Strangers & Forbidden Letters, Saturday Night at the Baths, and Equation to an Unknown, plus an insert booklet with an essay by Caden Mark Gardner about the filmmaker and the process of mounting this unique study in an erotic cinematic persona.

Reviewed on January 12, 2025