Matthias & Maxime 2019

Matthias and Maxime are lifelong friends in their late twenties living in Montreal, each carrying a different rhythm in life. Matthias is driven and ambitious, a successful businessman with a caring girlfriend named Sarah, while the quieter, gentler Maxime works behind a bar and spends long hours caring for his abusive, alcoholic mother. Matthias seems destined for a big promotion at work, and Maxime is quietly preparing to move to Australia for new opportunities. Their contrasting paths set the stage for a weekend that will blur the lines between friendship, desire, and the fear of what they might become if they let themselves truly listen to what their hearts are telling them.

When Rivette invites them to his lakeside cabin, the atmosphere shifts as his pushy sister, Érika, a film student, pressures them to star in her student short film after her two actors drop out. What begins as a lighthearted favor quickly reveals a deeper current running beneath their lives. Maxime capitulates and agrees to participate, and Matthias is later forced to join after losing a bet to Rivette. The news that their scenes will require a kiss catches them off guard, but their old history—years earlier in high school, or so the party legends claim—adds a charged undercurrent to the moment. They end up sharing a kiss, offscreen, which unsettles them in ways they did not expect and unsettles those around them as the film asks what such a moment could mean for two men whose identities have long been tethered to different social scripts.

That kiss becomes a turning point. Matthias cannot sleep the following morning, takes a swim in the lake and seems to drift between confidence and doubt, while Maxime begins to feel the weight of the moment in a more private way. Matthias also starts to question his choices at home: he declines a promotion and argues with Sarah, and the discovery that Erika has completed her film intensifies his sense of upheaval. Sarah seems to understand the conflict that has erupted inside Matthias, even as their relationship shifts in the wake of the kiss. The two men hold a growing tension that is easy to miss in the bustle of family obligations and future plans, but it quietly reshapes how they see themselves and each other.

As the weekend unfolds, the two return to their everyday lives with new questions. Maxime hands over the care of his mother’s estate to his aunt and seeks a letter of recommendation from Matthias’ father, a successful Chicago businessman, hoping to smooth the road ahead. The long-gestating questions about desire, loyalty, and identity only deepen as Maxime worries about leaving behind the life he knows, and Matthias confronts the ache of a love that seems to threaten the future he has built. The two men are simultaneously pulled toward different futures and pulled back toward each other by a moment they cannot quite erase, a moment that has already altered the course of their days and their nights.

The party at Maxime’s social circle becomes a crucible. Matthias arrives late, gives a halting speech for Maxime, and initially refuses to join an afterparty, only to be encouraged by Sarah to stay. A heated moment during a party game leads to a fresh tear-down of the old boundaries, with Matthias insulting Maxime’s facial birthmark and then storming out before returning to apologize. The night culminates in a fleeting, tender moment: a kiss and a brief sexual encounter between them that leaves Maxime hopeful yet hurt, and Matthias unsettled, as if the old certainties could shatter at any moment.

In the days that follow, Matthias finds himself wasting time at a strip club with a business associate, while Maxime begins cleaning his house in preparation for the move. He uncovers a childhood drawing of himself and Matthias living on a farm together, a poignant reminder of a simpler past that somehow feels more true than the present. A phone call finally delivers a crucial piece of the puzzle: the letter of recommendation was not lost in transit but had actually been sent to Matthias, who failed to forward it to his father. The truth lands with a quiet heaviness, helping Maxime see that Matthias has been in denial about what he truly wants and where his loyalties lie. He forwards the letter to his own email and prepares to leave for the airport, only to discover that Matthias is waiting for him, not far from the doorway, ready to face the uncertainty together.

What follows is not a flashy resolution but a tempered, patient reckoning. The two men stand at a crossroads where love, friendship, duty, and the fear of change collide, and they choose to walk toward one another rather than away. The film leaves them on the cusp of a new chapter, where their relationship—and the lives around them—will be transformed by honesty, vulnerability, and the choice to say yes to what they truly want, even if the road ahead remains uncertain.