Me, Myself and Mum 2013

In a theatre, Guillaume recounts his life as a youth, tracing a path that begins with a mother who casually dismisses his more effeminate moments. As a young boy, he is drawn to ways of being that don’t always fit the expectations around him, and when he asks to learn Spanish, his mother sends him to La Línea de la Concepción. There, he stays with Paqui, a Spanish woman who cannot speak French, and the two struggle to find common ground. Despite the language barrier, Paqui offers a bridge between cultures by introducing him to the dance of sevillanas. He grows proficient and performs at a local festival, only to face laughter from the crowd that leaves him puzzled about why he is the butt of the joke. He musters the courage to ask a woman named Pilar to dance with him, but she politely refuses, explaining that his dancing resembles that of a girl. He asks whether she thinks he looks like a girl, and when she agrees, he privately clings to the notion that his mother would be delighted by such a reflection.

Fascinated by his mother, Guillaume imitates her voice for the family cook and for Babou, his grandmother. The impersonations reveal a longing for acceptance and a desire to belong, but his father remains uneasy with his son’s behavior. After catching him pretending to be Sissi, the father sends him away to an all-boys boarding school, a place where taunts and strict codes of masculinity confront him daily. Unable to withstand the constant jeers, Guillaume sends a plea to his father seeking understanding. A psychiatric assessment follows, and the family decides to transfer him to an English boarding school, hoping the new environment might offer a fresh start.

At the English school, Guillaume discovers a place where his personality is not the sole measure of his worth, and he begins to experience a sense of relief. He develops a tender attraction to a schoolmate, Jérémy, but heartbreak soon follows when he learns that Jérémy is intimate with a girl. His mother offers comfort, yet she accidentally reveals that he is homosexual, a realization Guillaume hadn’t fully acknowledged before. The revelation leads to a period of exemption from his national service as he navigates his fragile state.

A sequence of psychotherapy sessions follows, guiding Guillaume toward self-understanding while never shying away from discomfort. He travels to a Bavarian spa to seek relief, where a strenuous sports massage from Raymund and an unexpected colonic from Ingeborg set the stage for a deeper exploration of his sexuality. An aunt offers guidance, nudging him toward testing boundaries as a way to map his desires, even as he remains unsure about what sex and affection truly mean for him.

In his early attempts to explore intimacy, Guillaume goes to a nightclub and encounters a man named Karim. At Karim’s flat, he discovers two other men waiting for a group encounter, and Guillaume’s nerves push him to escape when Karim realizes he is not Arab. A second attempt brings another encounter with a different man who is well-endowed, triggering Guillaume’s panic and withdrawal from the moment.

Love arrives later in a more intimate setting when he meets Amandine at a friend’s dinner party, and the two quickly fall into a sincere connection that leads to engagement. When Guillaume broaches the topic with his mother, she questions his sexuality, and he comes to understand that her concerns stem from fear—fear of losing him to a woman and fear of disrupting the familiar patterns of their life together.