Man at Bath 2010

Omar is about to leave Gennevilliers for a trip to New York City to showcase his latest collaborations when a troubling incident changes the plan: his boyfriend, Emmanuel, delivers a violent act that amounts to rape. In the wake of this assault, Omar asks Emmanuel to pack and leave before his departure, and the two drift apart into a sequence of intimate, somber vignettes that map their respective ways of mourning the end of their relationship. The narrative then shifts into a wandering, documentary-like exploration of memory, desire, and artistic impulse as Omar, a restless, aspiring filmmaker, uses his upcoming tour of upper New York as a chance to escape the weight of what happened and to chase new footage rather than reconciliation.

Omar’s camera eventually fixes on Dustin, a young Canadian college student on vacation, and what begins as an ordinary social encounter becomes a filmed, quasi-academic exploration of attraction and power. Omar befriends Dustin and soon pivots to a more intimate, entangled dynamic, openly documenting their mutual desire and turning their encounter into a kind of moving study in sexuality. In the process, the project widens beyond a single liaison to encompass a broader bisexual arc that even brushes against Omar’s former teacher figure, a reminder of Omar’s own intellectual curiosity and the messy, unfiltered way he chooses to depict sex on screen. The professor’s presence is explored through the lens of the story as it probes how boundaries blur when art and life collide.

Back in Paris, Emmanuel—now left financially strained and emotionally adrift—takes shelter in Omar’s apartment and tries to reinvent himself in a space he once inhabited with confidence and public praise for his body. He moves from asserting unsolicited attention toward an upstairs neighbor who also functions as a sex-work client, a figure embodied by Dennis Cooper, to inviting a stream of sexual encounters with Omar’s circle of acquaintances. Emmanuel’s chaotic home becomes a stage for desire, tension, and a desperate yearning for the days when life felt easier and more assured. He even reels in Omar’s look-alike, Sebastian D’Azeglio, bringing him back into the apartment as part of a larger, unsettling dynamic between memory and present need. The intermission in the film arrives as Emmanuel confronts his own emotional fragility, a moment that undercuts his bravado and exposes the vulnerability beneath his playfully aggressive exterior.

The plot thickens as Emmanuel, in a troubling sequence, refuses the advances of an underage boy, portrayed by Andréas Leflamand, even as he later accepts a tip from a former close friend, a scene that underscores the ethical murkiness and the moral complications that attend everyone’s actions. The film does not shy away from showing Emmanuel’s chaotic interior state and his capacity for emotional withdrawal even as he tries to keep control of the situation. The tension continues to build as the narrative introduces another young figure, Rabah Zahi, a teenager who ultimately presses forward with his own advances, which Emmanuel meets with a harsh, retaliatory cruelty that becomes one of the most painful, explicit moments in the apartment’s claustrophobic atmosphere.

As days pass, Emmanuel’s emotional volatility peaks, and in a quiet, almost redemptive moment, he cries over a mural he had begun painting on one of the apartment walls—a personal, improvised piece that seems to stand in for the emotional work he hasn’t been able to do in person. The film then circles back to Omar’s return, a moment of stillness and reflection as he stops to consider the finished mural and the absence of Emmanuel in the space they once shared. The closing beats leave the audience with a sense of unresolved longing and the sense that the past lingers in rooms, in walls, and in the camera’s unflinching gaze.

Throughout, the film sustains a measured, observant tone that prioritizes mood over explicit exposition. It leans into the ambiguity of desire and the ways art—documentary-style footage, assembled memories, and improvised performance—can both reveal and complicate intimate relationships. The cityscapes of Paris and New York frame the characters’ inner lives, amplifying the sense that departure and return are part of a continuous, messy negotiation between art, memory, and need. The pieces fit together to form a long, nuanced meditation on how lovers mourn, how filmmakers chase truth through their lenses, and how people sometimes oscillate between tenderness, hostility, and a longing for days that may never come again.