Alain Guiraudie's "Staying Vertical" Shocks at Cannes: Meandering Journey with Startling Moments

It is a creative, lyrical film. One never knows where it is going. Neither, it seems, does Louis the protagonist of Alain Guiraudie's new film, Staying Vertical, which just screened this week at Cannes. We first meet Louis driving along a beautiful country road in southern France, where he stops a handsome boy and indirectly propositions him. Then he drives on and ends up sitting in a field with a shepherdess, discussing wolves. Louis, who should be working on a screenplay, has come to the country to find a wolf, he says. He likes that such ferocious creatures exist. The shepherdess rebuts that she does not: wolves are no good for sheep. The two end up in bed.

The story continues in this meandering manner, with desultory encounters with the previously encountered handsome boy, the grouchy old man the boy lives with, the aforementioned pretty shepherdess and her her dour shepherd father. The only definitive conflict is what to do with the baby that is born. What makes the film alluring is the spontaneous fluid sexual desire that erupts between the characters (male and male, or male and female) the occasional presence of wolves--and the ever-so-often shocking images, including a graphic scene of a baby being born.

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