Pierrot is a goat farmer who’s been with both men and women, never wanting to settle down but keeping himself young with amorous adventures in the fields or on the river bank. They met when Jacques (who has had a series of long-term relationships with distinguished silver foxes) posted a lonely hearts ad to which Bernard (who had previously had a wife and five children) responded. Bernard and Jacques potter around Jacques’ Marseilles apartment, making tea and getting dressed. Between them both Catholic and communist, they describe their struggle against institutional homophobia and even being treated by a psychiatrist for being gay. Pierre and Yann live and work together breeding tropical birds. The story of a fight now largely forgotten and its militants, Les Invisibles gives gay liberation a very human face. And there are common threads that unite their stories, not only in their testimonies, but also picked out in the goats they tend, the shorts they wear or the tenderness with which they look after each other, Bernard and Jacques dressing each other awkwardly in socks and braces. Their individual life stories are traced back through their awakening sexuality, both its darkest moments and happiest moments. Through family photos, talking head interviews, archive footage, chansons and meditative glimpses of their daily routines, Les Invisibles offers an immediate intimacy into the lives of Pierre and Yann, Bernard and Jacques, Pierrot, Thérèse, Christian, Monique, Elisabeth and Catherine. Putting the stories of nine venerable gay men and women under the spotlight, Sébastien Lifshitz’s Les Invisibles pays homage to love, self-fulfilment and revolution.Īfter touching fictional features of souls at sea in Wild Side and Going South, Sébastien Lifshitz returns to documentary with Les Invisibles and nine enriching portraits of retired gay men and women recounting their life stories and struggles.
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