Men for sale

Hommes a louer, a 2009 French-Canadian documentary movie, comprises over two hours of edited interviews with 11 male prostitutes in Montreal. Its English translation of Men For Sale is doubly erroneous; better, both linguistically and conceptually, is Men For Rent: the interviews clearly indicate that none of the sex workers have sold themselves to sugar daddies. Instead, they rent out their bodies to satisfy their primary love: drug addiction, usually crack.

That depiction is inevitable: the documentary-maker, Rodrigue Jean, found his subjects at an addiction treatment and HIV awareness centre. They are hustlers on the homosexual sidewalk because that's the easiest place to earn the bucks needed to buy drugs. None of them need gay love or sexual release, some have girlfriends (some also on the game); all of them have troubled family backgrounds.

At the end of the movie, when Jean revisits some of the interviewees "few months later", one of them has found love and given up drugs, and it would have been a more positive footnote if his escape path had been described. The other subjects seemed to have wasted away even further, getting uglier and spottier, more addicted, less mentally balanced, doomed, providing a depressing conclusion to a disturbing report.

Technically, it's a competent set of head-shots, mostly filmed in the one of the clinic's sparse rooms. Maybe intending to demonstrate that all the subjects were voluntary and not actors, each was shown getting microphones (or medical gauges?) fixed to their chests. That used up screen time unnecessarily, as did night-time film of wintry Montreal streetscapes.

Sociologists and social workers may find interesting research data regarding the mores, incentives and tariffs for male prostitution. Few other people would see or hear anything worth remembering, and would be better recommended to re-watch Gus van Sant's My Own Private Idaho.

Jean had previously written and directed a pair of French-Canadian feature films, and a documentary about his native Acadia. This documentary (conducted in monthly interview sessions during almost a year) feels as if it was a personal investigation, and it may not be a coincidence that one of the interviewees proudly declares himself an easygoing Acadian.