Aime... comme minet

"Aime Comme Minet/All of Me" doesn't quite live up to the later stuff from JD Cadinot, the master of erotic hardcore. But this film certainly hints at what was to come in future works. Cadinot model Pierre Buisson is the centerpiece of the film. Buisson sprawls out on an antique leather couch and recounts to a photographer, his past sexual experiences, as the viewer sees it all in flashback sequences. Observant viewers will notice that the model is noticeably younger in the flashback sequences. For this film Cadinot used a technique that has never been employed in the history of hardcore cinema; he filmed the "flashback sequences" and than put them away in his vault, for two years. After this time he called back Buisson to do the interview footage, knowing that he would be noticeably more grown-up looking compared to the way he appears in his recollections. Two years in the making, this technique lends an amazingly personal and realistic feeling to this otherwise simple film. "All of Me" also features a very early appearance by Luigi diComo, who would become a regular in many subsequent Cadinot films. but it is Pierre Buisson who is the star, and this model possesses an almost indescribable sexual quality, appearing extremely seductive and very innocent at once. He poses with the grace of a panther in heat, and he appears to love the attention of the camera, like no other model Cadinot has used. Flashbacks include a double rape, in the back of a bake shop, which is supposedly the boys first sexual experience. (Of course he ends up enjoying it.) Later he discusses an experience he had with a school friend, (Luigi DiComo) in the stairwell of an apartment building. Again he is dominated by Luigi's character. Finally Buisson meets an older man in a public toilet, where he plays the dominant role for the first time. the action constantly shifts back to Pierre, posing nude and masturbating on the couch, while the photographer listens to his erotic stories. This is an extremely rare title, worth tracking down for Cadinot fans. Pierre Buisson worked again with the director in "Les Minet sauvage" and was meant to play the lead in that seminal hardcore film, but a drug addiction rendered him unreliable and he was relegated to a smaller role. Buisson sadly died from a heroin overdose, but these strange and artistic films have immortalized this actor's beauty for all-time.

I regard "Aime Comme Minet" as four separate stories, three filmed at an earlier time, the fourth (which we understand from Cadinot's own descriptions of the resulting product) occurring a couple of years afterward. All four stories star Pierre Buisson, and each deals with one or more themes that are present throughout Cadinot's film career.

I believe it is useful to describe each of the three earlier stories first. Episode 1 takes place in a large bakery where two men Frederic Lemaire and Ducko Vuckovich) work beneath large Pavallier ovens. A twinkish young man (Pierre Buisson) is employed to scrub out large vats where the baker's dough is mixed.

In a Cadinot theme, reminiscent of his contemporary "Scouts" and "Stop", Buisson is provocatively dressed, wearing the shortest of shorts. (If his bakery uniform differs from Cadinot's scout uniforms in that his genitals are shielded from open view, it is clear his body mesmerizes Lemaire and Vuckovich.

THey grab him. Vuckovich, in a departure from a usual rape scene, orally services Buisson who is unambiguously receptive. I find most intriguing about the men's reaction is the length of time that Cadinot spends on the "what the hell is this guy playing at?" expressions on the men's faces.

The second scene (which, to me, seems to utilize Buisson at his youngest age), is a romantic tryst between two soccer buds (Buisson and Luigi di Como) who use the staircase leading to their separate apartments as a place for love-making. They straddle the staircase and banisters in a variety of positions that predate the choreographed encounters of Kristen Bjorn's films. This resonates with the theme of adolescent gay love that Cadinot showed us in "Tender Adolescents".

The third scene returns to the anti-clerical theme that we saw in a more satirical presentation, in "Scouts". We are at Paris' Sacre Couer Cathedral, but there we meet Loic Le Gallec sitting on a bench on the pathway down to a public men's room. This is obviously a place of gay assignation, because Le Gallec sits in short shorts that display his ball-sac to passersby.

Passing by is the jogger Buisson, who jogs back to join Le Gallec in an exploration of some of the lesser known (at least to the main congregation) of Sacre Couer's spaces, and an exploration of each others bodies, which they find to their tastes, and do indeed do a lot of tasting

All these three disparate episodes are integrated into a whole film through the device of a cameraman snapping shots of an older Buisson recalling the "rape", the romance with his soccer buddy, and the confidence he obtained by alternating the dominant sexual role with Le Gallec at Sacre Couer.

The English translation of the French title as "All of Me" is, to me unsatisfactory. All in all, the bakery and soccer buddy scenes are worth the effort to track this film down and the images of Sacre Couer make for a great travel film.