SAUVAGE OPENS IN what looks like a clinic, with a man examining a frail but handsome youth. It lasts for a few minutes, and ends with a shocking twist that you would never see coming.
Leo (brilliantly portrayed by Felix Maritaud) is a barely educated, gay prostitute who leads a minimalistic life. He has no family, and does not even feel the need to own a phone. "Why do I need it?" he asks, when he is offered a stolen one by a friend. He craves affection, though; sometimes just a hug, often from the wrong people. In one of the most moving scenes in Sauvage, again in a clinic, a doctor examines a badly-beaten Leo and he hugs her—his vulnerabilities laid bare, revealing the small child that he is deep inside.
Leo feels disgusted when his gay-for-pay fellow sex worker Ahd suggests that he find an older man and settle down. But that changes when he meets Claude, an elderly gentleman who tends to a bloodied Leo and takes him home. But is he willing to let go of the one thing that he possesses—the freedom of an unfettered hustler?
Shocking and tender in equal measure, Sauvage, which was nominated in various categories at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival, is a non-judgmental look at an unlikely protagonist. Director Camille Vidal-Naquet will make you root for Leo only to let him disappoint you in ways you would not expect. The film is a riveting tale of a self-destructive youngster whose only saving grace is an innocence that refuses to leave him.