Avant Que j'oublie aka Before I Forget (2007) - Forty years ago, some members of the gay community took issue with the parade of self-pitying, self-hating queens in Mart Crowley's play (and subsequent film) The Boys In The Band, but is there really that much distance between Crowley's lonely New Yorkers and the network of Parisian hustlers and ex-hustlers in Jacques Nolot's more aesthetically respectable Before I Forget? As he did in his films Porn Theater and Hinterland, Nolot casts himself in Before I Forget as a retired, HIV-infected lothario approaching his golden years with a mixture of dread and resignation. He spends his days commiserating with old friends about the price of prostitutes and how the world they knew is collapsing, and his nights staring at an unfinished manuscript and worrying about what kind of legacy he's going to leave behind. Nearly everyone in the film is bitter and loveless, governed by desires and self-absorption. It's hardly a rosy picture of what it's like to be gay and 60 in Paris.
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