The String (2009)

Malik has a lot on this place when he returns home to Tunisia after living in France. He's processing his father's death, he can't come out to his mother, and his childhood anxieties have resurfaced. But all of Malik's problems seem to fade away when he falls for Bilal, the dreamy houseboy at his mother's bourgeois estate.

Where is all this heading? To another tragic gay movie where somebody dies? I don't think I require a spoiler alert to tell you that "The String" is NOT that sort of movie. This is a loving, wise, subtle, witty, sophisticated, erotic, almost Utopian vision of how life should be, a tonic to all those well-made but often dreary movies about gay life outside the urban gay Meccas of the West.

The acting is terrific (Malik's face tells many stories), the sense of humor is spot-on, Cardinale is simultaneously the scariest and best mother a gay boy could ever hope for, and the whole movie is beautifully directed, especially the scene where Bilal comes to Malik and humbly asks to borrow his shoes, because his own outfit isn't classy enough to get him into a trendy club. So much happens in this scene, it's like a little movie in itself. It sets in motion everything that comes afterward.