Jim Queen (or Jim Queen and the Quest for Chloroqueer, to give it its full title) is a total riot. A neat eighty-minute animation premiering at the Cannes Film Festival from directors Nicolas Athané and Marco Nguyen, this hilarious queer crowd-pleaser tells the story of Jim Parfait (Alex Ramirès), a buff and proud homosexual, part-time influencer, full-time douchebag. Sadly for Jim, his social standing takes a nosedive when a plague of “heterosis” starts infecting him and his queer friends, making them, to their abject horror, straight. Suddenly, Jim’s infinite abs begin to vanish, he’s aware of what the offside rule is, and expresses intense desires to settle down in the suburbs and have multiple children. Teaming up with a twink called Lucien (Jérémy Gillet), who’s apparently immune, can the pair save the day (and the world) from this pandemic of straightness?
It’s a film that already feels destined for cult classic status. Its hilarity is in its in-jokes, from the Beauty and the Beast style opening number, gay gym bunnies singing their adoring praises for Jim, to the pandemonium that ensues as the world falls foul of widespread heterosexuality. Lady Gaga concerts are cancelled across the globe. Ricky Martin and Kristen Stewart get married. Meanwhile, a gay Gestapo-esque organisation (called the Gay-stapo) try to force a cure on the sufferers of heterosis by cramming them into rainbow sarcophaguses full of sex toys, and using human pups to seek them out. Lucien and Jim’s hero’s journey is complete with a drag queen named Glamydia, a Gaydar that manifests like a Dragonball Z style superpower, a shoe-sniffer called Pavel, whom they encounter in the centre of a bush full of buttocks (yes, really), and a pack of gay “bears” who are literal bears.
Much of it feels like a Disney movie with a distinctly adult feel to it. Todrick Hall provides some of the songs for the soundtrack, and they are all distinct bangers. Yes, there are a few flaws – the absurdity won’t be for everyone, and we’re meant to invest in a romantic storyline between Lucien and Jim that never quite sticks the landing: usually, the Disney movie gives us a warring duo a bit more shared screentime to make their eventual romance believable. But it’s not the type of movie that’s concerned with truthfulness – it is what it is, and the best you can do is strap in for the madcap ride.
Queer audiences will love it, and hopefully straight ones will find something to enjoy here too. You wouldn’t be surprised to see it playing on a screen at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern or at Heaven during Pride. And yet, for all Jim Queen’s silliness, there’s something seriously heartwarming about the desire these characters have to retain their queer identities at all costs when faced with the concept of losing that identity. In a world where the right-wing often need reminding that being gay isn’t a choice, Jim Queen presents a world where it suddenly very much is a choice – and the formerly gay characters choose their queerness wholeheartedly by embarking on a determined quest for an antidote.
What the antidote actually turns out to be is suitably hilarious, perfectly in line with the movie’s abject ridiculousness. Tugging at its slightly more serious muscle, the film shows how dull a world without queerness would truthfully be, and it’s saddening to see Paris’s real-life Quetzal bar with a grey FERMÉ sign in the doorway, its regulars having abandoned it as they succumb to straight-dom.
No more spoilers though – seek it out in the cinema, ideally with as packed a crowd as possible. It’s how a film like this is meant to be experienced.
★★★★
In cinemas soon / Alex Ramirès, Jérémy Gillet, Shirley Souagnon, François Sagat, Harald Marlot / Dir: Nicolas Athane, Marco Nguyen /
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