[Article to be found in the summer issue, at your newsstand or by subscription.] On Netflix this July 17, the film Heartstopper Forever comes to put a final stamp on one of the tenderest series of its generation. Behind this adolescent romance with a compulsive taste for grand emotional outpourings, a forceful return of saccharine love is laid bare. Cynics, step aside.
By Florian Ques, Maurine Charrier & Laure Dasinieres
Heartstopper, or the triumph of saccharine sentimentality
Adapted from Alice Oseman’s graphic novels, Heartstopper has been telling, for four years now on Netflix, the story of Charlie, a bullied gay high-school student, and Nick, a popular rugby player who is discovering his bisexuality. Everything here is almost absurdly gentle: the boys communicate, friends support each other, adults are benevolent and no one ends up drunk in the rain after a breakup… Tenderness everywhere, sarcasm nowhere, we hadn’t seen characters this endearing since the end of Lassie.
My Dear F***ing Prince, NATO takes the wind
What would happen if the son of the President of the United States slept with the Prince of England? Absolutely nothing credible, but plenty of handsome guys in luxury sweaters and a sexual tension that would make Windsor’s gilding sweat, which, nonetheless, has seen worse. Between diplomatic sexts, theatrical disputes and declarations of love under royal lighting, the plot moves with the subtlety of a Wattpad fanfiction. Romantically enough to give you cavities, the film (to be watched on Prime Video) embraces so wholeheartedly its delirium that you end up yielding. It’s like stepping into Philippe Katerine’s universe: you just have to accept that the ridiculous is part of the experience.
The Broken Hearts Club, a pioneering rom-com
Before Queer as Folk, the American gay community had already found here its gang of neurotic, endearing friends perpetually in the throes of romantic trouble. Released in 2000, Greg Berlanti’s first film (available on Apple TV), future specialist of series where very handsome people have complicated emotional problems (You, Riverdale…), cut through the tragic representations of homosexuality that still dominate mainstream cinema. Here, the gays flirt, break up, dramatize at will and fall in love, like everyone else.
XO, Kitty, the heartbreak boarding school in meltdown
In the wake of To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, Netflix now sends teenage torments to Seoul. Between a chic boarding school, love triangles and an avalanche of butterflies in the stomach, the series follows Kitty Song-Covey at the Korean Independent School of Seoul. “Kiss” obviously, because at this stage, the screenplay winks outright at the viewer. With its XXL emotional crises in pastel corridors, would you like some more bubble tea?
What Breathes Romance, cinnamon bukkake
Peter, a bachelor tired of his parents’ remarks, decides to take his best friend to the family Christmas gathering by passing him off as his boyfriend. Obviously, his mother has already planned to pair him with another boy as handsome as a catalog of recycled-wool sweaters. If Christmas telefilms have now become an industry capable of producing fourteen gingerbread romances per week, gays have long been asked to stay at the chalet door. A civilizational anomaly corrected. Everything is stitched with white thread and no one seems to have a life away from the tree; that’s exactly what one expects from the genre. On Netflix.
Love, Simon, the mail and the bees
Following the surprise success of The Broken Hearts Club, Greg Berlanti took advantage of a break between a dozen American series to adapt Becky Albertalli’s bestseller. This teen rom-com follows a high-school student in the closet who falls for a classmate with whom he exchanges emails anonymously. Everything is calibrated to elicit little sighs: the indie-pop soundtrack, friends a tad too perfect, grand speeches about love, and these teens who move in kitchens bigger than a Parisian flat. We melt anyway, because it’s good. Available on Disney+.
The Boyfriend, cuddly reality TV
Ten men in a huge house, a coffee truck to run in the hope of finding love… One might think at first of a Netflix catastrophe with a jacuzzi and lots of shouting. Fortunately, the format is Japanese. Here, the silences last long, looks count and a simple brush of the hand takes on the proportions of a national event. Much cooler than loud, tacky reality TV, the show moves at the pace of tea steeping. To be savored with someone you love.
“We Fell in Love in October”, by Girl in Red
The cliché of the lesbian moving in after two dates may have a hard life, but this album certainly doesn’t help it disappear. With its soft guitar, its dragging voice and its lyrics soaked in fallen leaves, Girl in Red turns autumn into a sapphic fantasy. Everything makes you want to send a too-early “I miss you,” to buy a shared blanket, and to watch the rain fall with a girl in an oversized hoodie. Excessively sentimental? Obviously. So perfectly effective.
“Goo Goo Eyes”, by Lycinaïs Jean
With its zouk-infused Creole ballads and love declarations sung as absolute certainties, Lycinaïs Jean would almost make Céline Dion look cynical. From “Goo Goo Eyes” to “Danje” via “Tonbé ajounou,” the singer of Caribbean origin transforms each track into a wedding soundtrack. Impossible to resist for long to this avalanche of swaying romance.
