In cinemas this Wednesday, March 25, Cato Kusters’ debut feature tells the original and committed project of a lesbian couple whose lives were prematurely cut short by death.
It’s a love story between two women that is as beautiful as it is tragically told, the Belgian director Cato Kusters recounts in Julian, in theaters this Wednesday, March 25. Fleur Pierets and Julian P. Boom have always been creative personalities. One is a writer and art critic, the other a marine-bottom cartographer and performance artist. In 2017, shortly after their wedding in New York, the two women decide to embark on what they call “the Project 22.” The objective of this challenge is at once personal, symbolic, and engaged: to exchange rings in the twenty-two countries around the world where same-sex marriage was then legalized.
But after they said yes in Paris, the fourth stop on their world wanderings, Julian nearly fainted on the steps of the City Hall. Medical tests reveal several tumors around her brain and heart. Her health deteriorates at a furious pace, and the couple’s project is cut dead in its tracks. Julian dies in January 2018.
Today, Fleur continues to tell this adventure with its tragic ending. It was during a radio appearance by the widow that the Belgian filmmaker Cato Kusters discovered her. Fascinated, she grew passionate about this extraordinary love story. Already the author of several short films, the 28-year-old filmmaker took hold of it to turn it into the screenplay for Julian, her first feature, which oscillates between biographical narrative and romantic drama. She chooses a disjointed narration, moving back and forth between Fleur and Julian’s small victories along their journey and a present marked by mourning and the need to honor the memory of the deceased.
On screen, Nina Meurisse and Laurence Roothooft form a lovely cinematic couple. More than a homage, the film has the breath of a romantic epic, without the mawkishness that we are too often served. The direction, sober, thus highlights the palette of emotions, sometimes conflicting, that cross the two protagonists: passion, sorrow, euphoria, frustration… What endures is love.
