Queer Love Behind Bars – Star & Director of 'The Lost Boys' Discuss Their Recently-Released Prison Drama

Belgian helmer Zeno Graton's exceptional first feature "The Lost Boys" ("Le Paradis") is set almost entirely inside a youth detention center and evokes non-conformist cinema such as Stuart Rosenberg's 1967 gem "Cool Hand Luke" and Milos Forman's seminal 1975 classic "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." As with "Cuckoo's Nest," the audience may feel trapped inside the facility along with the gaggle of "lost boys" longing for liberation from the antiquated rules that govern them, but fearful of what actual freedom might mean.

The incisive narrative (script by Graton and Clara Bourreau) centers on an Arab boy, Joe (Khalil Gharbia, so sexy in François Ozon's "Peter von Kant"), who is excited about his imminent release until tattoo artist William (Julien De Saint-Jean, a revelation) is admitted to the compound. Sparks soon fly between the two boys (in secret, of course), and they must navigate certain realizations that may force them apart. De Saint Jean, with his brooding good looks and understated, yet potent and passionate, performance, proves to be a sizzling new cinematic force.

In addition to "The Lost Boys," De Saint-Jean is also prominently featured in Olivier Peyon's "Lie with Me" (currently streaming), a film that examines the heartbreaking and destructive power of shame and internalized homophobia. Both films were LGBTQ+ festival darlings.

De Saint-Jean will next be seen in the French blockbuster, "The Count of Monte Cristo," premiering in Cannes, later this month.

According to the website JustWatch, "The Lost Boys" is available to rent, buy or download at Apple TV, Vudu, Google Play Movies, and YouTube.

EDGE had the pleasure of chatting with De Saint-Jean and Graton, separately.

Part One: A Conversation with Actor Julien De Saint-Jean

EDGE: One of the refreshing things about "The Lost Boys" is that it's a gay love story with very little inhibitions regarding the boys' sexual orientations. It's just that they're in the corrections facility, and that's not the proper place to display this kind of passion.

Julien De Saint-Jean: Yeah, exactly. [Director] Zeno always told us when we were preparing the movie, [we'd] be showing something utopic... And I thought it was a really great point of view. Because now, in 2024, the love between two boys or two girls is more accepted... It's not even a problem anymore. Just two people loving each other.

EDGE: Can you share when and why you wanted to become an actor?

Julien De Saint-Jean: My mom put me in theater class when I was maybe six... I was wanting to be a director. At 15 years old, I entered the Conservatory of Dramatic Arts of Film. And normally, to go there, you're supposed to have your exam at 18. I managed to [get] in... If you want to be an actor in France, at least in theater, you need to [attend] the National Schools of Theatre Arts, so when I was 18 I entered one in Paris. And, after, I went to another school... And online I found an audition for a movie for Channel Two... And I actually [got] the job. The next day I had an agent, and three months later I had auditions for "Le Paradis/The Lost Boys" and "Lie With Me."

EDGE: Which came first?

Julien De Saint-Jean: It was actually at the same time. It was crazy... We started shooting "Lie With Me" three days in September. I shot all of "Le Paradis/The Lost Boys" in October. And I finished "Lie With Me," right after that. That's why I have a buzz cut for both movies! I was not supposed to. I was really lucky to [have] great directors.

EDGE: They're two very different performances. The one thing they have in common is this refreshingly subtly.

Julien De Saint-Jean: Thank you... In France, you're chosen because you are the character. But I am really far from the anger, the roughness of these characters. I am more gentle... So, I bring a bit of me to those characters. Zeno liked that about me. To not be this dominant, bad guy in a prison. To have this vulnerability. To show all the scars... he suffered, but [with] Joe, he can just have a little shoulder to rely on.

EDGE: Seems silly to ask this in 2024, but did you have any apprehension about playing two queer parts back to back?

Julien De Saint-Jean: That's funny, because a lot of people asked me that when I was in San Francisco at the Frameline Festival. Actually, that was a common question in every festival. The two movies had been sent to the same festivals...

At one point, when I had the opportunity to do the two movies, I asked my agents if I should cancel one and just do one. And thank God I didn't, because I'm so happy to have been part of the two movies... Of course I was scared to be typecast, because sometimes producers or directors, if they know you're good in something, will put you in the same box all the time. And I'm an actor and I want to do different roles. But I'm so grateful to have been part of [both], and I would have been really dumb to cancel one of them.

EDGE: I think there's little danger of your being typecast. It's more that now you're going to find yourself an instant queer film celebrity.

Julien De Saint-Jean: Yeah, I think the industry has changed. And the world has... There's more queer visibility in media and movies. There are so many more roles and characters and stories. So, these won't be the last gay characters or queer characters I will do in my career. And that's great. And I'm going to do so many straight roles, as well. There's so much diversity in stories in cinema.

EDGE: Let's talk a little bit about William. He's introduced to the audience as someone who's pretty fucked up. "He stabbed a guy," is what we hear even before we see him. It's deceptive, because William is really quite sensitive.

Julien De Saint-Jean: Yes. I mean, you maybe notice in the movie there's no explanation, mostly, about our characters. Zeno, when he made the edit, thought it would be less interesting to know why they were there... When I arrive [onscreen] with all the tattoos, the sharp face, you think, "Okay, he's gonna be so dominant and rough." And when he finds love, and intimacy with a guy – just to find someone that he can trust, like, as family – you see all this tenderness and deconstruction of the figure of what a guy in prison would look like, would feel like.

EDGE: The chemistry between you and Khalil is pretty palpable. Did you guys have a rehearsal process?

Julien De Saint-Jean: Yes, we did. Since it was Zeno's first film, he wanted everything really prepared before the shoot. I was booked first. Two months later I had to do auditions with, like, six Joes to find a match. And with Khalil, something happened... It was instant. And it worked. And with Zeno, we went to Brussels in Belgium, for a week to rehearse, to talk about the roles. We had homework to find music that we can relate to the characters. I really enjoyed that part where we create the roles. After, when we were on set, we didn't have to think. It was just natural. We had a week together, the two of us, at the hotel. We went [to] dinner. We talked about our lives. We became friends. So, it was easier to do intimate scenes, create something on set. It was nice.

EDGE: In "Lie With Me," you and Jeremy also had great chemistry.

Julien De Saint-Jean: Yes, Jeremy. That audition process was really complicated for so many reasons... the director paired us together and said, "It's you guys." But we waited four months for the producers to say yes to the film. So, we became friends, in Paris... and when we arrived on set, the first thing that we did was the first intimacy scene, so it was a quite intense, but we were [such good] friends that it was beyond a working relationship.

EDGE: As an actor, do you find that when the director yells cut, you become Julien again? Or do you take a little bit of the character home with you?

Julien De Saint-Jean: Good question. For me, I'm more Julien out of takes, but there's always scenes that really move you. And you're like, "Okay we've lived something, we experienced something strong." And that's in your memory. There was a scene with the Khalil when we smoke a cigarette, and he looks at me and smiles, and it really moved me.

EDGE: "Count of Monte Cristo" is opening soon?

Julien De Saint-Jean: Yes, "Count of Monte Cristo" is going to be presented in Cannes in two weeks. Out of competition. But still an official selection, which is great. I was actually writing questions and responses because I've got a lot of interviews, and I don't want to fuck it up. [Laughs] It's a really different movie. A major production. Like, $50 million budget – really rare in the French [film] industry... I was really scared during shooting, but now it's cool. I really like the movie. It's so great.

EDGE: Will you have short hair in the film as well?

Julien De Saint-Jean: Not really. It's a bit long. In all my movies, they want to cut my hair. I don't know why. I did a movie in Asia, in Taiwan. I just finished it four days ago. And they buzzed my hair, I was like, "Nooo!" I want my hair long for now. For "Monte Cristo" it's just a bit longer than this. Because I've waited like a year to have long hair. And first we did a scene with long hair. And then they cut it!

EDGE: Tell me about the film you just wrapped in Taiwan.

Julien De Saint-Jean: It's by Régis Wargnier, who won an Oscar in 1992 for "Indochine," with Catherine Deneuve.

EDGE: Great film. France's last International Feature Oscar to date.

Julien De Saint-Jean: Exactly. He's now 76 years old, and he hasn't made a film in 10 years. It's a movie about cooks. We [filmed] in Taiwan. I had never been to Asia. It's wonderful to travel and [experience] different cultures. It was intense shooting, but it was really nice.

Part Two: A Conversation with Director Zeno Graton

EDGE: Zeno, the two lead boys have little inhibitions regarding their attraction toward one another, and there's a refreshing lack of backstory given to us.

Zeno Graton: Yeah, the main goal was to make a story that I wanted to see on screen. The fact that they don't have these inhibitions is a reflection of a certain youth generation that I was witnessing around me, where they were more free inside than they were from outside conflicts. The prison was embodying this homophobic world that we still live in, but then they don't have this inner shame inside themselves. And they have to fight external obstacles instead of internal obstacles. For me, it was also to deploy a romantic love story that I felt we deserved... I was thinking a lot about "Happy Together" by Wong Kar-wai. I was also inspired by new shows like "Euphoria." ... And maybe it's a little utopian, considering the world we still live in. But I prefer to have this kind of utopia... It was also important for me to normalize tolerance instead of normalizing intolerance. When I was in these places, I was seeing a lot of solidarity and a lot of support for each other... The only homophobia is this hypocritical homophobia from the institutional representatives telling the queer youth that they can't [be themselves].

EDGE: There's quite a bit of Jean Genet in the film. In "Querelle" you always kill the thing you love. In "Lost Boys" that is not the case. You actually fight for the thing you love.

Zeno Graton: Yeah! Of course, Genet is everywhere, and a huge inspiration for this film. Genet is really about treason and how you kill the one you love, like the song. But the drama, for me, resides in the criticism of this institution, which is already dramatic enough. And their love is the silver lining that melts the ice that surrounds their desire and surrounds their freedom. I really wanted to talk about desire as a means of liberation... Where, if you embrace your queerness, all the walls around you are gonna fall.

EDGE: Was the casting process difficult?

Zeno Graton: ... I had a lot of fun doing it... We found Julien first. He was an absolute, "Okay, it's him!" I wanted this mysterious guy who could also be very at ease with these kinds of scenes. We asked him to stay for the auditions of the other character so we could find the match. And when Khalil entered, he had this tenderness that was very natural. They're very different. Julien is a very trained actor [via] major schools in Paris. Khalil is very intuitive in his approach to acting... Then we did this group casting where they all had to improvise. I had a very good Belgian casting director... Then I had to fight for rehearsals. We had one week with everybody, in order to make them feel comfortable together – eat together, dance together, rehearse scenes together, mostly doing improvisations and exercises. And then we brought them into the facility... it was very important that they had a humility about what we were doing... They became friends really quickly, and they still are.

EDGE: There are elements of "Cool Hand Luke" and "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" in "The Lost Boys." These films where a section of society is completely discarded. How do we fix the system so that you can be your own person, you can be a nonconformist, and still survive in this world?

Zeno Graton: A lot of people are actually working [on] that. There's an observatory in Belgium, they have a branch for incarcerated youth. What they've been doing since last September is screening the film inside these facilities to raise questions from the kids about their detention conditions. I couldn't be more proud about that. It's like a legal team that advocates for youth rights. They make an impact.

"Cool Hand Luke," "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" were [films] that really crafted my political views on the world. Two big inspirations, as well as films like "Brubaker."... All these films that tried to make a difference. "Cool Hand Luke" and "Cuckoo's Nest" were very big inspirations for the ending, too. These endings are very sad. And I wanted the audience to understand that these kids sometimes go to actual jail. But it was also a trick for me to end it in a nice way that they are together in this shithole. It's kind of my view on what queer love is. We are together in this shithole, in this homophobic society that we are doomed to fucking live in. And the only thing we have is the crew – the family – that we create along the way, as well as partners that we maybe have.

Both interviews have been edited for content, clarity and length.

According to the website JustWatch, "The Lost Boys" is available to rent, buy or download at Apple TV, Vudu, Google Play Movies, and YouTube.

Watch the trailer to "The Lost Boys"