Flesh and Fuel Review | Truckers Discover Romance And Hope In A Disarming Debut

How does one scratch out time and space for love while being constantly tethered to the road? There’s hardly leeway for more than spare halts. One is always barrelling ahead. The grind of it scrapes away vestiges of a measured life. First, Flesh and Fuel puts centre-stage the wretchedness, the submission to such circumstances, before it undercuts and channels out a path that’s generous, loving, human. Premiering as a Critics’ Week special screening at Cannes, Pierre Le Gall’s debut feature is as tangled in scorching desire as a tussle with how one re-negotiates life beyond misplaced imagination. There’s a sense of a person and the world expanding in vertiginous unison. What felt out of bounds trickles in as something no longer fanciful but achievable, desirable.

Le Gall has assembled two compelling actors who are able to summon electrifying, wrenching chemistry. As Étienne, with whom the film begins as well as closes, Alexis Manenti has this fascinating opacity. His reserve, as if projecting a blank canvas, invites you to form assumptions, fill in the elided details. A longtime trucker who picked up the reins from his father, Étienne has long held himself back, stifled or chucked the chances of trying it out with a partner. He’s almost resigned to the on-the-road reality that appears to demand a solitary life in exchange. There are small bubbles of comfort and assurance in colleagues but ultimately they too have someone waiting for them after protracted shifts. Yet, the shadow of the job does keep clutching on. A retirement is celebrated but the person soon returns to work in some capacity, as long as he can be on the road. The idea of having a fixed home begins fading, supplanted by the energy and mood of a vagrant who cannot be clipped to a single shelter.

Étienne would rather not impose the frenzied irregularity, the long absences on anyone. There are enough people in his life he feels he steadily disappoints in this regard: his mother, sister and nephew. Even when his sister floats the idea, he shrugs it off. DP Antoine Cormier finds an arresting, woozy and dreamlike texture in night-time forest sequences, cruising spots for the truckers. It’s where Étienne stumbles across the cheeky Bartosz ((an impossibly endearing Julian Swiezewski). Bartosz offers a giddy, thrilling interruption. Étienne is instantly smitten.

In a sea change, Étienne anticipates reunions with him. He’s unhesitant and daring to hurl himself out there. It’s an emotional, physical urge so visceral that he practically throws himself right before Bartosz’s truck when he manages to track him down. Bartosz is stumped when this happens, storming out to lash at the person who did such a reckless thing. As Étienne re-introduces himself, Bartosz’s mischievous, erupting laughter lights up the frame. They get along like a house on fire. But the logistics of time keeps intruding, rendering the relationship untenable in likelihood. Le Gall orchestrates their resolve to steal some time together with pure delight. There are exhilarating sequences built around the truckers speeding to catch a glimpse of each other on the road before the next delivery draws them away.

Flesh and Fuel is enormously benefited by its frank gaze on sex. Le Gall stages a full-bodied, heated scene when his leads do get a shot at utter intimacy. The pleasure is so overwhelming it’s like both have found something to lift themselves at last. Both Étienne and Bartosz are used to casual hookups as routine escapes. But this spark feels rare, new. The men plunge into elaborate efforts to make the relationship endure. Yet, neither have illusions how tough and near-impossible it’s going to be. Getting a window to sneak out of their work for brief trysts and encounters is constantly pitched against impending failure.

Social difference also planks up between the two. Étienne doesn’t quite grudge his job. He’s settled in what it limits and negates. Walking outside this circle hasn’t insisted itself on him. But the stakes are much higher, more pressing for Bartosz, who’s a Polish immigrant. The latter sharply draws the unfairness. He works twice as much but would barely land half of what Étienne would be paid. Rifts seem hard to look past. Can the relationship bear the strain of their hectic days, the grudging?

Thankfully, Flesh and Fuel chooses a promising parting note. Yes, there’s a lot of pining, ache, denying oneself joy but they are ultimately threaded towards a self-affirming realisation. Étienne, who had long submitted himself entirely to work, begins to see the road forking to imagine happiness for himself. The guardrails he had up regarding commitment slowly get smelted. Possibility flowers. It would be a difficult negotiation. Both are aware but they are ready to do what it takes in all the complex, often relentless balancing. Stirringly soulful and bouncing with prospects opening up, Paul Sabin’s music perfectly complements and energises the final few minutes. The reconciliation, the surging moment right before the men embrace the relationship find such blooming articulation in Sabin’s score you’d be hard-pressed not to have the biggest grin. Flesh and Fuel may not actively advance towards deeper considerations of the endlessly draining work beyond its railroading life to make it move only within its orbit. But the recognition of love as a counterforce to identity that’s been subsumed in work is undeniably rousing. It's such a pleasing film that warms the heart.