‘Flesh and Fuel’ review: Two lonely truckers share Europe’s highways – and much more – in an unlikely love story with a lot of heart

In a strange coincidence that shows just how intense the desire to tell this kind of story is, two films that debuted at major festivals last year depicted the same unlikely gay romance — one involving hard-working professional truck drivers living on the road.

The first was the powerful Mexican thriller The Punisher from director David Pablos On the roadwhich premiered in Venice and won the Orizzonti Prize. Violent, determined and sexually provocative, the film manages to weave a surprisingly moving love story through plenty of bullets and bodily fluids, leaving the viewer shaken when they finally run out of gas.

A promising first feature film by French director Pierre Le Gall, Meat and fuel (View in the arts), which is premiering in the Cannes Critics’ Week sidebar, plays a gentler, more optimistic Gallic cousin in this dark film.

That’s not to say that this relationship drama isn’t without its conflicts, interruptions and squabbles, many of which involve logistical difficulties in communication when you’re constantly on the fast track and having to meet strict deadlines across Europe. However, in what could have been an existential and very French tale of impossible love, albeit mostly set in the cabs of 18-wheelers or anonymous roadside rest stops, Le Gall boldly chooses to present the possibility of redemption.

This seems unlikely at first, given the film’s plucky hero and the quiet, soulless world he inhabits, which seems like the perfect setting for another downbeat film from the Dardenne brothers. In fact, when we first meet 40-year-old Etienne (Alexis Manenti), he’s so devoted to his longtime job as a professional truck driver — a job, we learn, that his father also did before him — that he has little time for anything other than hitting the road again and again.

As the top driver for his regional French shipping company, Etienne always delivers on time and serves as a role model for the new recruits, including the unruly if likable Jourdain (Armindo Alves de Sa), who is just starting to learn the ropes. When he’s not behind the wheel, Etienne stays in close contact with his sister (Julie Duclos) and her baby, whom he showers with gifts and Facetimes from wherever he’s parked.

There’s only one twist to his monastic life on the highway, and we learn about it early on when Etienne drifts away from a rest stop into a nearby forest full of fellow gay truckers looking forward to a cruise. Le Gall and DB Antoine Cormier (Kingdom) captured this sequence in an almost mysterious way, bringing elegance to all the random couplings. They do the same for other scenes that manage to find beauty in anonymous locations, adding a welcome shade of warmth to places most of us pass by and quickly forget.

However, Etienne never forgets his first tussle in the woods with Bartosz (Julian Świszewski), a Polish driver who fortunately saves his lover’s skin when the cops show up to arrest them and other men for indecent behavior. The two end up crossing paths again and bonding more intensely, in a sweaty and passionate bout of lovemaking that paves the way for a true romance.

You can see why the two are drawn to each other, and not just because they spend their days and nights driving long distance highways. As quiet and contained as Etienne is, Bartosz is fun and contagious – an upbeat party boy who just happens to drive a 16-ton truck. He seems to have found something in their weary existence that Etienne had never thought of: the possibility of joy in a cruel and ungrateful world.

But when the necessities of their jobs begin to push them apart, driving trucks becomes a serious obstacle to their budding relationship. In Etienne’s case, it’s because his struggling company has signed a new contract with the UK, requiring him to wait hours, sometimes days, to cross the border. For Bartosz, who works for a Polish company that undercuts its European rival with low prices, it means driving to hell and back for less than Etienne makes, and with almost no vacation.

It is almost impossible for love to flourish in such circumstances, although Le Gall shows in two memorable passages how he can still rear his head in unexpected places. The first is when Etienne and Bartosz, communicating by phone and CB radio, find a way to pass each other on the bridge while heading in opposite directions, honk the horn triumphantly and close their eyes for a split second. In the other, Etienne spots Bartosh’s stand in the huge Rungis wholesale food market outside Paris, where he chases him on foot and is nearly run over until he can force him to slam on the brakes.

In his most disarming role to date is the always charismatic Manenti, who broke out in 2019 as a crooked cop in director Ladj Ly’s crime thriller. Wretchedplays a kind-hearted, melancholy man who decides to accept his isolated existence on the road long ago, and then finds that his only chance to escape that life has been crushingly snatched away from him. Polish actor Swiezewski proved to be a good antidote to Manenti’s inertia, bringing charm and verve to their scenes together.

In such dramas – both David Lean Short meeting Ang Lee is clearly an influencer Brokeback Mountain It occurs to me that potential spouses usually don’t stay together and one of them, or the love interest themselves, usually ends up dying. Without giving away the how Meat and fuel That being said, it’s worth praising Le Gall for choosing a different path. The fact that he sees some hope in Etienne and Bartosz’s future is not only a sign of his romanticism. It’s a testament to his belief that those who toil in unforgiving jobs deserve their fair share of happiness, if they can find the right way out.