“What if we got married everywhere?” Fleur (Nina Meurisse) says to her partner Julian (Laurence Roothooft) in Cato Kusters’ drama “Julian” with the same kind of passion and lack of practicality that led Julian to propose to her in the first place, having popped the question moments after she got off a plane and looked so beautiful that she had to ask. The two are hopelessly in love and happily in Belgium where they’ll be able to get hitched without any issue as same-sex partners, but as the two talk about their engagement with friends, a stray remark about how that isn’t a right afforded in all parts of the world gets Fleur thinking as she is prone to do as a journalist and soon enough she’s making spreadsheets listing the 22 countries in the world where the two can make it legal, complete with a cost analysis. Based on the exploits of a real couple, Kusters’ debut feature boasts an inspired premise for a globe-trotting adventure, yet becomes tremendously moving in other ways when the writer/director explores how their ideals run up against forces outside their control.
When Fleur and Julian have no idea where things will ultimately go, it’s a credit to Kusters that she is constantly putting the audience on their toes as well, introducing the two in such a way that you only realize later the moment they first fell for one another at a concert. There’s nothing remarkable about the encounter except that Fleur can’t help but look at the woman she brushed past on the way to her seat. Their engagement also is as much of a surprise when news is broken amongst close friends rather than seeing either get on one knee. When the romance itself is without question, Kusters is freed up to pay attention to how their relationship exists within a greater context. Even in a technological sense, their memories seem governed by the fickle whims of a hard drive when the handheld videos that eventually become a part of Fleur’s Project 22 start to become unplayable and it is just one way that their connection faces issues that aren’t of their own making when the imposition of a government’s definition of marriage leads Fleur to see their nuptials as much for advocacy purposes as a personal desire while Julian would likely be happy with a simple ceremony and a quiet life, something that wouldn’t even come up for a heterosexual couple.
It is particularly cruel then that just as Fleur and Julian start their international wedding tour, it stops abruptly when Julian is diagnosed with a likely terminal form of cancer, but in the scheme of things only seems as unfair as anything else that’s been thrown the pair’s way and Kusters tells a story where love pointedly doesn’t conquer all, but not for a lack of trying. Meurisse and Roothooft make for a convincing couple from the start, but really shine in how they express their different ambitions and values from one another with subtlety and there’s a stark, crisp quality to Michel Rosendaal’s cinematography that catches the couple’s tenderness amidst the unforgiving borders around the life they share. Although an end title card is there to insist on the reality of the situation as campaigns around the world continue to push for what should be a civil right for all, “Julian” offers an escape when it expresses a romance so deep it becomes easy to get lost inside but proves rejuvenating for audiences as they leave the theater when it’s a rich reminder of what’s worth fighting for.
“Julian” will screen again at the Toronto Film Festival at the Scotiabank on September 7th at 5:35 pm and September 13th at 9 pm.