Get Ready To Get Wounded

I was extremely sad when I missed this when it played some theaters a few months ago, so consider me ebullient -- yes, ebullient! -- to see the news that our friends at Altered Innocence are putting their 4K restoration of the pioneering 1983 queer cinema classic The Wounded Man (aka L'homme blessé) from Patrice Chéreau, the French director of Queen Margot and Intimacy, onto blu-ray and DVD on May 23rd. Vinegar Syndrome is where you can grab a copy; here is the plot synopsis:

"Henri is a frustrated teenager living with his parents in a provincial French coastal town. When they drag him to the train station to bid adieu to his sister, Henri sneaks off to a secluded bathroom and interrupts a hustler named Jean satisfying the masochistic desires of an older male client. Henri falls desperately in love with the sexy criminal, but Jean evades Henri’s affections. Undeterred, Henri shadows Jean as he traverses the dark and dangerous underbelly of their sleepy village. But as he descends deeper and deeper into Jean’s world, there may not be an easy way out. Patrice Chéreau’s 1983 drama is a revelation: an amazingly accomplished work that genuinely channels the transgressive, unsanitized sensibility of Jean Genet, boasting a breakout lead performance by young Jean-Hugues Anglade and a script that took co-writers Chéreau and legendary gay French author and activist Hervé Guibert six years to perfect. The result is a rich, strange, and sumptuous film leading us to exhilaratingly mysterious and unfamiliar spaces both physical and psychological."

And here is the trailer:

I've wanted to see this for ages and so I snagged myself a copy the second they went up for sale -- I'll surely report back when I've been able to see the film. Anyone seen it before? '80s French boys with longish hair in jeans and white t-shirts shoving tongues down each other's throats -- be still my heart. (And that's just getting started.) Anyway they were kind enough to send me some photos from the movie to get us in the mood further, and I'll share after the jump...