How to Make Love to a Negro Without Getting Tired

Dream Note

Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to present the most gloriously un-PR-friendly title in the history of Canadian cinema — and somehow, against every conceivable odds, the movie underneath that eyebrow-raising moniker is a genuinely thoughtful, sun-drenched meditation on race, sexuality, and the audacity of ambition. Set during a sweltering Montreal summer that practically radiates off the screen like humidity from a bagel shop, the film follows two roommates who could not be more different if one of them were a poutine and the other were a smoked meat sandwich. Man — yes, that's literally his name, and no, I will not be taking questions about it — is a driven, obsessive writer hammering away at his magnum opus with the kind of manic energy usually reserved for people who've had seventeen espressos and a personal vendetta against God. His buddy Bouba, on the other hand, has elevated doing absolutely nothing into a spiritual discipline, dispensing Koranic wisdom like a philosopher-king who happens to live on a stained couch. The dynamic between these two is pure comedy gold: the workaholic and the sloth, the dreamer and the dream-critic, yin and yang if yin wrote fourteen hours a day and yang couldn't be bothered to wash a dish. But here's where the film gets genuinely spicy — Man has a rather conspicuous habit of romancing young white women, and the local Caucasian gentlemen are NOT having it. The jealousy practically drips from the screen like maple syrup from a pancake stack. What could have been a heavy-handed sociological lecture instead plays out like a French-Canadian sex comedy directed by someone who actually read Frantz Fanon for fun. The film refuses to make anyone a saint or a villain, which is incredibly refreshing in an era where most movies about race hand you a pamphlet along with your ticket. It's messy, it's provocative, it's occasionally uncomfortable, and it possesses a swagger that would make Shaft reconsider his wardrobe choices. A bold, weird, utterly singular piece of francophone filmmaking that asks big questions while looking fabulous doing it.