A 46-minute fever dream where love, lust, and myth-making collide in 80s queer cinema.
Harems is a love story between a screen-writer and a gogo-boy, the latter being typically representative of the image of seduction in the 80's. The screenwriter leaves on a journey and asks the gogo-boy to accompany him. A scandal breaks out and the gogo-boy's antics lead to both men's meeting with the narrator. She introduces the spectator to the psychological state of the screen-writer - who is in the process of inventing a mythic character based on his lover - and befriends and helps the gogo-boy in his quest for happiness. The narrator relates the story taking place between the two men and questions the relationship between fantasy and the reality of love.
Direction
Paradis blurs narrator, creator, and lover into one unstable gaze.
Writing
Screenwriter literally writing his lover into myth—deliciously self-aware.
Director
Marc Paradis
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
1991 Montreal queer cinema rarely gets spotlighted; this captures pre-mainstream LGBTQ+ storytelling's experimental freedom. Paradis made virtually nothing else.
The 'mythic character' the screenwriter creates mirrors how 80s queer culture itself constructed idealized masculinity through go-go dancers—making the film a meta-critique of its own era.
FR
CA
