Les Minets Sauvages is frustratingly edited and unfocused movie with too many scenes that either go nowhere or are cut off abruptly, but this is nonetheless a charming little movie of Dickensian melodrama where rape replaces whippings and sexual tyranny replaces the guillotine. It tells the story of young Didier who is sent to this reform home run by Jacques and Christoph. Didier is soon raped by Luigi and his mates Jonathan, Pierre, Omar, and Patrick and things look bleak for Didier... until the only slightly more benevolent Jean-Louis takes a shine on him and Didier becomes his lover. When the new top dog, Gérard, shows up, he and Jean-Louis seize power from poor Luigi, which only means good things for Didier as he is now the playmate of one of the new top dogs in the correction home! After all, when he is invited to join Jean-Louis and Gérard as they get Omar to blow all three of them, that's a sign that he has finally arrived, right?

What makes this movie really works is Didier Hamel, who is simply exquisite in his scenes. When he is raped the first night he is at the home, his facial expressions are almost excruciatingly painful to watch because they are a perfect blend of pain and reluctant pleasure. It makes me wonder just how much he actually enjoying his scenes because he seems really dig being taken against his will. The fact that his body is slender in an almost feminine manner only drives home the illusion of helplessness better when his taut bubble-butt writhes in reluctant excitement in the dim dormitory as it is being readied to be violently taken by Luigi and his mates, the butt cheeks nearly white in the dim lighting - boy, that's really good stuff, I tell ya.

Jean-Louis looks a little too much like Holly Hunter crossed with Susan Sarandon in the face but he exudes good chemistry with Didier. His first sex scene with Didier in a store room isn't too exciting as it is a typical fuck-and-suck scene, but a later scene where Jean-Louis fucks Didier openly in the dormitory while Gérard looks on approvingly and the others could only watch in longing and jerk off is very nicely done. There is some confusing chronology in that scene - at one time Jean-Louis takes off his undershirt but in the next scene he has it back, for example, and his briefs come and go as well - but Didier examplifies a splendid bottom who submits entirely to Jean-Louis while Jean-Louis is slow and tender but there is no question that he is the boss in charge. It is as if they - and everyone else watching them in bated breath - know that Jean-Louis can break Didier in two if he wants since Didier is his bitch, but of course he likes Didier better than he probably should. From the creaks of the bed rattling hard with the combined thrusts of Didier and Jean-Louis to the surreptitious wanking of Pierre as he watches from the next bed, this scene is potent male-dormitory assertion of power via sexual domination at its finest.

There are many rape scenes in this movie, all involving Didier at the hands of Luigi and his mates, which are actually pretty hot and sensual... until the rapists pull out to ejaculate on Didier's back. Come on, will rapists do this kind of thing to their victims? I'd prefer to see, say, semen dripping from a violated asshole or something more credible than this lame concession to the gay adult film formula. The final scene which sees Gérard and Jean-Louis affirming once and for all who the boss is by raping Patrick is anticlimatic after the splendid scenes of Jean-Louis and Didier.

There are many muddled scenes that go nowhere in this movie, which leads me to suspect that perhaps Mr Cadinot hires inexperienced former Burger King workers to work in the editing room. But really, Les Minets Sauvages is a charming little dirty movie that works very well, especially due to Didier who revels and purrs in being dominated in the bleak house of this movie. Think of this one as a dark history of Pip's life in Great Expectations that Charles Dickens doesn't want you to know about.

Rating: A-