The achievements of queer emancipation are being questioned again in a way that they haven't been in a long time. Right-wing forces in Europe and the USA, supported by a growing number of supporters, are rumbling against “Gendergaga” and the “rainbow agenda” of a “noisy minority” - and in doing so they themselves appear strangely fascinated by gender and sexuality. In Germany, the community is still reeling from the attack on the Berlin CSD, and yet another cardinal is cursing “godless” homosexuals and repeating the biblical “Sodom and Gomorrah”.

In this overall situation, a flashy animated film like “Jim Queen” is a blessing in several respects. Not only because it was shown at the Cannes Film Festival and that, for such a small curiosity of a film, contains a nice reassurance: that the culture is still completely permeated by something for which the said cardinal probably had no better word than “heresy”. But “a lustfully irreverent joy in being gay” fits “Jim Queen” much better.

The “disrespect” is aimed not least at one’s own scene. The French-Belgian director team Marco Nguyen and Nicolas Athané know their codes exactly and tackle gay stereotypes with wonderful courage and inside jokes. In other words: “Jim Queen” fortunately does not notice that there is a lot to be defended at the moment - a circumstance in which the willingness to self-irony often quickly suffers.

“Jim Queen.” Directors: Marco Nguyen and Nicolas Athané. France/Belgium 2026, 85 min.

On the contrary, the eponymous protagonist is already a walking cliché. But as it is with clichés: one for which you can definitely find relevant counterparts in reality. Jim (Alex Ramirès) - the name is an allusion to the English "gym" that sounds the same - is one of many gay men in the film for whom fitness has become the purpose of life and meticulous work on their own bodies has become a never-finished perfection project. It's not for nothing that Jim's last name is "Parfait": he is the most trained, the most hardened and the most sought-after of them all, and is also known around the world as a fitness influencer with millions upon millions of followers.

With so much vanity, Jim's whole world collapses when one terrible morning his six-pack suddenly begins to disappear. His best friend Nina (Shirley Souagnon) works in a hospital and can give the horror a name: an ominous disease has broken out in Paris, the so-called “heterosis”.

Her symptoms also sound devastating to Jim: at first his athletic body will deteriorate, at some point he will understand what “offside” means and at the very end - God forbid - he will only like women. While this threat image could have been cleverer - Ikkimel recently managed a finer one in the ZDF "Morgenmagazin" - the satirical points in the subsequent tour de force of Parfaits through the scene are much better.

This is what his search for a doctor who can supposedly produce a cure for “heterosis” leads to. The catch: The final ingredient is missing, and only Lucien (Jérémy Gillet), who has not yet come out, can provide it. The two of them only find out why exactly towards the end. However, the young, slight man is himself a fan of Jim Parfait, and from a distance he is infatuated with this muscular, demonstratively masculine man.

It is of course no coincidence that this unlikely duo now has to travel through Paris together. On their search for the doctor, the two men come across the different subcultures of the gay scene, from the “bears” to the “sniffers”. “Jim Queen” is not only interested in all the comic material that the individual factions produce, but also in the strange juxtaposition and sometimes opposition that lies behind the great “community” promise.

Drag queen Glamydia (Harald Marlot) sums up this strange separatism with appropriate sobering: When people talk about “LGBTQIA”, it sounds so much like community and understanding - and yet in the end most people, especially the “G” in it, prefer to stay to themselves.

Marco Nguyen and Nicolas Athané take the most apt approach against this situation, especially against the hierarchies among the smallest groups, and thus also for their protagonist: Jim Parfait represents the type of gay man who imagines himself to be at the top of this order and looks down on everyone else - of all things because he defines himself by surprisingly classic ideas of masculinity.

At Lucien's side, Jim can now learn a little humility. Watching him on the way there is not only entertaining and full of clever observations. It also leads to a punchline that has something comforting, especially in these times: This time it's not sex that makes you sick. It's sex that heals.