20 year-old Loïc (Pierre Chatagny) works in a chocolate factory outside Bulle, Switzerland by day and spends his after hours in Lausanne pursuing one-night stands with older gays contacted on the Internet, day after day, night after night. He has a hard time differentiating desire from pleasure, friendship from sex, and admiration from success. By filling his life with meaningless sexual encounters for extra cash he can block out the fact that he's unhappy. Loïc has delusions of grandeur, vague dreams of doing something big, but can't figure out what or how. For example, he imagines he's a good photographer because he takes pictures with the built-in camera of his cellular phone. In Lausanne, Marie (Natacha Koutchoumov), a childhood friend who works as a museum guard, provides Loïc with a place to stay after his urban flings. Marie isn't judgemental, and refuses to be a mother, big sister, or a nurse to him. Then one day he meets Lionel (Lionel Baier), who pulls aside the curtain of anonymity and seems more interested in Loïc's life than his body. Loïc arrives at one of the most crucial crossroads of his life and begins to take notice of Marie and himself. His journey to self awareness is told through a series of episodic events, including the suicide of his best friend, his growing infatuation with a local soccer player, a car accident and subsequent hospitalisation that reunites him with his parents. He says, "You can be interested in someone without wanting to fuck them." At the end of the film he realizes that he can be his own person and he recites a list of things he will never do in order to fit in and belong. He won't be a stupid boy anymore.
Overall this coming-of-age drama is an an exceptional film with good acting, a great soundtrack, unique camera angles and film styles, a wonderful story, and it is well-directed. Director Lionel Baier shares the writing credits with Laurent Guido and based this film on his own experiences. With rave reviews from the New York Times, Variety, and the L.A. Times "Garcon Stupide" tells a realistic story of sexual awakening. This French/Swiss film is in French with English subtitles
