It’s dawn in Paris, Yann a middle-aged gay man is walking home when he spots a cute young man lying in the gutter. Turns out he’s drunk and an American tourist. The street is in the 4th Arrondissement and is called Rue des Mauvais Garcons : hence the movie title.
Next morning the boy wakes up and cannot remember a thing, but has breakfast with Yann and then leaves promising to come back for dinner and a date that night. There is zero chemistry between the two, but Yann thinks over the eggs and sausage he has fallen for him. The boy … his name is Brad …. stands him up, but then appears next morning with a lame bunch of flowers and an even lamer excuse. They spend the day together and evidently fall in love, but still zero chemistry.
Yann once left Paris a long time ago to follow a Yank to Texas to live happily ever after with him, but he was back within a year with his tail between his legs. He now has a mild case of columbophobia (fear of the US ….not to be confused with columbiphobia : fear of pigeons). Brad on the other hand is as American as apple pie even though for some unexplained reason he has a very pronounced French accent (!), turns out to be a big closeted movie star who has been hitting up the bottle more than men of late. It doesn’t bode well for them. Especially as there is still zero chemistry.
The course of true love never runs smooth, but then by the end of this movie, we don’t really care. It’s not the street, or the boys that are ‘bad’ as the title hints, but the script and the acting and film itself that was evidently shot on different film stock/cameras which didn’t help either.
Skip this one and go find a bad boy in another street somewhere.
