Boys will be bi: the bisexual director and young gay star of Confusion of Genders talk about sexual fluidity and getting naked. (film).

"It's less a film about bisexuality than a film about indecision," says writer-director Ilan Duran Cohen about his new comedy, Confusion of Genders. And for once the statement isn't a cop-out. His film may have a bisexual as its protagonist, but that's not the issue. The story is about an early-middle-aged lothario of a lawyer (Pascal Greggory) who appears unable to decide whom to love. And it's not for lack of choices. There's his pregnant neurotic girlfriend and law partner (Nathalie Richard), an ex-girlfriend's randy younger brother (Cyrille Thouvenin), a criminal whose murder trial he's just botched (Vincent Martinez), and the girlfriend of said criminal (Julie Gayet). "In fact, the title was taken up in France as a kind of catchphrase to describe middle-aged crisis," says Cohen, who's bisexual himself.

Cohen is well aware of the fact that the French cinema has dealt with bisexual characters before, but he draws inspiration for his lead character from another country entirely. "In some ways my protagonist is like Marcello Mastroianni in La Dolce Vita, which is one of my favorite films. He drifts through different scenes and is acted upon by other people more than taking action himself." Cohen did, however, ask for more of his lead in one area than Fellini did: "One of the great advantages of being a director is that you can ask beautiful actors to take their clothes off," he notes.

The film garnered controversy over the Nathalie Richard character, who gives up her baby right after its birth, claiming to have "no maternal feelings at all." "Many people found that shocking," says Cohen. "But so many women have come up to me and told me that they've felt the same way, knowing that it's totally taboo to say so." Cohen finds himself somewhat baffled by the new generation of gay men and their desire "to have straight families--some of them even marrying women in order to have children." The movie touches on that viewpoint as well with the Cyrille Thouvenin character, the hero's younger lover, who's only too happy to be given his rival's baby.

"Cyrille has become a gay celebrity in France," says Cohen proudly of the out actor.

But to hear it from 26-year-old Thouvenin, Confusion of Genders was primarily a breakthrough because it rescued him from making television films that "weren't very interesting. I was always playing the young junkie or the unhappy teenager." As for the opportunity to play opposite Greggory in the altogether: "Well, it isn't always easy to do scenes like that, but I thought it was cool to do it with Pascal. We laughed a lot."

Thouvenin may shortly threaten Greggory's preeminence, since he's recently appeared in a new TV adaptation of Jean Cocteau's Les Parents Terribles in the part written expressly for the gay artist's lover, Jean Marais. Contemplating his future as an openly gay actor, Thouvenin says, "You know, in France, we really don't have the militant attitude I see in America. So in a way, he adds, laughing, "I don't know any gay actors. Nobody's gay!"

Ehrenstein is the author of Open Secret: Gay Hollywood 1928-2000.