Leave it to the French to make an earnest movie dramatizing the struggle for LGBTQ equality over the past four decades, and to make the main character a bit of a jerk. Victor, who’s 17 at the start of the three-part film and 49 at the end, has a temper, holds a grudge, and often can’t see past his own needs. In short, the filmmakers seem to be saying, even jackasses deserve equal rights. (The director is Philippe Faucon; the screenplay is credited to Faucon and the two writers who conceived the project.)

Victor isn’t a terrible person, he’s just self-centered and needs to be coaxed into doing the right thing — so maybe he’s a stand-in for practically everyone in the world, particularly those who needed persuading over the years to back LGBTQ rights. We meet Victor when he’s a 17-year-old high school senior (played by Benjamin Voisin), having a covert affair with a schoolmate of Algerian descent while dating a sweet blond girl in public. Both he and his secret boyfriend work for Victor’s father, Charles (the excellent, intense Frédéric Pierrot), a foreman on a construction site — thus setting up a tumultuous coming out story.

This first of the three 50-minute episodes is set in 1981, as the French left is lobbying to change the age of consent for gay sex to the same age it is for heterosexual sex, rather than three years older. The next two installments are set in 1999, when the political battle is over civil unions, and 2013, when same-sex marriage is on the verge of legalization. Each episode focuses on one aspect of Victor’s life, and most of the characters from 1981 age and evolve with him, including his parents, those early girl- and boyfriends, and Serge (Stanislas Nordey), the older man teenage Victor meets in the cruising area of a park.

The structure and several of the persistent themes — tensions with a parent, infidelity, gay parenting, the loss of a partner — are reminiscent of Harvey Fierstein’s own three-part masterpiece, Torch Song Trilogy (1982), but without any drag shows or a sense of humor. Indeed, Proud (that’s Fiertés, or “pride,” in French) takes itself so seriously that it neglects to include much joy. It’s not a downer — victories are won, wounds heal, relationships deepen — but depictions of pleasure and romance are few. It’s French, so there’s more nudity and frank sexuality than you’d see in most American films (especially in a show made for television, as Fiertés was, first airing in 2018). But apart from a brief glimpse of the boys kissing passionately in the first episode, the sex is most often depicted to show what’s missing rather than what’s being discovered.

Proud still makes for a good Pride Month viewing party or three-course reminder on what young people have to go through even today — both LGBTQ youths and the children raised by LGBTQ parents. As older Victor, Samuel Theis is reminiscent of Armie Hammer in Call Me By Your Name, balancing on the border between soul mate and bête noire, and both Pierrot and Nordey make fine foils for Victor in all three episodes. American LGBTQ viewers could easily make an exhausting list of all the issues Proud skirts or avoids entirely, but its goal is worthy: putting an optimistic spin on the arc of the moral universe, asserting once again that it bends toward justice.

Grade: B-minus. Not rated but PG-13 equivalent. Available June 19 through the Virtual Cinema program of Asheville’s Fine Arts Theatre.

Photos: Courtesy of Kino Lorber.