The Neutral and the fragment: Queer strategies of resistance in Sido Lansari’s Les Derniers paradis

This article examines Les Derniers paradis ( The Last Paradises ), a fourteen-minute French-language film directed by Sido Lansari. The film concerns a Moroccan man who falls into and out of love with a Frenchman. Throughout, the former skirts binary choices – a gesture that Roland Barthes calls the Neutral. In addition, the film’s archival fragments interrupt the storyline and, like the Neutral, result in irresolution. The Neutral and the fragment, this article contends, can effectively serve as forms of resistance.