Freud suggests that, outside of perversion, “visual impressions” concurrently exist as “the most frequent pathway along which libidinal excitation is aroused” (22). Thoroughly roused: this look, no longer set at an eroticized distance, would facilitate the tactual union of bodies in relation. Much like Visconti’s Aschenbach, the protagonists of Xavier Dolan’s 2010 film Les Amours Imaginaires also take pleasure in looking at their mutual object of desire. The camera fastens to the two friends, Francis (Dolan) and Marie (Monia Chokri), as they look upon their aspirational lover Nicholas (Niels Schneider). Though no longer passionately set at a distance, the voyeuristic rivals grow intimately close with Nicholas, seemingly on track toward a sexual relationship indebted to, but noticeably not imbedded in, scopic excitement. Similar to the oscillation of “will-they-won’t-they” that pervades Death in Venice, the central tension of Dolan’s film that lends the narrative its kinetic commencement is the question of for whom this relationship, free from threat of premature fixation, will be realized. Like Dolan’s protagonists, we are made close readers of the most minute of acts made by Nicholas, hoping to capture the nature and direction of his unknown desire in our crosshairs.