Although pursuing a very domestic relationship with seamstress Anka (Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin), pianist Paulo (Matila Malliarakis, THE EXTRAORDINARY ADVENTURES OF ADÈLE BLANC-SEC) falls in love at first sight with Albanian bartender/bass guitarist Ilir (Guillaume Gouix, MIDNIGHT IN PARIS). When Anka finally throws him out, Paulo quickly attaches himself to an initially reluctant Ilir. Love seems to bloom despite Ilir's reluctance to hold hands with Paulo in public (at least in his immigrant neighborhood) and his subtly cruel emotional and sexual games. When Ilir goes on tour and doesn't come back, Paulo feels directionless and literally helpless (having to rely on sex shop owner Gregoire [David Salles, HOLIDAYS BY THE SEA] for some very sensitive assistance in one of the film's few humorous turns). When Ilir does contact Paulo, it's to reveal that he has been sentenced to a year-to-eighteen months for a hash bust, resisting arrest, and assaulting an officer. Paulo is determined to "wait for him" but Ilir finds their weekly thirty-minute conversations painful and decides to "be cruel to be kind". Paulo finds solace in the arms of Gregoire only for Ilir to ask him to help smuggle drugs into the prison. Will Paulo risk the affection and security of his relationship with Gregoire for his first love?

That BEYOND THE WALLS isn't a portrait of idealized first love doesn't make it any easier to sympathize with the main characters. Ilir is rather ambiguously rendered, with only hints of possible criminal behavior (his ethnic background seems to have more to do with his reticence to acknowledge their relationship, and his hash bust seems to have just been for carrying rather than trafficking). Paolo, on the other hand, is a child. He may be of age, but much of his characterization speaks of his immaturity; his patchy facial hair, slim frame, and asthma just as suggestive as his clingy behavior. His "Take care of me" to Ilir takes on a meaning beyond the immediate sexual one, especially when Gregoire later says he wants to take care of Paolo in the former sense (with the underlying sexual alternate meaning). Thankfully, Paolo's girlfriend Anka - seen early on reading BAISE-MOI writer/director Virginie Despente's feminist work "King Kong Theory" - tosses him out and makes an early exit after a few minutes of "you promised you'd stop" and "can I meet him" and reading their text messages aloud in bed.