The Dutch friend is a film about the integrity of the individual. The principal themes are political activism and homosexuality. Gide, world famous, an important figure on the literary scene, was 63 when he met Last, the 36-year-old Dutch writer and Communist in Paris, Like Last, Gide was interested in social issues. Both were homosexuals and members of a persecuted community and were active against the given social order. In the 30s, faced with the rise of fascism and social misery, many intellectuals and artists united around communist ideology and around the country in which, for the good of humanity, these ideas were developing : the USSR.