I don't know how different the movie is. In the novel, Eric does not have a big part, but it is a very significant one.
The novel is written in a very elliptical style, a series of very short chapters (the longest ones are about 10 pages, the shortest one are not even a full page), each describing a certain aspect of Julien's very monotonous and repetitive existence.
One of these chapters is devoted to Eric and their secret weekly meetings to wrestle. These are very important, because they are among the very few, privileged moments when Julien allows himself to be free and alive. The only other times he does this is when he is writing poems at night, again secretly, and when he sneaks out of the house to roam the streets at night. The rest of the time, Julien concentrates all his efforts on pleasing the adults around him, being an "enfant sage" (i.e., well-behaved child), and maintaining the delicate order and stability that has been established around him by his emotionally distant parents.
It's interesting that, without understanding the dialogue, you imagined that he wants his parents to return together. Again, this may be different in the film, but if so it would have very little to do with the novel. For his parents to return together is the last thing on Earth that Julien desires. He does not remember them ever actually being together, and though he is curious about their life before the separation, he cannot even imagine them living together. He finds the image of them having sex repulsive, and seeing couples walking around, holding hands or kissing is disturbing to him. He claims that he will never get married and cannot understand that kind of loving relationship.
What drives him to suicide is that he feels the delicate balance of his life being disrupted. His mother wants to have custody of him and that throws everything into turmoil. He sees the order of his life about to shift into chaos and the unknown. Throughout the novel, he dreads the approaching month of June, which he sees as "dangerous," because it contains so many unpredictable events, like his birthday and the end of school. When he goes on his last holiday with his father, on the beach, he knows that his life will never return to the predictable and safe order that he once knew. Unable to face that, he prefers to plunge deep into the ocean and "swallow the sea."
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