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Review:
A Home at the
End of the World (2004, Warner Brothers
Independent Pictures, R, 120 min, dir. Michael Mayer, written by and based on
a novel by Michael Cunningham) presents the dramatic possibilities of the
reunion of boyhood or high school best friends. Now one way this can go is if
one friend is married with kids and the other friend is gay and then draws
him out, but here the situation is more subtle. Bobby Morrow and Jonathan
Glover will watch their lives time out at they grow closer again, as family
dies away in various tragedies and waits for them. This is a kind of gay
“Terms of Endearment.” They wind up living together in a rural house in
upstate New York
in 1982, about the time that AIDS is still called GRID, and they both have
lesions that look like Kaposi’s Sarcoma. Now Jonathan is openly gay, where as
Bobby is ambiguous, trying female attachments in his young manhood despite
reuniting with Jonathan when moving to the East Village
in NYC.
Bobby’s history goes
back to 1967, where his admired brother acts cool about free love in his
presence (inviting him into bed after sex with a girl friend) but will die in
a tragic accident at a party when he runs into a sliding class door, pulls a
chard out of his juggler vein and dies. Bobby and Jonathan pick up in 1974 as
Erik Smith plays the teenage Bobby and Harris Allen plays Jonathan. The
physical transformations into manhood by the actors are subtle and
interesting—as is a scene where they explore tenderness in the bedroom. Bobby
learns cooking from Jonathan’s mother (Sissy Spacek),
and he really likes to cook—it becomes his livelihood. By 1982 when Colin Farrell and Dallas
Roberts take over, the transformation is complete, but Jonathan seems to be
aging faster. It is Jonathan’s turn for family loss, as they travel to Phoenix, and the Arizona sequences
provide for some visual treats taking advantage of the full widescreen
format. The female queen Clare (Robin
Wright Penn) loves both men and provides a baby, with a certain amount or
irony. The experimental family will provide a real life, but for tragedy; it
will have to go away (the baby is taken, literally) as Jonathan gets sick and
then maybe Bobby.
This is a story of
tenderness, of people making their own choices, and their turning out tragic.
The ending is ambiguous enough, though, that they could have survived. But
for the moralists who want to claim that their choices lead to their young
demise, there is no real defense.
You I Love (Ya lyublu tebya) (2004, Picture This! Dir
Olga Stolpovskaya, Dmitry Troitsky,
Russia, R) provides a bit of gay love intrigue and family retribution in
neo-capitalist Russia.
Timofey, a young advertising executive, strikes a
young zoo worker, Kalmyk, from the Russian steppes, and this leads to a comic
love triangle (with a woman), until Kalmyk’s uncle tricks him back home to
Siberia for retribution for being gay. Ironically, the “cure” is to join the
Army (but the film rather stops there for a happy ending, rather than taking
the family issues as far as some other films on this page). The on-location
and detailed cinematography offers sweeping vistas of Moscow and the arctic taiga.
Best of Schools (Grand Ecole) (2003, Pyramide/Eden
Films, dir. Robert Salls, play and screenplay
Jean-Marie Besset,
France, hard R) presents a polygon of young adults, many of them
students in a college business academy, in a complicate bisexual love network
that is supposed to parallel the business concepts (“Hostile takeovers”
“leveraged buyouts” “swaps”) being taught in the b-school. Agnes (Alice Taglioni) plays one boyfriend, the buff-blonde Paul (Gregori Baquet) against his
water-polo perhaps straight boyfriend Louis (Jocelyn Quivrin),
in a mismash that also brings in an Arab
construction worker and painter Mecir (Salim Kechiouche). The confrontations are loaded with erotic potential
(and outright nudity) but the French stylization and over-manipulation tends
to weaken the story’s beats and the stakes for the characters, so the move
leaves one wanting to have seen “more”—subtlety, that is.
Poster Boy (2004, Shallow Pictures, dir. Zak Tucker, with Matt
Newton, Michael Lerner, Jack Noseworthy, 95 min,
HDCAM, rec. PG-13), presents family and political drama, as a kind of
sociology lesson. Jack Klay aka Jesse Helms runs
for re-election as a religious right Republican U.S. Senator and enlists his
appealing son Henry (Matt Newton) to be his poster boy in a show of family
solidarity. Well, Henry is gay, and very much of the
assertive kind—Matt Newton plays the role out rather like Matt Damon. He is
first trailed to Palm Springs,
when he reacts by setting his straight friend laid with a hooker. When he
meets ACT-UP activist Anthony (Jack Noseworthy), he
falls for a trap without knowing that Anthony is really gay. There is a big
first screen kiss. The intimate scenes are handled with great tenderness,
within PG-13, and that adds to the eroticism of the film, although there are
some minor technical gaffes (regarding underwear that is sometimes on and
sometimes not) in the film editing. The outdoor scenes in Palm Springs, including the windmill farms,
are interesting; the film is told by Henry to a reporter in New York City with Henry as a limited
observer.
Bear Cub (Cachorro) (2004, TLA, Studio Canal, Spain, Cinemascope, digital, rec.
hard R, dir. Miguel Albaladejo ). Well, a lot of us gays are attracted to hairy men, but
I don’t know why they need to be “big,” like ursa---
they could better be tall and lean for my taste. But Pedro (Jose Luis Garcia
Perez), a fortyish dentist in Madrid,
enjoys an active sex life and, we learn, has become HIV+. And, well, is he really a bear, when his
chest looks shaved? (There are two scenes that seem to reinforce that
observation.) His 11-year-old nephew Bernardo (David Castillo) comes to stay
with him while his New Age mom travels to India. She gets busted for
marijuana possession and kept in jail, so Pedro winds up with the prospect of
raising his nephew as a single gay “father.” Devoted he is, until the ‘wicked
grandmother” tries to blackmail him (by following him into the bushes with
private detectives) to get partial custody. Bernardo will go to Valencia for
boarding school and do well, and the resulting teenager (Daniel Llobregat, maybe another rising star will make quite a
character impression at the film’s denouement. Bernardo, it is said, is
immune to HIV because of his mother’s infection at birth, a medical
possibility that seems to suggest another strategy for a vaccine. This film
is very well done technically, with expansive shots of Spanish cities and
coast near the end, and detailed indoor sets with very subtle colors and
hues, managed by careful film editing and stock. Spain is presented as a
super-modern country, very mainline European, in quite a contrast to Mexico and Latin America. It is refreshing to see major European
filmmakers willing to go to the edge and getting the budgets to do so. I’d
like to see more film from the Bilbao
and San Sebastian
area. IMDB shows another film, 1996, by the same name.
Straight-Jacket (2004, Regent Pictures/Here!/SRO Pictures [which has a trademark that looks
like Paramount Classics], dir. Richard Day, 99 min. PG-13, Cinemascope) is a
situation comedy whose closest heterosexual analogue is Down With Love. This
looks like the 50s Twentieth Century Fox comedies, down to all the interior
décor with wide shots and lots of detail and color shades. The story is an
easy set-up: Heart-throb Guy Stone (aka Rock Hudson, maybe) ((Matt Letscher) has been leading a closet gay life. When he is
“found out” at a police bar raid, the studio sets him up with a manufactured
marriage, a one-year contract, to Sally (Carrie Preston). His rules: no
snooping, separate beds, and no babies!!
Gay life continues when he meets a handsome gay screenwriter Jack
(Freddie Stevens), who is disillusioned that Hollywood wants to corrupt his
novel (“Working America”) to please the Tall Gunner Joe McCarty censors
(don’t mention “unions”). At one point, he considers whether he should ever
write again. Stone gets caught again—it seems to be people’s jobs to catch
queers and spread scandal about them in Hollywood—and
he winds up testifying in Congress before McCarthy, made up with green paste.
He is asked to name names (of other commie homosexuals—translate as
homosexuals in the military) for a witch-hunt. He refuses, and gives an
impassioned speech, that “we mean you no harm, and you can’t say the same
about yourselves.” It reminds me of Jim Carry in The Majestic. You
come away with the impression that homophobia then was
just an easy way to make money, to play on straight men’s fears of physical
failure. One other thing, is all that body shaving, the no-hair-on-his-chest
rule, I guess. The movie opens with Stone in bed with another man who looks
like a clone of himself—and of Victor Mature. It seems like in the 1950s you
couldn’t let some housewife in Peoria
see what nature gave you and what you have that women don’t. There was a
short story, “The Body Shave,” in 1984 in one of the gay mags
(I think In Touch) that made this point.
The film never does show actual sex acts and is so innocent that it
should get a PG-13. Look up “Strait-Jacket” on IMDB.
Tarnation (Wellspring, dir. Jonathan Cauoette, exc prod Gus Van Sant, 88 min, NR but should be R) is an interesting
collage assembled from home movies (in various formats, from digital video to
super 8 to older 8 mm) by a growing boy and young man (31 at the time of
filming) of his history with his psychotic mother Renee. Her descent into madness may have been
induced by shock treatments and horrible mismanagement by both family and the
Texas
mental health system back in the 70s. Jonathan, who was gay, had to go
through horrible perambulations but eventually became a productive young man
as an actor and was gradually able to help take of her with his lover. Now, the right wing often argues that the
need to care for family members is easier for offspring who have their own
large families, but this film makes a legitimate counter-case,
that his being gay gave him the flexibility and access to unusual
resources to help his mother. Much of the story is told with simply worded
subtitles, and much of the video is very grainy indeed, to the point of
annoyance, but then the autobiographically-driven message seems to justify
the technique. Filmed largely around Houston
and in New York.
There is a line where Jonathan says to his mother, “It’s not your fault”—that
comes from the script of “Good Will Hunting,” Van Sant’s
masterpiece.
Cowboys & Angels (2003,
TLA, dir. David Gleeson, 89 min, R) gets us rooting for a young (straight)
civil servant Shane (Michael Legge) in Limerick,
Ireland. To save money, he moves in as a roommate with a young gay man
Vincent (Allen Leech), a fashion designer (stereotyped). They warm up to each
other quickly anyway, as Vincent tries the “queer eye for the straight guy”
makeover. Shane focuses on his desire to quit civil service and go to art
school, and, well, he needs money. He gets involved in drug running (as a
“cowboy”) after a chance encounter with a neighbor (who later turns out to be
gay and will try to “do him”). Vincent, in the meantime, is busting forth to
get his fashion show done. Vincent (the gay one) turns out to be much more
stable (the “angel”), as Shane starts getting into trouble. One early scene
shows Vincent picking up an older man at a mixed bar (well defended by
bouncers) who tries to strip off his shirt and says “I’ll buy you a new one.”
That turns out to be critical as Shane drags Vincent into trouble too, and,
well, the screenplay here needs a big character-driven payoff and it gets
one. There are two other films in IMDB called “Cowboys and Angels.”
Testosterone ((“Testosterona”, 2003, Strand Releasing / Blue Streak, dir.
David Moreton, USA/Argentina, English/Spanish, 105
min, R) is a pretty weird comedy/drama about masculine gays—about the fusion
of macho masculinity of the “pink pistols” variety and aesthetic male
homosexuality. The opening credits, in fact, present woodcut-like artwork
showing gay men in various embraces, one hairy and one smooth—hence the
movie’s title. Dean Seagrave (played with great
charisma by hairy-chested David Sutcliffe) is a well-to-do successful gay
novelist and artist living in the ephemeral spring-like world of LA and West Hollywood. As the movie develops, we ask
ourselves—is this just and S&M game played by a
good person trying to keep what is his, or is Dean basically criminal? More
than a gay soap opera about jealousy, this movie plays with our notions of
right and wrong in comic yet earnest fashion. One night his smooth Latino
boyfriend Pablo (Antonio Sabato, Jr.) disappears
when he goes out for cigarettes (why do screenwriters of gay movies have to
keep their characters using tobacco?—the use thankfully really is going down
in the real world). Dean quickly jets to Buenos Aires to hunt him down, since he has
some clues as to his rich family background. The on-location scenes in what used to be one of the world’s most beautiful
cities is are quite captivating. Along the way he meets other female
and gay male characters, as well as Pablo’s mother who stonewalls him. One
such character is the ambivalently masculine Marcos (Leonardo Brzezicki) who starts out as a fan of Dean’s book but
draws him into sexual (and later “pink pistols”) teasing that director Moreton draws out. They go on the road, into the pampas
at a couple of rich estates, to look for Pablo. This gets to be the real South America. Finally, Dean and Marcos have a fight
that turns into a love scene on the floor. Several times in the movie we see
gay character’s shirts get stripped off as if they were on dance floors.
Finally, well, Pablo has gone straight on him and gotten married,
heterosexually, for reasons of money and family name—well, maybe not so
straight. The ending is indeed ambiguous—will a jealous Dean really cut Pablo
up into itty bitty pieces as a memento? There are feints and twists in the
plot that make it complicated and weird, all to make you laugh a little, cry a little. Does this bizarre yet spectacular
and rather erotic movie really work? It does for me, finally, and it gives me
encouragement (for my own work) that this movie got funded, made, and
commercially distributed.
Brother to Brother
(2004, Wolfe/C-Hundred, dir. Rodney Evans, 16 mm, NR but recommend R, about
90 min) provides the moviegoer with “intersection data” between
African-American issues and gay issues. Yes, there is tension between gay
blacks and the larger black community (which can be outrighly
hostile to homosexuals), and there is a relationship of sorts here between a
black and a white gay man, but what is interesting is the way the film
provides an outsider’s view of the entire Civil Rights movement and the
honesty thereof with which the media portrays it. I’m getting ahead of
myself, and the movie’s website (link above) gives a detailed synopsis of the
layered (after the manner of Adaptation) plot, but
I want to make a few points.
Early on, Perry
(Anthony Mackie), a young black man, is attending college, especially a
heated political science class, and meets Jim (Alex Burns), a tall, gangly
white student. Soon they have an intimate encounter in Perry’s room. There
are details here—like no food or drink in a dorm room??—odd) and I personally
think the scene could have been even more intimate without crossing the
line---although Jim will apparently not get as close to Perry as Perry would
like. (Although that almost happens—Jim, in bed in a tender scene, says as he
strokes Perry, “You are so beautiful… your skin is so smooth.”) Now Jim seems
like a role model gay character, rather like Jared Price in the movie
reviewed above on this page, and I would have been interested in a movie that
develops him more. However, the film
quickly moves to its core issues. Perry, we learn, was kicked out of his home
onto the streets when his dad found him in bed with another man. Another of
Perry’s friends, Marcus (Larry Gilliard, Jr.) is
reading poetry for him when aging writer Bruce Nugent (Roger Robinson, who
rather resembles James Earl Jones in Everwood)
appears. Soon Bruce is telling his long story of the Harlem Renaissance,
which is shown in a crisp, abstract, 50s style black-and-white flashbacks
(amounting to almost half the screen time of the movie) that reminds me of Amos
‘n’ Andy. Young Bruce is played by Duane Boutte,
and looks much leaner. There is a particularly interesting episode where
Bruce is trying to get published, and finds that his editor would compromise
his integrity by trying to make “minor changes” to appeal to bean counters
and mass markets—all of which reminds me of the “enemy” of all aspiring screenwriters—Hollywood.
There is a tongue-in-cheek urinal scene where a vice cop, posing as a sailor
(as if all sailors in that era were gay—here comes “don’t ask, don’t tell”)
tries to entrap Bruce.
This film is on a
small, platform release schedule, so the viewer will need to pay attention to
when it comes to his or her hometown.
Summer Storm (Sommersturm) (2004,
Warner Independent Pictures/Regent/Claussen, dir.
Marco Kreuzpainter, in German, Widescreen Arriflex, 98 min, R) is a comic rondo of high school kids
coming of age – and coming out – in summer camp somewhere in Bavaria. You
know that this film is going to go toward the edge when the opening shot is
that of some teenage boys’ hairy legs, without faces. Then Tobi (Robert Stadlober) and his buddy Georg (Trsitano
Casanova) are running through the forest, when Tobi collides with a branch (ouh!!) and plays dead, or at least mute, for a minute.
The romp ensues. Tobi, Achim (Kostja
Ullmann), Anke (Alicja Bachleda-Curus) and
Sandra (Miraim Morgenstern) have arrived for
training for a rowing competition, and it seems that this will be against the
“queer” team from Berlin.
Soon, the “straight” team starts having various personal encounters that will
bring some of them out of the closet. Tobi gets a sunburn;
Achim gives him a back and leg rub, and that turns
into a tender but compelling love scene. The sociology, here, is to keep the
team together; in the more liberal and coherent social climate in Germany, unit
cohesion is not as big a deal as it is with the “don’t ask don’t tell”
mentality of the U.S.
military. There are some problems, to be sure, and they must be ironed out
when a violent thunderstorm hits the camp, forcing them to shelter in a
vacant youth hostel. Setting the gay issues aside (this film is a bit of a
gay “The O.C.” [Orange County] perhaps, or “Summerland,” or even a gay
“Discovery Kids” (where high school students, the cream of the crop, take on
physical challenges in the wilderness, usually Hawaii), what strikes me here
is the way high school kids (high school or early college) are usually
portrayed in the movies as much more poised, sharp-witted and mature than
many kids are in our real high schools. That is cause for concern.
Producing Adults (Lapsia ja aikuisia – Kuinka niita tehdaan?) (2004, Wolfe, dir.Aleksi
Salmenpera, Cinemascope, in Finnish, 102 min, R) is
the sensational film from Finland,
shown at the Toronto Film Festival, about fertility and birth control issues.
Venlay (Minna Haapkyla) works at a fertility clinic and decides who is
the most suitable for artificial insemination. She wants a baby herself, but
her boyfriend Antero (Kari-Pekka Toivonen) has a vasectomy—a procedure shown in clinical
detail in the movie. (I recall a coworker in 1971 announcing to me that he
had just had his “tubes tied.” Having married a third time into an instant
family, he would lose that family, and soon have difficulty starting another
one—that sounds like a plot for a movie, doesn’t it?) Soon she finds herself
exploring other opportunities, including lesbianism. The trouble here is that
the film puts together a lot of different pieces without sustaining a lot of
tension among the characters. There is an interesting scene where some of the
characters take an ice dip in the ocean. The film purports to provide an
interesting moral paradigm: that it is more important to make the children
you do have into adults, than it is just to have babies—perhaps a
controversial proposal in countries with low birth rates and growing aging
populations. Finland
produces fascinating dramatic films, and they are little seen in this
country, partly because they often are sexually explicit enough to rate an
NC-17 [Finnish mores are less squeamish than ours] and their directors do not
like to compromise. Outside of a few areas of the country (like
Minneapolis-St. Paul) they can be hard to find.
Eating Out (2004,
Ariztical, dir. Allan Brocka,
90 min., rec. NC-17, HDCAM ). Do not confuse this
with Eating Raoul! This little “comedy club” gem is filled on location
in Tucson, Az, and right
off it shows the “problems” with American “adult” films. They have trouble with being serious,
partly because of cultural squeamishness and moralism—European filmmakers (especiallu in Spain and Finland) have
gotten past this long ago. The film starts out as a crossover between softcore porn, “Will and Grace,” and “Beauty and the
Geek.” But pretty soon the characters
and story fall into place, as do the sexual situations, and the viewer starts
to get hooked—the clever comedy lines are then almost superfluous. Scott
Lunsford plays Caleb (a character name popular in soap operas such as “Port
Charles” and “The O.C.”), slightly ripening heterosexual political science
major at a local community college. He likes aggressive women, but, curiously
claims to be a virgin. Gwen (Emily Stiles) sets him up with a date with a gay
classical musician Marc (Ryan Carnes), and then with a bit of telephone sex,
dictates the whole middle section of the movie—their erotic encounter after
they rented and watched a video with a blue bowl of popcorn between them
(popcorn polishes your teeth, you know). The scene is erotic if ambiguous.
After Gwen tells Caleb to undo some of his shirt, Marc starts to explore, and
Gwen, curiously, asks over the phone if Marc “hurt him.” The neckrubs and then chest, tummy and lower explorations
continue (still under Gwen’s phone supervision—she would make a good debt
collector) , and Caleb enjoys being deflowered, even
with a certain amount of surrender to passivity. From the direction, it appears
that he may or may not have shaved his own chest first—why would he have done
this if he was still a virgin? (I wonder if the ambiguity was intentional, or
just technical carelessness with the lighting, or if Marc is somewhat the
magician). Afterwards the story moves to getting Marc back with boyfriend
Kyle (Jim Verraros), who launched the whole plot.
The closing scene is tender indeed. (Or, what a tender little baby!) Ryan Carnes, with his visually striking
virility and muscularity (though if you compare the movie to imdb, you notice that he must have shaved), makes a most
interesting casting choice for a classical pianist (there are two scenes
where he plays, hands off screen—once a Chopin etude, and once in a 4 piano 8
hand family exercise, Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever” march—a bit of post
9/11 patriotism.) I wonder if the filmmakers anticipated comparison of Marc
with the (heterosexual) teenage character Ephram
(Gregory Smith) in the WB show Everwood—a
character with great subtlety who evaporates in
Season 3 out of his own anger against his overbearing father. Here, Marc,
instead, seems reconciled with his family is presumably destined for great
things. He just doesn’t go to Julliard—that would make a different movie.
Eating Out 2: Sloppy Seconds (2006, Ariztical, dir. Phillip J. Bartel,
81 min, NR (NC-17?) has different characters for a dessert farce, hardly up
to “Eating Raoul”. This time Kyle (Verarros)
enlists some fag hags to go after an ambiguous boy Troy (Marco Dapper) in an ex-gay group. The
homophobic comedy (“Homo no more!” “Stamp out faggotry!”
“He conquered his inner demons. He dates girls and he likes dating girls; if
you hide it, you can bury it!”) has become trite.
There is a gay climax involving a port-o-potty in the classroom and the vixen
getting “sprayed.” This movie has more shirt pull-ups than ever before (they
even get into the dialogue), but the bodies are all hairless, perhaps
artificially. For me, there was less
to savor than in the first course.
The DVD has a short: “Serving Seconds: The Making of ‘Eating Out 2’” which explains the
need for new director and some new cast, and shows some of the auditions.
Saving Face
(2004, Sony Pictures Classics, dir. Alice Wu, 91 min, R) combines several
indie genres and topics, and produces a comedy that skims across the surface
of much deeper issues of family loyalty and responsibility. You could say
that the picture blends TheWB’s The Gilmore Girls with My Big Fat Greek Wedding, with The Joy Luck Club and oriental
comedy in general, back to women’s interests, feminism, and lesbianism, not
that any of these need to come together. They just do in this film, shot in Queens, though not in an explicitly Chinese-American
neighborhood. Wil (Michelle Krusiec)
is a resident surgeon, whom we slowly learn has a love affair with a dancer
Vivian (Lynn Chen). They have one bedroom scene at midpoint in the movie that
is quite passionate, showing almost everything, even, for an instant, the
clitoris, to the point that the film probably bordered on NC-17. (Eyes Wide Shut
couldn’t get past this.) Apart from that scene, the film pretty much stays in
PG-13 territory of derivative ethnic comedy. The mother (Joan Chen), who does
not look that much older than Wil, has made a
“mistake”—she has gotten pregnant, probably a great biological blessing at
her age, but she has earned the strong familial disapproval of her own father
for staining the family’s honor. So the hunt for a husband ensues, and that will
lead to the inevitable broken wedding scene at the movie’s denouement. The
wedding will take place in a glitzy restaurant, and the confessions at it
(when Will breaks it with a secret letter) call to mind a similar catastrophe
on TheWB’s Summerland,
or even an episode on NBC’s Days of our
Lives where Shawn crashes Belle’s wedding to Philip with his motorcycle.
So the pieces of this movie have all been tried before. Then there is the reconciliation at the
airport between Wil and Vivian (how did Wil get through security if she is not a passenger?) that
brings to mind the end of Garden State. The mother has rebuffed Wil
when Wil discloses her lesbianism to her mother,
somewhat gratuitously, shortly before the wedding, and that is supposed to
set off event chain leading to the confrontation. The screenplay seems like a
compilation, and it gets too telescoped at the end to make complete
sense. What I would have liked to see is more of the “why” of this sense of family betrayal—I can think
of a lot of reasons having to do with collective identity and
security, but they are hard to express in film. Maybe the scene where mother
and daughter share a family bed expresses the idea of family solidarity as
well as possible.
My Summer of Love (2005, Focus/Apocalyso/BBC, dir. Pawel Pawlikowski, based on the novel by Helen Cross, 86 min,
R). Okay. Female homosexuality. Lesbianism. This movie seems like a
revisiting of the explicit female bonding movies of thirty years ago that
seemed so groundbreaking at the time. Rich girl Tamsin
(Emily Blunt), on horseback, sees Mona (Nathalie Press) lying in a pasture in
the English countryside. Soon they are dedicated to one another. Each has
blood family sibling troubles Tamsin had a sister
die of anorexia, and Mona’s brother Phil (Paddy Considine)
has become a born again Christian, turning a pub into a church and
manufacturing a brass cross that he will raise on a hill with his
congregation. It’s not hard to predict that Phil will have trouble with his
sister’s affair, even she had been abused by a
heterosexual boyfriend. The question, of course, is why. Is it that his idea
of faith cannot be questioned, or does his whole idea of masculinity depend on absolute family loyalty. The movie builds
towards a somewhat brutal and final payoff between the lovers.
Heights
(2004, Sony Pictures Classics/Merchant Ivory, dir. Chris Terrio,
screenplay by Amy Fox, produced Ismail Merchant, 93 min, R) strikes me as a
retelling of “Making Love” even if that comment strikes many people as
missing the dramatic point. The “omniscient observer” viewpoint of the
screenplay keeps us from seeing this as a “gay movie,” but rather as a
dramatic daisy chain. The film comes from Merchant Ivory, best known for
historical costume period pieces. Instead, here we have a one day “24 hours”
multi-character drama (the Heights is not necessarily Brooklyn Heights, but
just a figurative term for relationships in New York City), moving from one
to the next in cartwheel fashion (reminding one of “Crash,” “Magnolia,”
“Thirteen Conversations About One Thing,” John Sayles and Robert Altman
movies, even if smaller here). Yes, the characters will collide like Pauli
particles and get reshuffled. The real story, though, turns out to be
transparent. Isabel (Elizabeth Banks), a photographer, is engaged to an
attractive entertainment lawyer Jonathan (James Marsden), and gradually will
learn of his bisexuality. In fact, Jonathan has weekly trysts with a young
actor Alec (Jesse Bradford), and at one time had a gay affair with a British
artist, whose agent Peter (John Light) seems to be unmasking the episode.
I’ll note that the head shots for Marsden and Bradford look a lot alike on
imdb.com, and they seem a bit too much alike in this film. Jesse Bradford has
indeed recovered from the depilation needed for Swimfan.
It seems that Alec lives in the same building as Jonathan, unbeknownst to
Isabel until Alec auditions with her mother (Glenn Close), a Shakespeare
director putting on Macbeth and playing Lady Macbeth. Alec accidentally (or
perhaps not so accidentally) leaves his leather jacket after the audition,
and that helps bring the characters together. Along the way there are
voyeuristic opportunities, such as when Isabel is rebuffed for trying to take
a picture of a low income mother and daughter on the subway, and even the
swing Chelsea
apartment party, which seems to be for swinging bisexuals, as another
supporting character Mark (Matt Davis) gets stripped by a gay dirty dancer in
the background. George Segal plays the rabbi trying to reassure Jonathan
about his upcoming heterosexual marriage, for which Isabel has given up a big
job opportunity. The question is, thought, why does Jonathan want to marry
Isabel? In at least one scene, he has the jealousy when Isabel wears Alec’s
jacket (except we don’t realize yet what generates the jealousy), when he can
attack her with sexual passion (is this logical? Passion was the point of the “Making Love”
film and Jonathan’s passion for Alec is not lessened at the end.) Maybe he
wants the social supports of a legal family. In the end, the various
characters have to start in new directions.
The Second
Coming (1995, Water Bearer, dir. Jack Walsh, 53 min) is a
delicious little 16 mm grainy black and white film documenting the takeover
of the US government by the “Army of God,” in a manner that is supposed to
parallel the rise of Nazi Germany. The terrorists take over a nuclear power
plant (housed in the Bureau of Standards, which of course does not have a
nuclear plant on its premises) and blackmail the government into surrender.
It seems that it was an inside job with the military and the president. In the meantime, a gay Puerto Rican fellow
named Carlos (John Connally) falls in love with a Jewish
geek (Jeff Constan) and they try to organize a
resistance. They both meet separate, grisly ends, not until Carlos is
teat-tortured and raped by straight men. The title is ironic, in that I named
the third chapter of my first DADT book “My Second Coming.” The DVD has a supplementary short, Dear Rock, which is an open letter to
Rock Hudson, who died of AIDS in the 1980s. We all know how Rock passed as
straight. There are multiple beefcake stills, and on some of them he was
allowed to keep his chest hair.
Bulgarian
Lovers (“Los Novios Bulgaros”)
2003, TLA, dir. Eloy de la Iglesia,
101 min, NC-17) is one of those European films that presents the gay world as
a complete parallel universe, here centered around modern Madrid. A middle
aged businessman Daniel (Fernando Guillen Cuervo) brings home a handsome young man Kyril, from Bulgaria (Dritan
Baba). Of course, the youngster reams him, and he enjoys it, and he wants a
younger lover. (At one point he sucks Kyril’s
thumb!) And soon the question is, will this lover
lead him into a dangerous life that undermines his stability. To the straight
dominion, of course, Daniel seems like a “fag.” But it’s all relative, isn’t it. There is
plenty of politics (capitalism and socialism, with the platitudes),
especially when they visit Sofia,
Bulgaria,
which appears to be shot on location (including the Alexander Nevski Cathedral). The plot widens out then, with a
wedding, and soon Kyril is in real trouble, accused
of trafficking cocaine and perhaps highly enriched uranium (from Russia).
Daniel, while driving, falls asleep at the wheel, and dreams of a nuclear
attack. The gay world, here, seems to be able to buy its citizens out of
terrorist sleeper cells.
Prom
Queen: The Marc Hall Story (2004, Wolfe/CBC,
dir. John L’Ecuyer, 92 min, PG-13) examines the
issue of anti-gay discrimination in a Canadian Catholic school. The specific
setup is that a gay high school student wants to take his boyfriend to the
prom and sues the school. This is a bigger legal issue in Canada than
in the United States
because Catholic schools take public money and Canada by and large protects
citizens from sexual orientation discrimination. The intellectual arguments
sift down pretty quickly: the Church invents a good practical argument: the
senior prom is a socialization process for straight students,
and important courtship step on the way to their becoming married fathers and
mothers a few years later. That begs another question: why does society, and
especially the state with public monies, need to be involved in supporting
personal relationships and giving them meaning beyond what the individual
spouses give it. That has become the heart of the gay marriage debate in the U.S. (gay
marriage has passed in Canada).
Now, as for the film, it seems that Marc’s boyfriend Jason (Mak Fyfe) is already out of high school, and both
partners (Marc is played by Aaron Ashmore) look
like twenty-somethings (not 17-year-old seniors),
filled out and with hairy chests. Marc’s hair looks almost gray on the DVD; maybe that is a lighting issue (in the
courtroom scene he dyes his hair blue). But Marc is certainly upstanding and
a good role model. Jason smokes in one scene (I wish he didn’t – that is
depressing – the screenplay could have done more with his character). But the
important thing is what the court case means to others. The parents are
supportive (unusual in the movies), and the civil rights lawyer (David Ferry)
is out to make a name for himself, while Marc and Jason almost split up over
the controversy. Marc wants to drop out, until an
younger gay teen calls him.
Three Dancing Slaves (“Le Clan”)
(2004, TLA, dir. Gael Morel,
France, 90
min, Prob NC-17) has three brothers coming together
in an outdoors area in southern France apparently near the Pyrenees. Marc (Nicolas Cazale)
is a skinhead who sometimes shaves elsewhere, and is slipping into an
underworld. Christrophe (Stephane
Rideau) has returned from prison, and youngest Oliver (Thomas Dumerchez) wants to belong but must come to terms with
coming out toward the end of the film. The movie is divided into three parts
according to the characters but seems aimless to many viewers.
Hate Crime
(2005, Pasidg, dir. Tommy Stovall, 104 min, R) is a
riveting revenge drama of the hidden commission and aftermath of an gay-bashing murder. The film is shot on location in
Dallas, much of it in the White
Rock Lake
area. It tells a story that resembles “In the Bedroom” and
“A History of Violence.” Robbie (Seth Peterson) and Trey (Brian J. Smith) are an attractive young male gay couple that moves into a
tract house in North Dallas, somewhat away
from the more bohemian Oak Lawn area. Next
door, unfortunately, live a fundamentalist pastor Boyd (Bruce Davison) and
his unstable son Chris (Chad Donella). Boyd
promotes vehement hatred of sinners from the pulpit, reminding one of the
“God hates fags” church. One day Chris and Robbie have a confrontation. Chris
quotes Bible verses (especially Romans) and Robbie takes it as a threat.
Soon, the gay couple’s dog returns home bloody and Robbie finds his lover
Trey brutally beaten in the park. He will linger in a coma in the hospital
and die. (The medical scenes are quite graphic.) Robbie will long for
revenge, of Shakespearian dimensions. His mother joins him in the quest. The
Dallas Police (Farah White) are supportive at first but when detective
Esposito (Giancarlo Esposito) takes over Robbie himself becomes a suspect
over a life insurance policy. Now the pink pistols element comes into play,
as Robbie and his mother prepare to take the law into their own hands,
leading to a showdown and payoff. There are surprises, as when Chris gets
photographed himself at a triple-X gay sex club, and the preacher does live
up to expectations. The film could have benefited from even more detail from Dallas, as like with a
scene in the Cedar Springs clubs (like the Throckmorton Mining Company,
Village Station, and the Roundup). But then, perhaps, the secluded lives of some of the characters does match their
location.
Guys and
Balls (2004, Buena Vista Int/Regent/Hager
Moos, dir. Sherry Horman, R, 106 min) (“Manner wie wir”) Ecki
(Maximilian Bruckner), playing goalie, loses a soccer game for his team by
letting a shot through, and this is caught kissing a teammate. Banished, he
organizes a gay soccer team that will win the final match. This is a kind of
gay “Remember the Titans.” There is plenty of physical comedy, even with
women (one of whom taunts Ecki with total off
camera nudity after she “prepared”), and even affectionate action in
elevators. This seems to be a crowd
pleaser.
Hard Pill
(2005, Stoebner, dir. John Baumgartner, 94 min, R)
is a slow-motion situation comedy with a premise that one could deem
offensive: a gay man, Tim (Jonathan Slavin) signs
up with a pharmaceutical company to take a pill that will make him
heterosexual. The experiment makes the news, with others making comments,
some of which would get one in trouble in the workplace. The film introduces many characters with a
Kinsey scale meter on the screen, with the homosexual to heterosexual
continuum shown. Tim has been having quick tricks with a bisexual rock
musician friend, and Tim’s role is what one might guess (the scene is not
that well directed – the terms in the Army were “give” and “take”). The
medication itself is a kind of Viagra, that makes
him interested in performing and bearing the responsibility for the
initiative, and also makes him reactive to typical female signals (even
pheromones). That (the biology) is
presented with a certain candor. The film has various subplots with other
characters’ liaisons that seem at most loosely connected to Tim’s struggle.
The Mostly
Unfabulous Social Life of Ethan Green
(2005, Production/Zone, dir. George Bamber, 92 min,
R) gives us a handsome, masculine and likeable 26-year-old protagonist Ethan
(Daniel Letterle), who has an on-off love affair
with an older guy. He meets a baby-faced teenage realtor Punch (Dean Shelton)
who will complicate his love life with lots of 50s-style physical comedy. The
one serious line is when Ethan asks Punch how old he is (he is rightfully
suspicious of underage) and Punch answers 19. (Maybe that was to reassure the
lawyers.) Their “friendship” grows, as
other characters migrate toward a gay wedding that will be punctuated by an
asthma attack. (Broken weddings are pretty common in movies and television
series today.) There are some scenes where pretty specific acts are
suggested, but they are funny rather than erotic. So the film bops along with
very little tension.
Ordinary
Sinner (2002, Wolfe/Jour de Fete/Thief, dir. John Henry Davis, 93
min, R) sounds like a downer for a title for a film about religion and
homosexuality. The story is engaging. A young Episcopalian seminary student
Peter (Brendan Hines) quits school, apparently after being put on probation
for tangential involvement in a violent incident with a troubled skinhead
(and maybe repressed gay) man Scott (Joshua Harto).
He goes to college at a small school in Vermont, where he knows Father Ed (A.
Martinez). He befriends a gay college student Alex (Kris Park) and a swinging
single girl Rachel (Elizabeth Banks). All the time his own sexuality is
ambiguous, but Rachel seduces and undresses him in a provocative scene, with
foreshadowing that never pays off.
(It’s important that Episcopal priests can marry, whereas Catholics
cannot; this is pointed out clearly in the script.) Soon Father Ed outs
himself when giving a sermon on homosexuality and the Bible, and a red-haired redneck (no pun) Ogden
(Jesse Tyler Ferguson) makes what sounds like a threat because Leviticus
apparently compels him to put homosexuals to death. Soon Father Ed dies in a
diving accident at a local quarry, and it turns out that it is not an
accident. But the killer is not who you think it is, and neither is the
motive (it never is). The film does leave a lot of loose ends open. The
device of opening in jail and returning for a scene is intriguing, but does
not leave a resolution.
Keep Not
Silent: Ortho-Dykes (2005, wjff/Keshet-Rainbow, dir. Llil
Alexander, 52 min, Israel,
rec. PG-13) is a documentary exploring the psychological battles fought by
lesbians in Jerusalem’s
Orthodox community. Several are already married and threatened by family
pressures. One has a confessional with a Rabbi, who insists that lesbian is
an inborn weakness that she most overcome to obey the Torah. It sounds a lot
like the Vatican,
doesn’t it (“objective disorder”). The women struggle with the effect their
values may have on their children, because of the prejudices of others. But
there seems to be an emphasis on obedience as a way to serve the interests of
the group (a chosen people, with the special history that it has). It seems
that some deference to the values of the group are
needed for everyone to be supported. At the end, however, there is a colorful
same-sex (two females) union, and it goes over well in public, even in Jerusalem. This was
shown in the Washington Jewish Film Festival.
Hineini: Coming Out in a Jewish High School
(2005, wjff/Keshet-Rainbow,
dir. Irena Fayngold, 60 min, USA, rec.
PG-13) is a documentary about starting a gay-straight alliance in a Jewish
high school in Lexington,
Mass. The heroine is Shulamit Izeb,
who starts the effort in ninth grade. The kids in this film are all very
mature, articulate and academically proficient. There are interviews in
rabbis, who emphasize that the Torah over 4000 years has viewed homosexuality
with negativity, primarily to protect shared religious and community values
(including family and procreation). The school, though private and parochial,
wants to allow it because Massachusetts
requires public schools to allow them. The group eventually is allowed to be
a “support group” but not an “advocacy group.”
Same Sex
America (2005, Seventh Art, dir. Henry Corra,
95 min, PG-13) is a documentary presenting the gay marriage issue,
particularly tracing the stories of several same sex couples as they face the
variety of anti-gay initiatives in many states (and the silly attempt at a
federal constitutional amendment defining marriage in the summer of 2004)
after the ruling in Massachusetts in early 2004 requiring the state to
recognize gay marriage. Of course, the conservative arguments skim along the
top. The fact is, many conventional straight people need the social supports
of marriage (including the whole biological complementarity and courtship) as
part of their psychosexual experience, a necessity to keep a marriage
together while the raise children. Various domestic situations, such as a gay
male couple adopting, are shown. Harvard
Divinity School
dean Peter Gomes gives a “just say no” speech on the Mass. Constitutional
amendment. Some people will call same sex marriage “offensive.” Like “it just wasn’t meant to be.” The
reporter is Eliza M. Skinner.
Dorian
Blues (2004, TLA, dir., wr Tennyson
Bardwell, 85 min, PG-13). Well, the Dorian mode is what you get with a scale
that starts on D and plays the white keys. Dorian is also the name of the
protagonist, and he is a much gentler soul that Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray. As
a high school senior (played by Kansas Michael McMillian), he has an
epiphany, and tells his football jock brother Nicky (Lea Coco) that he is
gay. (Dorian seems somewhat verbal and artistic, and at one point he says
that he has a gift for “melancholy,” a concept that religious right
Evangelist Tim La Haye used to quote in his
anti-gay tirades twenty years ago.) At
first, the brother warns him not to tell anyone and high school students
taunt him; it seems that by “telling” about a personal characteristic he can
destroy other people, as if he had some kind of heat vision. It’s always been
interesting to me that people regard personal disclosures about oneself as
harmful to others (especially family, but also peers). The brother gradually
accepts it but the father (Charles Fletcher) doesn’t and kicks Dorian out.
Apparently, though, he pays for Dorian’s tuition at NYU, where he becomes a
top student and runs through some boy friends before having a real reconciliation
with his brother. His father will die of a heart attack brought on by his
inflexibility, and in the end Dorian will be reconciled with his mother (Mo
Quigley). Dorian manages to look sexy
with his clothes on, whereas his brother always seems to socially
clumsy.
Garcon
Stupide (2004, Picturehouse, dir. Lionel
Baier, Frm 93 min, NC-17)
casts Pierre Chatagny as a young adult (Loic) going through coming of age, with his camera and
various explicit encounters with men, while he “dates” Marie (Natacha
Koutchoumov). The film is choppy and in small
aspect ratio, digital video although great sound with the Rachmaninoff First
Piano Concerto and First Symphony in the background toward the end. There are
kinky scenes, as when he starts to shave the chest of one of Marie’s partners
while he sleeps. At the end, he watches a globalization protest in Paris, ready to stop
being the “stupid boy” and then meets another trick on the ferris wheel.
I Can’t
Marry You (2004, F.Y.I. Productions, dir. Catherine Gray, 57 min)
is a documentary making the case for same-sex marriage. Evan Wolfson at one point simply states that the government
has no right to discriminate on someone based on their choice of adult
partner, that is part of the fundamental right to privacy or at least private
choice. But even more so in the Internet age, marriage itself is a very
public affair. Early on, a speaker asserts that gay marriage is important for
giving gays social equality, or at least social acceptability. The keyword
here is social.
The film presents a lot
of people, including one male gay couple that has been together for 55 years,
another for 42. One gay policeman accounts that one day his mother had read
his personal diary (printed, not on the Internet) and asked for a Rheingold
talk. The mother admitted that she had not enjoyed sex with her husband for
thirty two years, yet threw him out the next day (after the son said that
that was her problem, not his). Over seven years, she grew and changed her
views. There is a pair of charismatic teenagers, one of whom had outed his lesbian parents.
The film goes into the
plethora of benefits that accompany marriage, of course, but it does not go
far enough to explain why gay marriage matters even to those not in
relationships. That is because persons who did not get married are often
expected to subjugate their own interests to meet the needs of those who do.
The heterosexual family is viewed as a final step of validation of adulthood
and one’s claim of the full respect for others. The head of a family is
expected to protect other family members, including those who cannot marry
but who are expected to remain in a supportive position. Modern individualism
has questioned this, and viewed relationships as private choices for the
benefits of the individuals, but older views of the family were that it
provides a social order that takes care of people and therefore should not be
challenged. Why are parents so often crushed by learning that a son is gay?
Because the unquestioned deferential loyalty to blood by children was thought
to be a birthright that made fulfilling the duties of parenthood worth it,
and because it gets most of the caretaking of people done. The competition
from gay sexual interest, and therefore even committed gay marriage, devalues
the notion of blood family as an indirect component of self-esteem for many
people. There is a basic conflict here about what basic rights ought to be,
given the tremendous responsibility for others that keeping a free society
going requires. Such topics as filial responsibility laws come to mind, as
these could well be covered in another film. The second-class citizenship
idea, however, leaves as wondering about all the ways some of us expect
others to remain subordinate to us and still have their own world of dignity.
We used to expect that of the “Negro” slaves.
Tying the
Knot (2004, Roadside Attractions / Docurama,
dir. Jim de Seve, 87 min, sug
PG-13) is an even more comprehensive, from a historical point of view, account
of the issue of same-sex civil unions and same-sex marriage. It starts with
black and white footage of the Gay Activists Alliance at 99 Wooster Street (The Firehouse) in New York around 1971.
It moves quickly, and spend a lot of time on the
percolating legal battle in Hawaii
in the 1990s, which preceded the victory in Massachusetts in 2003. It also covers a
pension case in Tampa, FL where a lesbian partner has to fight
the legal system for her benefits when her police officer partner is slain on
the job. (There is another short on a similar incident in New Jersey, “Freeheld.”)
And there is a tragic case of a gay male couple whose relatives get a will
annulled to claim benefits out of blood relationship where they did nothing
to earn it. The surviving partner’s rural house is torched. That case really
shows up this issue at a deep level as a battle about how well people do
under various possible sets of societal rules, set up under postulates about
“morality”. A lot of the rants are “Biblical.” The movie also covers the
Loving miscegenation case, which the Supreme Court threw out in 1967. But the
couple had actually been arrested by a police knock on the door, and upon
conviction, the couple was told they would either go to prison or be exiled
from Virginia
for 25 years. (Virginia
is for Lovers? Right?) Arguments were
made then about the “definition of” and “meaning” of marriage, and how
society would become unglued without it. The film also maintains that
conservative ideas about marriage are an outgrowth of "feudal
marriage." In feudal society, men could not even start business or
acquire land without wives to support the work in running them.
The DVD has extras, including panel Q&A's of the director
at the LGBT Newfest, and also at Tribeca; the director mentions the raiding
of estates supposedly with wills by blood relatives. There is also a short Boston
May 17 2004
showing the celebrations of winning the court battle in Massachusetts.
Saints +
Sinners (“Saints and Sinners”, Persona / HVE / Avatar, dir.
Abigail Honor, Yan Vizinberg, 71 min) Edward De Bonis and Vincent Maniscalco
trace their separate comings out to their families as young men, their living
together in New York City, and their decide to get married. A Catholic priest
performs the holy union ceremony in an Episcopal facility. There is a lot of
discussion of how Catholic theology regards homosexuality as an “objective
disorder” and sex without procreative potential as sinful or as cheating
nature or God, and of the risks taken by Catholic personnel in having
anything to do with this. The film accounts for the founding of Dignity, and
of its meeting in non-Catholic facilities. The DVD
adds a four-minute short, “Legally
Married,” of how the couple married in 2004 in Sommerville, MA. But when one of the partners became
critically ill, the other could not stay with him in the hospital, even in New York City.
Ben &
Arthur (2002, Q Culture, dir. Sam Mraovich,
85 min). A low-budged melodrama that moves all too quickly in showing how
extreme homophobia can turn to violence. Arthur (Sam Mraovich)
convinces his lover Ben (Jamie Brett Gabel) to fly to Vermont from LA to marry (actually a civil
union). The film starts walking through all the legal issues like a
docudrama. He has asked his fundamentalist brother Victor (Michael Haboush) for money, but Victor turns against him (hiring
a private detective) and resorts to escalating violence. (But so has Ben’s ex
wife, who threatens him with a gun when he leaves her.) Victor becomes even
more unhinged when his cult-like fundamentalist church throws him out because
his brother is gay. (He complains that he won’t get any nieces and nephews.
Really. But it gets worse.) Arthur finally resorts to desperate and violent
measures. The problem with this film is that it tries to create hectic
urgency every couple of minutes and piles on crises that are not credible in
this combination. Pretty hard to take.
V for Vendetta (2006,
Warner Bros,/Anarchos/DC Comics, dir. James McTeigue, dir. Andy and Larry Wachowski,
130 min, R) has a masked vigilante character named V taking pot-shots at a
totalitarian Britain in 2020, with John Hurt as the dictator. The world has
fallen apart because of political corruption and mismanagement of major
threats, including epidemics. It seems that the government may have planted a
viral epidemic that has killed 80000 people in a few days. Infrastructure has
fallen apart in both Britain
and the US,
as dictators blame immorality and homosexuals. There is mention of avian
influenza, and the implication is that government deliberately withheld
vaccine and mismanaged the crisis in order to have an excuse for
dictatorship. V (William Rookwood, played by Hugo Weaving) has been horribly
disfigured in an explosion and wears a mask like Zorro. He befriends Evey (Natalie Portman) whose longterm
committed lesbian relationship (Natasha Wightman) preceded the breakdown of
society, as she has been imprisoned and tortured for information on traitors
and “seditionists”. Now we see her head shaved and in prison the hair on her
legs grows back and she starts to look like a man. At the end, she is freed
when her captors realize she has no fear and cannot be impeached. The
inspector is played by Stephen Rea, who delivers his lines with the same
earnestness that he showed in “Copenhagen” as he voices his concerns that the
government engineered the whole thing. Indeed, he could be executed for
“sedition” – the film explores why this has often become a crime when order
is coming apart. Deitrich is played by Stephen Fry.
At the end there are great explosions of Parliament to the 1812 Overture.
Despite its wide screen and major studio backing and comic book origin, this
movie has the look of a big British art film. There is a great line where V
says that ideas are bulletproof.
The film has been
viewed as controversial as somehow justifying terrorism. I don't think it
does, as the circumstances have become so extreme. It sounds more like
"revolution" as we took it to mean in the 60s.
The Truth about Jane (2000,
Lifetime/Hearst/Starlight, dir. Lee Rose, 87 min ) gives us Stockard Channing in one of her most intense roles (like The Business of Strangers), this time
as a previously liberal mother Janice who wads up when faced with the
suspicion and then “admission” by her daughter (Ellen Muth)
is that the teen is a lesbian. Jane has discovered herself in a friendship
with Taylor (Alicia Lagano). Even the understanding
father says he wants grandchildren, but Janice seems particularly hurt by her
daughter’s apparent lack of biological or blood loyalty. She insists that he
has a right to have what she wants for her daughter. The parents threaten to
send Jane to boarding school. An English teacher Ms. Walcott (Kelly Rowan) confides
her own lesbianism to Jane, and Janice threatens to press some kind of
charges for “improper influence.” But when Jane threatens suicide, Ms.
Walcott is able to bridge the gap in a climactic confrontation. Finally, Jane
is able to get Janice to join PFLAG.
The script does delve
into the causes of “homophobia” among parents, and that includes the idea
that they feel rejected by their children’s lack of biological loyalty, and
they subscribe to a moral value code that the conventional heterosexual world
of marriage and children is the best way to give everyone some sense of
value.
Circuit (2001, TLA/Jour de Fete, dir.
Dirk Shafer, 140 min, HD digital video, sug NC-17)
At a gay book club at Barnes and Noble in Minneapolis, I can remember a
heated discussion about circuit parties. Well, this film starts with the “Red
Party” and switches over to the “Blue Party,” and seems like a continual
circuit party. The story, though, matters. A small time gay cop John Webster
(Jonathan Wade-Drahos), after he refuses to bust
another gay in front of his partner, is asked by the chief to move to the big
city where he can really live his “lifestyle.” He meets a hustler Hector
(Andre Khabazzi) who, despite the fact that he only
does sex for money, initiates him in circuit party culture. The story sprawls
over a lot of territory, as an HIV+ man who is shaken down by a viatical “investor” when he will live too long. Tad
(Daniel Kucan) is a nice character who is always
videotaping everything, turning this into an “I am curious” film. Slowly John
sinks into the world of drugs (ecstasy and probably crystal meth) and can’t
vomit it out fast enough. There are even scrotal Viagra injections, almost on
camera. The circuit party disco floors are surprisingly tame, however, given
the dirty dancing. There is no ritual; the men are already stripped and
prepped with shaved chests. (In a fitting room, there is one razor swipe.)
There is nothing left to do. Maybe that’s how it is in Palm Springs (or West Hollywood CP). I
couldn’t get into one of these if I tried, so I would only know from hearsay.
The film does build up to a climax at the Palm Springs White Party (here is a
typical link); and, yes, it’s not a
decent circuit party “unless we have an O.D.” Unfortunately, they have more
than one. At the end, Tad’s “documentary” is shown, in the epilogue; I think
that the movie could have developed Tad’s character and personal story with
more visual controversy. A love story between John and Tad would have engaged
the reader and avoided the need for so much negative behavior. I don’t know
if this is a gay “Boogie Nights.” But this is a curiously epic film.
Another Gay Movie (2006, TLA, dir.
Todd Stephens, 92 min, sug NC-17). Well, students
at “San Torum” High School in the O.C. California
can be openly gay, and teachers seem to be able to cross the line. Actually,
in higher income areas in more progressive communities, it is not unusual to
find GS alliances and openly gay students who progress happily. Here, the
four pals are varied enough in how they look, but Jarod (Jonathan Chase) is
the hairy-chested stud who can hit tape measure home runs, Andy (Michael Carbonaro, who looks and acts his part like another
"Jason Biggs," even to the point of preparatory ritual
"grooming" of himself) has a bisexual dad who helps him celebrate
his graduation and 18th birthday with sex toys, and Jonah Blechman and Mitch Morris round out the musketeers. That
is as serious as you can get, though, as this comedy tries to exceed
“American Pie” with gay gags, body excretions, sex toys, harnesses and the
like. It’s not necessary to make a detailed list for a movie review. It may
be funny as sitcom, but it is not erotic. One can question taste, as in one
scene two older bears wear Nambla t-shirts, even as
one of the characters recreates Ben Affleck’s dance moves from “Forces of
Nature.” The characters have to “score” before the summer before college is
over. (There’s no Seth lamenting about not getting in to Brown.) Only in the last ten minutes do the
characters find anything like real love, and only then does the film get in
any way erotic.
Gays Gone Wild: Another Gay Sequel
(2008, TLA, dir. Todd Stephens, 95 min, NC-17) Gays on spring break have a
contest as to who scores the most. This film is much more explicit, with lots
of gay “American Pie” comedy. There’s crabs crawling on guys (resembling “Bugcrush”) leading to a crotch shaving scene, then a puke
fest, and then a scene where somebody uses epoxy glue instead of condom lube.
There are horror movie “dream” scenes with frat attacks and decapitations.
This is pretty wild. Jake Mosser plays the most likeable character.
[The Big Gay Musical] (2009, dir. Casper Andreas and Fred M.
Caruso). Blogger.
Queens (“Reinas”, 2005, Regent/Here!/Penthouse/Fortissimo/Warner
Bros Espana/Warner Independent?, dir. Manuel Gomez
Pereira, Spain, 107 min, R) traces five mothers in the days and hours leading
up to a mass gay wedding. Major studios were involved, such as Warner
Brothers in Spain,
but because of the social controversy of gay marriage and the reaction that
the film could get in this country, the studios seem to have arranged with
Penthouse to provide a releasing trademark. The technical production values
are up to the best big studio standards, rather resembling the great Fox
comedies in the late 1950s: Cinemascope, sharp and clear photography,
handsome uses of Madrid and surrounding arid Spanish countryside (sometimes
from a train), and a snappy music score by Bingen Mendizabal, all in the best Dolby Digital. In Spain, gay
marriage has recently become legal. The mothers vary in their attitudes, and
the men go through some comic perambulations, such as one who deliberately
loses his dog, who becomes quite Disney-human when on her own, fending for herself by begging from strangers. The men are likeable,
most of all the hairy aerobics instructor, but also
the conceited Narciso (Paco
Leon). Some scenes, like the fake attempted suicide, did not ring true.
But I’m a Cheerleader (1999, Lions
Gate, dir. Jamie Babbit, 85 min, NC-17) is a
“comedy of sexual disorientation.” Megan (Natasha Lyvonne)
doesn’t keep up the proper appearances at high school and her parents suspect
her of lesbian, so she gets sent to a boarding camp for ex-gay
rehabilitation. But she may develop a real love affair with Graham (Clea Du Vall). This film was
mentioned in “This Film Is Not Yet Rated” as an example of how gay films get
more restrictive ratings from the MPAA.
Jam (2006, Article, dir. Mark Woollen, 87 min, sug PG-13) is
a video documentary about the American Roller Derby League, from 1998-2004,
run by Tim Patten (diagnosed as HIV+ in 1984) and his partner David. Various
business conflicts are shown, as a lot of contemporary San Francisco, such as the Market Street
area and bay bridge. According to the documentary, roller skating has always
been popular among gay men, as has rollerblading, all of which are easy to
develop skills in quickly. Shown at the 2006 DC Reelaffimations
LGBT filmfest. (Do not confuse with an unrelated
dramatic film in 2006 with same title, on IMDB).
Blueprint
(2005, “First Look” “Work in Progress”, Balancing/OneinTen/Jerome,
dir. Kirk Shannon Butts, 72 min, NR, sug. PG-13) is
a bit of an indie road movie in the tradition of “Jerome’s Razor.” Here, two African
American friends of college freshman age take a trip to Sullivan County
from NYC. A motorcycle gets towed and will cost $1100 to get back. The go to
a stream and private property and approach intimacy, without sex. A white man
is filming them, which they notice. There is a confrontation, and the young
white man himself admits that he doesn’t like being filmed. They go back to
the City, to heal a rift with a parent and grow their relationship. The film
may have more material added which would fill out the story. But some movies
of this type are definitely left open ended. This particular film needs a
little more suspense and tension.
Puccini for Beginners (2006, Strand/IFC/InDigEnt, dir.
Maria Maggenti, no rating but sug
soft R, 90 min, USA)
was the closing night film at the DC ReelAffirmations
Film Festival. A New York lesbian writer, recently “dumped” searches for love
and gets into a chain letter of relationships, sometimes turning sheets with
metrosexual (though male-enough looking and attractive) men. The story is
formulaic screenwriting 101, in Three Acts and an Epilogue (like on a Bax Symphony), the comedy situational and sometimes
physical. But there are clever lines about majoring in philosophy (some of my
friends in Minnesota
did) and about Columbia
University (where
George Stephanopolous teaches). There are nice
little sidewalk scenes of New York
City. I thought I caught the East Village
once, and even Julius’s once. The title refers to the opera forma (the Met at
the Lincoln Center is shown), and the soundtrack
seems to have more Mozart than Puccini. The story of Turandot,
and how it was finished, would make a great film, wouldn’t it.
Coming Out (1989,TLA/DEFA,
dir. Heiner Carow, 113
min, R) is first gay film to come from East Germany after reunification.
A young closeted and married (wife played by Dagmar Manzel)
gay teacher Philipp (Matthias Freihof) befriends a
young man Matthias (Dirk Kummer), invites the young
man home, and then has to confront his wife on the day of Bernstein’s famous
concert of the Beethoven 9th. The music score seems to include
Schoenberg’s “Five Pieces for Orchestra.”
The film opens with a bizarre sequence where Matthias gets his stomach
pumped because he’s a “queer”, and then the gay teacher has a similar
epiphany in a bar as he listens to an old man tell a concentration camp
story.
Colour Me Kubrick: A True…ish
Story (2007, Magnolia / Europa Corp., dir. Brian W. Cook, 86 min, UK, no
rating but would suggest R). So we see John Malkovich
(now 54) being John Malkovich being Alan Conway
being Stanley Kubrick. John is about the only actor who can pull something
like this off, a very male comedy that is almost a monologue. Here he is,
loaded with inverted testosterones: male enough to be bald and hairy of body,
even if his aging gams look stubby.
The story is supposed to be more or less true: a middle aged gay man
Alan Conway did an “identity theft” on Stanley Kubrick, pretending to be the
director in order to pick up young men in gay bars, while Kubrick filmed
“Eyes Wide Shut.” It caused Kubrick
enough trouble to take legal action. In time, Conway’s games catch up with him. One trick
realizes that he did not direct “Judgment at Nuremberg” (that was Stanley Kramer) as his
charade started to fall apart. Eventually he winds up as a god damn MP – in a
mental hospital aka nursing home, and then the British government sends him
to an alcoholism rehabilitation spa for the rich and famous. Some of the film
was shot on the Isle of Man (it seems like
the drive on the right there). If I ever found money for my movie (“Do Ask Do
Tell”) I’m afraid that John Malkovich is the
“obvious” candidate to play me. The other one is Patrick Stewart. Most of
Kubrick’s films are reviewed, at least on the tidbits file, on this site.
Boy Culture (2006, TLA Releasing /
Pierce, dir. Q. Allan Brocka, 87 min, NR but would
be R). This little film, set in Seattle
and Portland
around Thanksgiving time, made the GLBT festival circuit and is usually shown
by digital projection from a DVD.
X (Derek Magyar) is a Gen Y 25-year-old “hustler,” crew cut and “masculine”
(though his chest looks cropped in some scenes) who narrates this somewhat
self-indulgent coming of age story. Much of the reaction centers around his
interaction with an elderly “client” (Matt Riedy),
and an African American roommate Andrew (Darryl Stephens) with whom he is
developing something like a real relationship, which is tested when he makes
a trip with Andrew to Portland to see a wedding and finds that Andrew has
just come out to his mother. The other roommate, a rather stereotyped
effeminate Joey, is played by a smooth-skinned Jonathon Trent. Much of the
substance of X’s life is told in flashbacks and isolated episodes, often
funny and mildly erotic (there are some scenes to the disco “Boy Kultur” and X remarks that he loves disco music)
The Yacoubian
Building (“Omaret Yacoubian”,
Strand Releasing / BAC/ Good
News, dir. Marwan Hamed, Egypt, 172 min, NR but sug R, Arabic with subtitles) is a sensational new film
set in a historic apartment building in Cairo, and dealing with many
controversies in contemporary Muslim life, especially homosexual
relationships. Much of the story concerns a relationship between a
middle-aged journalist and a young police cadet – both are married. The
Egyptian cops are only too willing to inflict homosexual sadistic torture on
the cadet when they catch him. Despite its length, the play-like movie heads
for an explosive and tragic conclusion, almost Shakespearian. Blogger entry
for more details here.
This film reminds me of the Argentine masterpiece “Apartment Zero.”
Shelter (2007, Here! / Regent, dir.
Jonah Markowitz, 97 min, R, USA)
seems like a gay version of TheWB’s “Summerland”
and sets up involuntary family responsibility again. Zach (Trevor Wright) is
a budding artist (about 19 or os) whose creations
on walls in the Bay Area get painted over.
After a family tragedy, he is helping his older sister (Tina Holmes)
raise her little son Cody. He meets accomplished novelist Shaun (Brad Rowe),
after some surfing together in wetsuits (like in Summerland) and sleepovers
has his epiphany. Once when left with Cody he takes the boy to Shaun’s to
sleep. His sister is shocked when she finds out. “You’re the only male role
mode he has.” Then his sister gets a live-in job and has to leave Cody with
him just as he has gotten into art school. One can imagine the denouement – a
practical setting for gay marriage and even gay custody. There is a feel-good
ending. But the moral question is, should the burden
for raising the boy have fallen Zach just because he is “kin”? Many people think so, even if the law no
longer says that. (IMDB lists several other unrelated films by this name.)
Blogger discussion in conjunction with Reel Affirmations 17 is here. (Should not be confused with a different
Italian film in the festival, “Shelter
Me” (“Riparo – Anis tra di noi”, dir. Marco S. Puccioni, Wolfe.)
Phoenix
(2006, United Gay Network, dir. Michael D, Akers, 91 min). A young male nurse
Dylan (Chad Bartley) in LA travels to Phoenix
when his lover Ken (Gaetono Jones) seems to
disappear. He finds that Ken has another partner of seven years (the length
of time it takes the cells in our body to be replaced) Demetrius (Jeff
Castle), and then starts to develop a relationship with Demetrius himself,
setting up a hidden triangle which need not be closed again. The film is
clean looking and shows stunning views of the Phoenix area. The windmills provide an
interesting metaphor at the end – as if Dylan were a
kind of Don Quixote, and yet Ken has called him a “child” (after the opening
intimacies). The very end of the film, returning to the sea and surfing,
closes a circle.
Gone, but not Forgotten (2003, United
Gay Network, dir. Michael D. Akers, 94 min). Again, this is a gay situation
“melodrama” with some writing tricks known from French film but also
reminiscent of Douglas Sirk’s work in the 50s. In
the San Bernadino Mountains near LA, a park ranger
Drew (Aaron Orr) rescues a yuppie Mark (Matt Montgomery) who has temporary
amnesia after a climbing fall. He takes Mark in and they start a love affair.
As Mark’s memory starts to return, his heterosexual past will catch up with
him, and suspicion will catch up with Drew. The plot threads recall a bit of
both “Misery” and “Making Love” in different ways (maybe even “Gone, Baby
Gone”), but the resolution is much brighter than it might have been. The DVD
would play only on a new Windows machine; it would not start on my iMac, and
I could not turn off the commentary. Oh, yes, Montgomery might have had some
pre-production work.
Outing Riley (2004, Wolfe, dir. Pete
Jones, 88 min) Bobby Riley, the youngest son in a large Irish Catholic family
in Chicago, struggles with multiple opportunities to out himself to his
brothers after his father dies. There is an interesting confessional where
the priest says he is a chaste heterosexual who has followed his calling, and
this gets into the choice v. nature argument. There is more female nudity
than male in this light-hearted film, and it touches on a few other topics,
such as improper web surfing in the workplace.
Nina’s Heavenly Delights (2006, Here!, dir. Prabitha Pamar, UK/India, 94 min). A young woman
Nina of Indian extraction (Shelley Conn) leaves Glasgow to avoid an arranged
marriage, but returns to help the family’s curry business when her father
dies, and she falls in love her own way. Some people like to cook, and the
“chemistry” in the pestle scenes is interesting.
200 America (2003, Wolfe, dir.
Richard LeMay, 83 min) A hairy-chested gay man
Conrad (Matt Walton), reeling from a breakup, meets a male prostitute from
Australia Ian (Sean Matic) and then hires him for
sleeping with him into an ad agency that he owns. Ian goes for another man in the agency, but
we learn that Ian is illegal (why from Australia?) and is seeking
heterosexual marriage in order to get legitimate. The movie seems rushed and
misses a lot of chance for real tension. Isn’t it cynical, you get business
by sleeping with the right people?
Slutty Summer (2004, TLA, dir. Casper
Andreas) The writer and director of this film plays a writer who takes a
summer job as a waiter and goes through a number of boy friends, which being
very clumsy at his job. The main friend seems to be Tyler (Jamie Hathchett, who keeps his Brit accent). Rather light
hearted stuff. There are some directoral
inconsistencies. In one erotic scene, he is about to be undressed by Tyler by buttons, and
suddenly instead he has a pullover shirt on.
2 Minutes Late (2007, TLA, dir.
Robert Gaston, 78 min) is a film noir thriller where a gay insurance adjuster
impersonates his missing twin brother who is a risqué photographer, with the
help of a lesbian detective. But some homage to 40s style storytelling. You
hardly notice that it is a “gay movie.” Blogger.
You Belong to Me (2007, Wolfe, dir.
Sam Zalutsky, 82 min). A gay architect (Daniel Sauli) moves into a brownstone to chase a boyfriend but
find the landlady won’t let go of him. It turns into a kind of Psycho. Blogger.
In the Blood (2008, TLA Releasing /
Superstitious, dir, wr.
Lou Peterson). A college senior (Tyler Hanes), struggles with coming out and
at the same time protecting his sister from a campus stalker, the
complications of with lead to a supernatural family secret. Hanes is impressive.
Link
here.
Rock Haven (2008, TLA Releasing, 78
min, dir, David Lewis, NC-17) A late teen moves to the California coast with his evangelist
mother had has to come to terms with homosexuality when he meets the teen
next door. Sean Hoagland, Owen Aalabdo. Blogger
review.
Little Ashes (2009, Regent / Here!, 112 min, R, Spain/UK) Three artists in pre-Franco Spain
gradually become intimate. Robert Pattinson, Javier
Beltram. Very “male”. Blogger.
An Englishman in New York (2009, LeopardDrama, dir. Richard Laxton,
72 min, UK) The later years of raconteur Quetin
Crisp, aka Denis Charles Pratt, who tended to blurt out what was on his mind
in his speeches. Blogger.
Mr. Right (2007, Mugshots,
dir. David and Jacqui Morris, UK, 115 min, R) Several young gay Brits
collide, especially Alex (a charismatic Luke de Woolfson)
in his bid to break into showbiz. Blogger.
The Swimsuit Issue (“Allt Flyter”,
2010, Tribeca, dir. Mans Herngren,
Sweden, PG-13). Straight men from Sweden enter what is normally a women’s swimming
event in Germany and pass through gay pride. Blogger.
The Kids Are All Right (2010,
Focus/Gilbert, dir. Lisa Chodolenko, R), but the
grownups (lesbians who each had a kid by artificial insemination from Mark Ruffalo’s character) aren’t. Watch actor Josh Hutcherson,
“the gentle jock” for is future. But the lesbian parents did raise great
kids. Blogger.
Patrik Age 1.5 (or “Patrik 1,5”, 2010, Regent/Here!, dir. Ella Lemhagen, Sweden, 103 min, R) Two married gay men adopt a
homophobic teenager, inadvertently trying to get a baby. Blogger.
Undertow (“Contracorriente”) (2011,
Wolfe//Dynamo, dir. Javier Feuntes Leon); a ghost
of a male lover appears to a Peruvian fisherman when his wife has a babt. Blogger.
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