Category Archives: Gay

2 November, 2011 · 4:34 pm

Weekend (2011)

There are certain things that pretty much all gay men agree on. Cher used to rock. The metrosexual male is a confusing creature. And coming out is one of the defining moments of your life. That last topic is broached early on in director Andrew Haigh’s sexy, agreeably gritty romance, though Weekend isn’t content with simply retreading the same beaten path as so many ‘gay movies’ – it’s a film packed with emotion and honesty.

Mostly it’s about love. Can two people fall in love in just two days? Russell (Tom Cullen) and Glen (Chris New) meet in a bar on a Friday night, and end up spending the entire weekend together. They’re fundamentally different – Russell’s a damaged realist who hasn’t fully accepted his sexuality; Glen’s a fiery dreamer, actively controversial and championing gay equality – but that’s exactly what draws them together.

“You want everyone to think independently, but you want them all to agree with you,” Russell challenges Glen at one point. It’s just one of numerous stand-out moments in a film that never rests on its laurels. Weekend is constantly searching; exploring what it means to be gay in the modern world, and demonstrating how two people who are often (derogatively) reduced to a single adjective – queer – can be so utterly different, and so utterly perfect for one another.

Shining an intense light on Cullen and New’s relationship, Weekend’s shabby-chic aesthetic keeps it from devolving into a glossy gay romcom. And despite its themes, to call Haigh’s film a romcom would do it a disservice. With its naturalistic leads, frank sexual encounters and candid discussions, Weekend achieves that most important of filmic ambitions – relatability. In that way, it echoes My Beautiful Laundrette, centring its love story in a recognisable present where gay identity is ever evolving. If only all films about gay men were this good. 4/5

Via Out In The City

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Filed under british film, Essential Viewing, Gay, Out In The City, Review, Weekend

28 August, 2011 · 7:00 am

Tomboy (2011)

“You’re not like other boys,” notes 10-year-old Mikael’s potential new girlfriend in this featherlight drama. She’s not wrong – Mikael is actually a 10-year-old girl called Laure (Zoé Héran), who pretends she’s a boy when she moves with her family to a new neighbourhood. She’s not bad at it either, convincing as a football-loving lad who’s just as gung-ho and mischievous as her comrades. The charade can’t last forever, though, and things get complicated when Laure’s younger sister Jeanne (Malonn Lévana) gets wind of what her sibling’s been up to.

Proving that even the most issues-oriented films don’t have to get bogged down by their weighty ideas, director Céline Sciamma handles Tomboy with the same lightness of touch as her feature debut Water Lilies. The French director’s delicate fingerprints are all over her sophomore feature film – Sciamma keeps the focus tight on Laure right from Tomboy’s opening shot, exploring notions of gender and identity from a child’s-eye-view and effectively putting a fresh spin on cross-dressing comedies (this ain’t no White Chicks).

Thanks to Sciamma’s thoughtful approach, it’s almost impossible to refer to Tomboy without using the words ‘sweet’ and ‘sensitive’. While we’re at it, we might as well throw ‘funny’ into the mix as well. Laure comes up with a playdough solution when she’s invited to go swimming, while Lévana almost eclipses Héran as the scene-stealing little sister who prances around in a ballerina costume (while Laure practices spitting in the bathroom sink) and makes the kind of hilarious observations that only a child could (“Mummy doesn’t work because she’s fat and ‘pre-nant’”).

There’s tough stuff going on too – not least when Laure’s mother discovers what her daughter has been up to. In its naturalistic framing and captivating young leads, Tomboy is nothing short of enchanting. 4/5

Via Out In The City

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Filed under french cinema, Gay, Out In The City, queer cinema, Review, Tomboy

27 August, 2011 · 7:00 am

The Skin I Live In (2011)

Pedro Almodóvar may be gay, but that doesn’t stop him loving women. The Spanish director has built a successful career out of making films about the fairer sex, positioning them at the centre of zany, melodramatic storylines in movies that are as outrageous as they are opulent. The Skin I Live In is no different.

Antonio Banderas plays Robert Ledgard, an accomplished surgeon who’s escaping his troubled past by experimenting on cultivating a tougher kind of skin. Helping him in this venture is the mysterious Vera (Elena Anaya), who Ledgard’s locked in his home, and is using as a guinea pig for his research.

On the surface, Skin… could be mistaken for lazy. After all, many of Almodóvar’s favourite elements are all present and correct – rape, music, violence, sly humour, vivid colours. Do a little digging, though, and it’s clear that the comparisons only run skin deep. Those elements are Almodóvar’s calling cards, and par for the course. With Skin…, the director constructs an involving drama layer by layer, gradually building to the panting, screaming melodrama you expect of him.

Amid the histrionics is a genuinely unsettling treaty on revenge, gender and grief. Almodóvar’s always nudged the boundaries of gender representation, and here he snaps the restraints entirely. The film’s central nuclear bomb of a twist will divide audiences, but Almodóvar rewards the faithful with fertile, febrile material. He also does for Banderas what he did for Penelope Cruz with Volver, gifting him a fascinating role in his native Spanish. Inscrutable, cruel and obsessive, Banderas hasn’t been this ‘on’ in ages.

Skin… is never easy, and its subject matter is tricky at best, almost too extreme at worst. But it’s never anything less than 100% involving – a fearless stab at seriously brain-busting storytelling. 3/5

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Filed under Antonio Banderas, Elena Anaya, Gay, Out In The City, Pedro Almodóvar, Review, The Skin I Live In

27 May, 2011 · 7:00 am

Kaboom (2010)

If you’re a fan of whiplash-inducing dialogue, healthy doses of rampant nudity, pretty young things being pretty and films with an ardent sense of the absurd, Kaboom could just be your new favourite movie. Written and directed by Greg Araki of The Doom Generation, it’s a bright, head-spinning ode to youthful frivolity that barely pauses for breath as it screeches from one zany set-up to the next.

Acting as our anchor in an orgy of ideas is the pleasingly bestubbled Smith (Thomas Dekker). A sexually “undeclared” college student, he’s got a crush on his frequently naked surfer roomie Thor (Chris Zylka) and is doing the nasty with nutty British bird London (Juno Temple). Things take a turn for the strange, though, when Smith encounters a group of animal-mask-wearing weirdos one night who may or may not have just killed a fellow student.

A blizzard of post-modern activity keeps Kaboom dashing along at a heck of a lick. Championing whipsmart dialogue and a pleasingly glossy sheen, it’s clear that Araki’s having fun toying with us, chucking in OTT supernatural happenings and sexy daydreams to keep us on our toes. Even the film’s central mystery appears to be one big joke.

Which is sort of where Kaboom comes unstuck. Okay, so nobody stays clothed for more than five minutes. But Kaboom exists in a limbo where few actions have discernable consequences, meaning there’s little to grab a hold of. Even the film’s mystery becomes a farce, with the histrionic climax submitting to knowingly cheesy direlogue and a wilfully silly twist.

Still, to those who’ve been raised on a diet of talky, wise-cracking Diablo Cody movies (Juno, Jennifer’s Body), this will be a welcome distraction. For everybody else, Kaboom could merely lead to a good deal of head scratching and the feeling that maybe you’re a bit too old for all this. 3/5

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Filed under 2010, Gay, Greg Araki, Juno Temple, Kaboom, Out In The City, Review, Thomas Dekker

18 May, 2011 · 2:16 pm

My Beautiful Laundrette (1985)

Love and the pains of prejudice are just two of the themes pumping through My Beautiful Laundrette’s veins, ensuring that this affecting, intimate portrait of inner city ’80s life is as lively as it is absorbing.

Young Pakistani Omar (Gordon Warnecke) lives in London with his alcoholic father. Given a job by his uncle at a rundown local laundrette, Omar seizes it as a canny business opportunity. Amid pressures to attend college and get married, Omar bumps into old acquaintance Johnny (Daniel Day-Lewis) one night, and the seeds of an old relationship sprout anew.

Laundrette’s biggest surprise (and risk) has long since become common knowledge – that of the daring romance between Omar (affectionately and comically known as ‘Omo’) and reformed white thug Johnny. What’s most admirable about Laundrette’s handling of ‘gayness’, though, is that it refuses to portray Omo and Johnny’s relationship as any different from any other fledgling romance. Tellingly, Omo and Johnny’s is the most put-together pair-up in the entire film.

Where most contemporary ‘gay’ films root their plotlines in the traumas of being gay, Laundrette keeps it low-key and genuinely touching, deliberately skirting the obvious ‘issues’ that a gay romance might invite. Day-Lewis in particular is on top form, deepening his thuggish bad boy into an affectionate, well-meaning squatter earnestly seeking atonement for his past misdeeds.

There’s more going on in Laundrette than gayness alone. Though it’s clearly a product of the ‘80s, the London it presents isn’t all that different from the London of today. Cleverly pictured by director Stephen Frears as a stifled hodgepodge of urban development gone mad, in which people live literally on top of one another (often in the least aesthetically pleasing of surrounds), it’s the perfect breeding ground for our busy story.

Training its eye on numerous plot strands involving adultery, family pressures and racism, Laundrette is never drowned by its subject matter, retaining a warm sense of humour that often goes hand-in-hand with gratifyingly gritty realism. It remains a beautiful snapshot of troubled times, bringing with it the hope that good things really do happen to good people. 4/5

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Filed under Daniel Day-Lewis, drama, Gay, London, My Beautiful Laundrette, Review, Stephen Frears

22 April, 2011 · 11:10 am

Taxi Zum Klo (1980)

An invaluable snapshot of ‘70s gay life, this racy re-release from 1981 is a shocking, raunchy, bare-boned delight. Meaning ‘Taxi to the John’ in German, Taxi Zum Klo earned its stripes as a scandalous, underground pseudo-porno back in the ‘80s, and retains much of its power to flabbergast even today.

Frank Ripploh directs and stars as the bearded gay teacher who leads a double life – by day he’s an adored educator of children, by night he’s a drug-loving, promiscuous playboy whose boundaries are as sturdy as pink crepe paper. Ripploh’s night life consists solely of hitting up hedonistic highs – meeting men in toilets and plucking strangers from the street. But when he falls in love with Bernd, can Ripploh survive the limitations of a monogamous relationship?

Clever, candid and uncommercial, much of Taxi’s ability to rivet stems from its sly blending of fact with fiction. While it’s shot in a straight forward documentary style, and includes everything from real-life people to hardcore gay sex, it’s near impossible to separate the real from the fabricated. With all those involved in the making of the film now dead, it’s a captivating conundrum.

Where Taxi works best, though, is as an intriguing time capsule that offers important insight into a time gone by. It’s plain to see why the film was so outrageous to an ‘80s audience. In this era of Shortbus orgies and 9 Songs orgasms, Taxi’s ability to shock now comes from its depiction of casual, unprotected sex in a pre-AIDs setting – in particular a graphic scene in which Ripploh engages in water sports with a man he barely knows. An opportune reminder of how much has changed in the intervening 30 years, Taxi makes for a rough, ready, disarmingly intelligent ride. 4/5

Via Out In The City

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Filed under documentary, Gay, Out In The City, Review, taxi zum klo

25 February, 2011 · 11:58 am

Howl (2010)

‘Howl’, by gay Beat generation radical Allen Ginsberg, is more than just a poem. A giddy, piquant war cry, its sexy idioms and white-hot imagery awoke a new way of thinking in a repressed, fearful ‘50s. Small wonder that, by the time of Ginsberg’s death in 1997, ‘Howl’ had sold more than 800,000 copies, been translated into 25 different languages, and had transformed into an anthem of acceptance and free speech.

Broaching such a loaded subject in biopic form was always going to be tricky. Ginsberg himself led a fascinating life, one tainted by tragedy (his mother’s descent into madness), drama (his frequent spells in jail) and romance (his affair with car thief Neal Cassidy). It’s a lot for one movie to play with, and explains the ambitious approach of directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Freidman. Theirs is a film of four parts, Howl’s focus flitting between a quartet of distinct vignettes – interviews with Ginsberg (played by James Franco); the poet’s Beat life and first reading of ‘Howl’ in 1955; an accompanying expressionist animation; and a court hearing as a legal suit is filed against Ginsberg’s “offensive” text.

Busy is not the word, and Howl strains to suitably blend its contrasting components. The court scenes, though given a turbo-boost by actors like Jon Hamm (who looks like he’s just stepped off the Mad Men set), are the main problem, grinding proceedings to a halt. A shame, because Franco’s spirited reading of the poem is effortless, paired with a dazzling animation that features deep sea pianos, spinning, skeletal ghosts and hellish landscapes. Fingers crossed that the DVD release has a feature that plays the animation, Howl’s greatest achievement, on its own. At its best, Howl recalls the honourable experiments of an early Gus Van Sant (who serves as exec producer). At its worst, it’s directionless and meandering. 3/5

Via Out In The City

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Filed under Allen Ginsberg, drama, Gay, Howl, James Franco, Out In The City, poetry, Review

4 February, 2011 · 12:07 pm

Rabbit Hole (2010)

“Does it ever go away?” whispers Becca (Nicole Kidman) towards the end of John Cameron Mitchell’s wrenching, enriching testimony on grief. Those who’ve ever lost a loved one will feel her pain. Cocooned in a house groaning with memories, Becca’s shell-shocked, exposed, drifting – her young son has just died in a road accident, leaving her and husband Howie (Aaron Eckhart) alone to pick up the pieces. Each cope differently – Becca goes inward, her flinty interactions concealing deep ache. Howie goes outward, searching, hoping.

If all this sounds like an A-list episode of Hollyoaks, it isn’t. Helmed by Shortbus and Hedwig director Mitchell, Rabbit Hole represents a U-turn in form for the openly gay filmmaker. Reigning in the explicit sex and power wigs, Mitchell directs deftly, quietly, creeping into the lives of our pugnacious couple and watching without judgement.

All the best indie buzz words apply: restrained, poignant, moving. But Rabbit Hole isn’t content to be just another indie film with an A-class cast and Big Issues. As it tracks Becca’s journey, it wraps her brittle experiences in mordant wit, ensuring that what could be a drab, maudlin slog is as vibrant as the flowers over which Becca so affectionately fawns.

Vitally, Rabbit Hole’s musings never ring false. Beautifully adapted by David Lindsay-Abaire from his own stageplay, Kidman rises to the demands of his vivid script, leading an impeccable cast that betrays no weak links. Eckhart exudes soul and Sandra Oh elicits sniggers, while Oscar winner Dianne Wiest as Becca’s mother is nothing short of miraculous – both kind and knowing. Amidst them all, Kidman remains coarse, frail and sincere in her finest turn since The Hours. Rabbit Hole is emotional, raw stuff managed with warmth and poise, and we wouldn’t be surprised if it ended up on the Academy Awards short list. 4/5

Via Out In The City

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Filed under Aaron Eckhart, Dianne Wiest, drama, Essential Viewing, Gay, Hedwig, Out In The City, Rabbit Hole, Review, Sandra Oh, Shortbus

10 December, 2010 · 12:05 pm

Loose Cannons (2010)

Family – can’t live with them, can’t kill them. Unless your unexpected emergence from the closet has prompted your father to suffer a near-fatal heart attack. Such is the plight of forty-something Antonio (Alessandro Preziosi), whose revelation sends an emotional riptide coursing through his close-knit Italian brood. But it’s visiting younger brother Tommaso (Riccardo Scamarcio) who has the bigger problem – he was planning on announcing his own man-love at the very same dinner that Antonio’s confession disrupted. Now, with Antonio banished, Tommaso’s left to shoulder the floundering family business (pasta manufacturing, naturally) as the company’s sole male successor.

Which just barely scrapes the surface of director Ferzan Özpetek’s vibrant filmic cocktail, the energetic plot also tracking the exploits of a saucy older aunt, a tempestuous female friend, and all manner of domestic disquiet. Özpetek, though, is no stranger to such outlandish premises, his previous dramas having sticky-fingered numerous awards and kudos (notably, Ignorant Fairies won big at the 2001 New York Lesbian and Gay Film Festival). With Cannons, he deftly twists humour and dramatic gay themes into a sumptuously-shot melange of witty banter and touching sentiment.

Italian cinema has long flirted with dicey dissections of the family unit (see also the operatic beauty of Tilda Swinton’s recent I Am Love), but here Özpetek nudges the formula into sunnier surrounds. Though the resultant near-farce at times wobbles through campy terrain (witness the arrival of Tommaso’s flamboyant friends, who struggle to put a lid on their sexuality), the film is anchored by its stellar cast – not least Ilaria Occhini as the family matriarch, whose own tragic past poetically collides with the present, most arrestingly in the film’s elegiac closing moments.

A chic, charming chuckler, Cannons proves particularly appealing as we wend our way into the winter months, offering the perfect place to soak up some warm Italian rays. 4/5

Via Out In The City

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Filed under comedy, drama, Gay, I Am Love, Loose Cannons, Out In The City, Review

12 February, 2010 · 10:13 am

A Single Man (2010)

Imagine what might have happened if Douglas Sirk had created his own fashion line. Conversely, imagine what kind of movie Donatella Versace might make given half a chance (on second thoughts, no, please don’t). Well, famously provocative designer Tom Ford has gone one better. He conquered the empires of Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent as a top trendsetter, got bored, and fixed his gaze on cinema instead. The result? A Single Man: the kind of confident debut that radiates personality and visual flair while retaining a quietly fluttering heart.

It’s evident from the outset that Ford’s involvement in A Single Man isn’t based on a frivolous impulse. Yes, the film is an experimental exercise, flaunting voguish superfluities. But scrape a little at its stylised veneer, and you uncover a film that swells with warmth.

Widely considered novelist Christopher Isherwood’s greatest work (and the author’s own favourite), A Single Man is the tale of grieving middle-aged lecturer George. Eight months ago, his partner of 16 years died. Unable to escape his melancholy, George (played here with tantalising refinement by Colin Firth) is coasting through life on the currents of memory. Deciding he can go on no longer, he resolves to end his life. We meet him here, on what could be his last day.

Streamlining Isherwood’s 1964 novel, Ford snips away any non-essential characters to concentrate on the central quartet of George, his lovey, midlife-crisis-consumed pal Charley (Julianne Moore), dead love Jim (Matthew Goode, seen in flashbacks) and young student Kenny (Nicholas Hoult). The result is a curious convergence of both men’s personalities. Isherwood’s penchant for pretty youths is retained in the form of Hoult’s beautiful, curious student, while Ford imbues Moore’s Charley with a distinctly British bent (there are definite whiffs of Ab Fab’s Patsy).

“When I die, people can look at this movie and know what I was about,” the director has said. And it’s true, his fingerprints are all over A Single Man; from George’s new surname (borrowed from Ford’s first love), anecdotes about shaved eyebrows (Ford’s own faux pas), even our lead’s dogs are played by Ford’s mutts.

It’s fitting that the filmmaker’s opulent imagery should repeatedly return to eyes, this being as near to a celluloid imprint of a man’s soul as it’s possible to get. Hyper-stylised but with careful nuance, A Single Man only stumbles in its third act as the visual tricks give way to a clumsy climax that feels strangely disconnected from the philosophy of what has gone before.

Anticipation: Firth has had good buzz, and the trailer suggests Ford’s fashionista savvy could translate well to cinema. 3

Enjoyment: A film about death that is bursting with life and passion. 4

In Retrospect: Film couture, dazzling in its optical majesty. Shame about the third act stumble, but A Single Man establishes Ford as an auteur in the making. Singularly brilliant. 4

Via Little White Lies

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Filed under A Single Man, Colin Firth, Essential Viewing, Gay, Little White Lies, Review, Tom Ford