LGBT

Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967)

André Crous

Despite the two big names with top billing and some good ideas, Reflections in a Golden Eye is a fragmented mess of a film whose literal golden glow cannot save it from mediocrity.

Reflections in a Golden EyeUSA
3*

Director:
John Huston
Screenwriters:
Gladys Hill
Chapman Mortimer
Director of Photography:
Aldo Tonti

Running time: 105 minutes

Everything that is golden isn’t gold. The visuals of John Huston’s Reflections in a Golden Eye, which not only has two major stars as a dysfunctional couple in the South but also deals with issues of intensely repressed sexuality, are tinted gold. Every now and again, a pink dress or red streak of blood break through, but the rest is a lifeless olive-gold that is perfectly in tune with the beige of the ubiquitous military uniforms.

The film is a very muddled assortment of lust and betrayal. Everything is tenuously held together by identical bookend quotations from the original novel by Carson McCullers, which read: “There is a fort in the South where a few years ago a murder was committed.” Alright, so there will be a murder, but the film’s six characters show so little development that any one of them could be shot and we’d barely even notice.

Marlon Brando plays Major Penderton, who teaches courses on leadership at the local military post. With one or two notable exceptions, he is expressionless, a block of ice completely resistant to the Southern heat. His wife is Leonora, whom Elizabeth Taylor portrays with the same kind of drunken, free-spirited and emotional callousness as she did in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? We never learn what the backstory is to this unlikeliest of couples. We meet them when the marriage is already long over, and Leonora is having daily dalliances with their next-door neighbour, Lieutenant Colonel Langdon (Brian Keith).

Langdon’s wife, Alison (Julie Harris), is still traumatised after losing her baby three years ago but is lucid enough to recognise that her husband is having an affair. However, being the polar opposite of extrovert Leonora, she deliberately ignores the obvious signs. She spends her days mostly in the company of the family’s effeminate Filipino “houseboy”, Anacleto, a dreadful bit of acting by Zorro David. The character has one brilliant scene in which he throws a drink at a group of gossiping officers before fading into the wallpaper again. And then there is the taciturn private Williams (Robert Forster), who notices Leonora walking naked through the house and subsequently returns every night to look at her up close and smell her underwear.

For obvious reasons, Major Penderton has the most potential. After Williams does some work in his garden, Penderton spots him on horseback in his birthday suit. Soon, the staring begins, as Penderton simply cannot control himself in public whenever he spots the young private. But these feelings of confusion and anguish are not developed in any serious way. They merely sketch out some vague explanation for the expected murder. At one lecture, Penderton’s mind seems to wonder when he asks the students, “Is leadership learned, is it taught, [or] is man born with it?” At another point, he waxes lyrical about the military life, which is “immaculate in its hard, young fitness”. But he seems to be stuck for good.

Brando’s best moments come either when he is on his own or when he demolishes his character’s icy exterior. When he is on his own, he gallantly but rather pathetically tries to lift weights, he stares into a mirror to rehearse his witty lines and facial expressions for a social event at his own home. Or he spreads a handful of rejuvenating cream over his face, not unlike a clown before a show. These are sad but intimate moments that allow us a glimpse of Penderton’s melancholy existence as an act that might allow him to blend in. But the scenes in which his well-kept façade disintegrates are equally powerful. The way his face contorts when Leonore taunts him, or when his horse refuses to listen to him, makes for very compelling cinema.

The scene with the horse is absolutely astonishing. When Penderton had earlier gone riding with his wife and her lover, he fell off the horse. Now he takes his wife’s prize stallion, Thunderbird, but when he kicks in the side, it bolts into the forest. The thick foliage scratches and scrapes his face. He holds on for dear life. And Toshiro Mayuzumi’s score kicks into high gear. But it is the low-angle, titled camerawork and the rapid editing, in particular, that draw attention. The confused, all-too-human look of utter desperation on Brando’s face and his violent but futile response are pitiful but make him the most interesting character of all.

The title ostensibly refers to a drawing by Anacleto of a peacock, which has a “tiny and grotesque” golden eye. But as with so much else in the film, this inference also goes nowhere. While some moments are reflected (in gold) in Williams’s left eye, especially when he is leering at Leonore from afar, the metaphor is impenetrable.

Reflections in a Golden Eye is a terribly uneven film that unspools in fits and starts. It has enough characters with promising storylines to fit three feature-length films, but it doesn’t dig into any of them. The tensest scenes are the ones between Taylor and Brando, but they are few and far between. The plot ultimately explodes with an unintentionally hilarious final shot (multiple whip pans between murderer and murdered, with a startled bystander sandwiched in between). The film has the makings of a fascinating social study, but its fragments never cohere into anything resembling a whole.

Matthias & Maxime (2019)

André Crous

In Matthias & Maxime, Xavier Dolan continues his downward trajectory by choosing to keep his two titular characters apart for almost the entire film.

Matthias & MaximeCanada
3*

Director:
Xavier Dolan
Screenwriter:
Xavier Dolan
Director of Photography:
André Turpin

Running time: 120 minutes

We know the drill: Two straight best friends – more specifically, two guys, stuck somewhere between graduation and responsible adulthood – kiss, and the moment changes their lives forever. At times, Xavier Dolan’s Matthias & Maxime is marginally more nuanced than that, but the nuance is actually just long stretches of inertia separated by spasmodic revelations.

As it happens, the kiss is not of their own choosing but merely a result of them agreeing to appear as actors in a short film project about identity. The small-statured, tattooed Maxime (“Max”) volunteers, while his smouldering best friend, Matthias (“Matt”), has to be pressured into accepting the challenge, which he does because of their decades-long friendship. Although initially horrified at the idea of kissing each other (especially because of unverified whispers that this is may not be the first time), the two friends eventually man up and lock lips, which is so momentous the screen turns black.

Almost immediately, Matt has an identity crisis that he takes the entire film to work through. Unfortunately, for the duration of the plot, he appears to be in the closet, emphatically in denial while repeatedly staring at every half-sexy guy moving through his line of sight but without showing any sign of development. Max’s focus is elsewhere. He is about to move to Australia to run away from his problems, the most urgent of which is his mentally ill mother (played to perfection, as usual, with seething resentment and no shortage of verbal abuse by Anne Dorval), but gradually we come to realise he is likely running away because of his sexuality, too. One mesmerising scene with Max on a public bus reveals exactly what we were hoping to learn but then fails to build on this discovery in any meaningful way.

Matthias & Maxime tips its hand early on when Matt’s boss at his law firm, hinting at an upcoming promotion, suggests that many people may be used to doing one thing before discovering much later that they enjoy doing something different. In fact, despite our initial impressions, the kiss did not reveal unexpected inner emotions to the two men but was an expression of feelings they had been struggling with and suppressed for their entire lives, as the film’s final act – and, specifically, a very powerful scene at the house of Matt’s mother, portrayed to emotional perfection by Michelin Bernard – makes so poignantly clear.

And yet, the narrative structure here inhibits (and even undermines) our sympathy in at least two important ways. Firstly, unlike the similar examples of Y Tu Mamá También or Humpday, the kiss comes not towards the end but right at the beginning. This means we don’t know how things were before, and therefore, there is no opportunity for involvement in the awkwardness that follows the physical encounter. This is equivalent to providing a climax without any dramatic build-up.

Secondly, and even worse, the film then proceeds to keep Matt and Max apart for around a full hour. They do not discuss what happened, they do not tell each other (or us) how they feel or what they think, and there is no possibility of a resolution until a brief moment of in vino veritas followed by a narratively contrived final shot and a cut to the end credits. The only thread connecting them for most of the film is their timidity to address this quandary over their friendship and their similar domestic situations: In both households, the only parent around is the mother. 

Despite the amount of dialogue and the admirable delivery by the entire cast, we don’t get close to either of the two M’s. An elaborately staged scene in which Matt tries to rid himself of his existential demons by swimming across an entire lake, getting lost, then swimming back, is mind-numbing because it takes forever, the shots are uninspired, the piano music is monotonous, and we don’t know Matt well enough (or at all) to sympathise with this sudden bout of sexually motivated hysteria.

A film like Marco Berger’s exquisitely paced Hawaii, which focused its energy exclusively on fleshing out its two characters, slowly increased the sexual tension until the point of satisfying release. By contrast, Matthias & Maxime opens with bad foreplay, proceeds straight to the climax and then languishes for more than an hour in a painful refractory period. 

An inordinate amount of time is spent treading water. Throughout the film, Dolan is much more interested in presenting life around the characters rather than focusing on their own lives and inner turmoil. And yet, Matthias & Maxime is at its most captivating when the two titular characters are in the same scene. Max, whose crimson birthmark flows from his right eye across his cheek, is infinitely more interesting than his friend, but despite Dolan playing the role himself, he struggles with the same passivity that hampers Matt’s character from ever becoming more than pitiful. Unspoken desire can be a powerful driver for a story, but at some point, people have to start speaking, and Dolan inexplicably does all he can to avoid this critically important moment.

For all the talk of this Canadian director’s talent, two films continue to stand head and shoulders above the rest in Xavier Dolan’s career: His début feature film as director, I Killed My Mother, released in 2009, showed him at his most creative. And in 2014’s Mommy he reached the zenith of his storytelling prowess with an intimate story told as if it were an epic. But his films since then have been disappointing. Despite its wonderfully recreated tension, It’s Only the End of the World was an annoying powder keg of a chamber drama with another incredibly passive central character. And his subsequent short-lived foray into English-language filmmaking, in the form of The Death & Life of John F. Donovan, produced little more than a full-length dark-toned flashback.

Matthias & Maxime is not unlike Matt himself: While handsome to look at and intent on speaking correctly (Matt’s insistence on using correct grammar is reminiscent of the early films of both Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut, and the screenplay’s own dialogue is flawless), it prefers limbo over taking things to their logical conclusion. 

Viewed at the 2019 Mezipatra Queer Film Festival.

Sworn Virgin (2015)

André Crous

Sworn Virgin, which tells the story of an Albanian woman who first becomes a man, then a woman again, is sturdy, but the main actress stares too much.

Sworn VirginItaly/Albania
3.5*

Director:
Laura Bispuri
Screenwriter:
Francesca Manieri
Director of Photography:
Vladan Radovic

Running time: 90 minutes

Original title: Vergine giurata

Although mostly expressionless and saying very little, Mark hopes that the journey away from his homeland will set him free and bring about a life-altering metamorphosis. Mark grew up in the north Albanian countryside as a woman named “Hana,” but because of the strict rules of the area, which include countless restrictions on women’s activities and freedoms, she rejected her womanhood, at least insofar as the term is used in this context.

However, in order to access the traditionally male activities of hunting, smoking, drinking and many others, she had to swear to remain a virgin for eternity and give up any desire to love (it is not clearly stated why this is the case, as most men born as men are presumably allowed to experience this basic human emotion). She has also had to work hard to look like a man and took the name “Mark”.

In the role of Hana/Mark is Italian actress Alba Rohrwacher, who speaks Albanian throughout the film. At the beginning of the film, after leaving the homeland, she turns up in Milan at her sister’s place. Her sister, Lila, resisted tradition in her own fashion, as she rejected the idea of being married off by her father and instead left for Italy with the man she chose herself. But any expectations of a kindred spirit are dashed when Mark arrives to find that his niece, Jonida, has never been told of his existence, and Lila also appears uncomfortable that this news has so now come to light.

The film develops at a leisurely pace that remains engaging, as we put the pieces together (many of them provided to us by means of flashbacks to Hana and Lila’s childhood) and attempt to understand why Mark has made the journey to Italy.

The central character is very hesitant to share his reasons for coming, but the opening scenes in Rogam, in the Albanian Alps, where Mark had been living in complete isolation, suggest a longing for companionship, which would obviously require him to break his vow of eternal virginity and surrender his gender pronouns. Slowly, Mark becomes Hana again, and although some activists from the gender police might baulk at this turn of events, début director Laura Bispuri does not rush toward a sudden transformation but rather makes the viewer feel as immersed yet as unsure of the direction of the story as the title character almost certainly does.

Rohrwacher’s appearance also contributes significantly to our understanding of her character’s awkwardness in either gender role: With her gaunt figure here, she barely passes for a man at all, except for the flat, breast-bound chest and the cropped haircut. However, her long-time isolation and apparent lack of social interaction have led her to appear clueless about some very everyday things in Italy, and when she opens cosmetics in a store or stares at a mannequin wearing a bra, one could think of the oafish Crocodile Dundee, which is a very unfortunate point of reference.

The opening scenes are replete with atmosphere and meaning, as we not only get a glimpse of the idyllic, misty landscape of the mountain region, full of lush green mountainsides and deep blue waters, but one exterior shot of Mark’s house also includes a brief moment of a sheet of snow sliding off the roof – an unmistakable metaphor for the veil that is about to drop to reveal the original structure.

But it is the structure of the rest of the film – the gentle back-and-forth shift between the past and the present, which is the trajectory from woman to man and then from man to woman – that most visibly showcases the two hands shaping the character of Mark/Hana, and it is a strategy that works well to make the viewer aware of the struggles and the layers of this person. Her past and present mould and represent her as much as the two gender roles she takes on.

Scenes from Hana’s youth show why she wants to take on male roles, while those in the present focus on the difficulty of adapting to an entirely new context in geographical, social and sexual terms. We do not always have a perfect grasp of her reasons, but the pieces fit together well enough for us to acknowledge her conviction that this re-definition of herself is necessary.

The transition has its fits and starts, but one scene shrewdly and vividly illustrates the shedding of the old and the acceptance of the new. Having found a job as a security guard at a parking garage, Mark sits in front of a pane of glass late one night, removes his name tag and places it in front of him, on the glass, physically at a remove while still visually attached to his slight reflection. The moment is brief, but it has emotional and cerebral resonance for the viewer, which helps to signpost Mark’s transformation.

Unfortunately, the lack of emotion makes Mark/Hana a difficult character to grow close to, and her constant staring at people or things around her is sometimes grating. It is also a little far-fetched that Mark would simply up and leave from half a lifetime in Albania, with nary a belonging, and arrive in Milan to not only turn over a new leaf but write a new story. Nonetheless, Sworn Virgin is an assured first film by Bispuri that provides the viewer with little but never too little information, although a less distant performance by her lead would be welcomed as an improvement in her future projects.

Viewed at the 2015 Karlovy Vary International Film Festival

Just Friends (2018)

André Crous

In the light-hearted Dutch romance Just Friends, a restless young man is urged on by his grandmother to hook up with her equally dashing carer/surfer.

Just Friends / Gewoon vriendenThe Netherlands
3.5*

Director:
Ellen Smit
Screenwriter:
Henk Burger
Director of Photography:
Tjitte Jan Nieuwkoop

Running time: 80 minutes

Original title: Gewoon Vrienden

Gay films can’t be all doom and gloom with the odd rainbow all the time. That would be a very short-sighted depiction of life as a non-straight individual. Rainbows aren’t grayscale, and gay drama is not confined to anguish about one’s sexuality. Stories can take shape and flourish outside the conventional lines of LGBT cinema without being any less worthy of our attention.

This has been the case for close to decade thanks to the work of Argentine director Marco Berger, whose films consistently take place amid abundant sunshine – a perfect visual metaphor for the bright demeanours of his characters, for whom life might have its ups and downs, but not because of their sexual identity.

In Dutch director Ellen Smit’s Just Friends (“Gewoon vrienden”), two gobsmackingly adorable young men – the gym-frequenting, energy drink‒chugging skinhead Joris (Josha Stradowski), who bears more than a passing resemblance to Wentworth Miller, and chocolate-eyed, curly-haired, medical student‒turned‒carer/surfing instructor Yad (Majd Mardo) – meet, flirt and fall in love without missing a beat.

Whether from experience in the real world or from years of watching films in which gay characters confront friends and family unwilling to accept them, viewers of LGBT cinema have come to expect conflict at every turn. Perhaps this is what makes the genre of “sunshine gay films”, which includes Smit’s film and Berger’s entire oeuvre to date, so unexpectedly potent despite its mellow core. Our expectations are upended merely by people being tolerant.

In the case of Just Friends, the potential point of conflict comes in the form of Yad’s family, which originally hails from a Muslim Syrian background. But we come to realise that Yad, who has recently returned home from Amsterdam after partying too hard and realising he needs a fresh start, has had boyfriends before. And even though his mother has voiced her disapproval, it is not at all clear that the reason was them being boys instead of girls. When the time comes, his interaction with his father is also absolutely compelling because the discussion turns not around the fact that Yad and Joris are or aren’t dating but around the issue of how Yad is experiencing the relationship.

But even the bright lights of Yad and Joris can’t outshine the latter’s dazzling grandmother, Ans (Jenny Arean). Living alone with her sickly ginger cat, she needs help around the house, and when Yad shows up, the two seem to hit it off immediately. When Ans’s grandson arrives, however, Yad is smouldering so hard he is just about to spontaneously combust. Joris enjoys every moment of this attention so much he feels compelled to remove his shirt immediately and start pruning the hedges in the garden using a trimmer, although his ripped abs arguably would have done the job equally well.

Joris’s family is still coping with the loss of his father a decade ago, which is likely when Joris’s mother started getting plastic surgery and hitting the bottle. And yet, his father is a persistent presence in the film – mostly because his urn features as prominently as any of the lead characters, but also because he appears in flashbacks beautifully rendered with video scan lines and, at a crucial point, in an animated photograph.

The film contains a single instance of homophobia, and it is quickly nipped in the bud. It doesn’t come from the nemesis but a peripheral villain who only appears in this lone scene. His behaviour and existence seem to be relegated to the fringes of society and can in no way be taken seriously. Such random bullies who pose no threat beyond a rhetorical nuisance don’t deserve our attention anyway.

Sunshine gay cinema is what we need in order to balance all the heartache coming from the tragedy aisle of the LGBT celluloid supermarket. Cinema can create the world as it should be, and in the case of Just Friends, the tolerance is so overwhelming as to be inspiring.

Viewed at the 2018 Cape Town Film Market and Festival.

Canary (2018)

André Crous

Canary is a coming-of-age film set in apartheid-era South Africa that also marks the coming of age of contemporary South African cinema.

Kanarie-CanarySouth Africa
4.5*

Director:
Christiaan Olwagen
Screenwriters:
Christiaan Olwagen
Charl-Johan Lingenfelder
Director of Photography:
Chris Vermaak

Running time: 120 minutes

Original title: Kanarie

Johan Niemand (literally, “John Nobody”) likes fashion, music and Boy George. But he lives in a small town in Christian-heavy apartheid-era South Africa, and it goes without saying that, for someone like him, the road ahead isn’t going to be easy. To make matters worse, we meet him fresh out of high school, just as he is called up to serve in the military.

A bit like its Pied Piper‒inspired opening credits sequence, Christiaan Olwagen’s Canary (Kanarie) is a flaming, mesmerising piece of work that viewers will have a hard time resisting. The film deftly navigates the minefield of recent South African history, littered as it is by racial segregation, religious supremacy and repressed sexuality. And it is the latter that features most prominently, although the film frequently chooses creative and insightful discussion over easy wins.

In that opening scene, two friends bribe Johan to walk down the road of their provincial and presumably conservative neighbourhood decked out in a big white wedding gown. We later find out he’s made a habit of doing whatever he can to earn money in order to buy LPs so that he can escape his surroundings, even just for a moment, by listening to his Walkman. It is a scene that seamlessly combines the fear of being different with the elation of imagining a world where you don’t have to fit in but others will join you in expressing yourself.

But expressing oneself in 1980s South Africa often meant being separated from one’s peers. Johan, played by Schalk Bezuidenhout (who, in what seems like another life entirely, is actually a moustachioed, curly-haired stand-up comic in his native South Africa), is conscripted just as South Africa is about to mark 20 years of ongoing conflict in neighbouring Namibia and Angola. War and manhood, then as now, are perceived as two sides of the same coin. Johan rightly assumes that his only way of surviving the dreaded “national service” is to be selected as a Kanarie – one of two dozen young men who form the South African Defence Force Choir and Concert group. To his utter relief, he makes it through.

Although slightly out of his comfort zone at first, he quickly bonds with two fellow Canaries: the camp but stout Ludolf (Germandt Geldenhuys) and blond, bespectacled fellow country boy, Wolfgang (Hannes Otto). They tease and support each other, particularly when they are verbally abused by their superiors.

One such superior is the young “Corporal Crunchie” (Beer Adriaanse), nicknamed for his copious consumption of the oat-based delicacy Ludolf’s mother packs for her son. Addressing the recruits as “ladies” is the mildest of the insults he hurls at them, which often include an array of ever more creative epithets associated with both male and female genitals. Loquacious and vulgar, the corporal is a slightly out-of-control version of Full Metal Jacket’s infamous Gunnery Sergeant Hartman and easily rises to the challenge of using words as weapons to emasculate his recruits, despite many of them having developed a thick skin after years of being bullied at school.

When the Kanaries go on tour and stay with host families, Johan and Wolfgang often share a room and grow ever closer, which gradually tears the soft-spoken Johan apart. Swinging between exhilaration and despair, he struggles to accept himself as he is convinced God will punish him for what he desires.

From the very first moments, Canary sets itself apart from the rest of the flock. The audacious decision to shoot scenes in single takes (or to give them the appearance of being shot as such) is both a blessing and a curse. Director of photography Chris Vermaak utilises his Steadicam to full effect to have conversations play out in a coherent, inescapable space. During Johan’s audition, the camera makes a seemingly impossible move as it appears to be drawn to the singing by passing through a table – the inverse of a similar shot in Citizen Kane.

However, while there is no question Olwagen gets to show off his talents as a director and the cast gets to flaunt their acting skills, the incredibly mobile camera can become distracting, if not downright repetitive as it pushes in or out on static action while panning and tracking on more mobile actions. The same is true of the recurring breaking of the fourth wall, which would have been more effective had it been used more judiciously.

By contrast, one of the most memorable shots is also one of the simplest: a single minutes-long close-up on Johan’s face that expresses everything we need to know and will strike a deep emotional chord with many a viewer, not unlike Ingmar Bergman’s similar approach to a rape scene in The Virgin Spring. Another devastating moment emerges out of the palpable tension of Johan and his sister trying but failing to address a serious topic as they sit shoulder to shoulder in a doorway and the camera has nowhere to go.

Above all, Canary puts onscreen some of the best acting ever shown in an Afrikaans feature film. For once, the actors don’t sound like they belong on stage and, unlike almost every single Afrikaans television series or feature film out there, no scene opens with people laughing at a non-existent joke. They are immediately recognisable as characters fully rooted in and representative of the real world, with their conversations having the colour and texture to make them both layered and accessible.

Tackling nationalism, religion and sexuality in a single film and doing so without veering off into the territory of self-congratulation or pontification is above most filmmakers’ pay grade, but Olwagen and fellow screenwriter Charl-Johan Lingenfelder stay close enough to Johan to allow us a sense of intimacy while pulling back far enough to take in his immediate context. He is the centre of attention in every single scene, and this first-person perspective, which includes many a music-video-style fantasy, boosts our empathy for him as he comes not only of age but of identity.

Christiaan Olwagen has made his material sing, and it’s as good a harmony as anything his characters belt out.

Viewed at the 2018 Cape Town International Film Market and Festival.

The Celluloid Closet (1995)

André Crous

The Celluloid Closet, a ground-breaking documentary released in 1995, reveals many of the queerest moments from the first 100 years of the cinematic art form.

The Celluloid ClosetUSA
5*

Directors:
Rob Epstein
Jeffrey Friedman
Screenwriters:
Rob Epstein
Jeffrey Friedman
Director of Photography:
Nancy Schreiber

Running time: 105 minutes

Just like the people they portray, films with LGBT characters have always been around. In 1995, at the 100-year mark of the birth of cinema, an expansive documentary rounded up a century of (mostly, but not always, implicitly) homosexual or queer characters and narrative trends to show how, even in the darkest days of the moralistic Hollywood Production “Hays” Code, the closet door was often ajar.

Based on the exhaustive overview provided by Vito Russo’s 1981 landmark book of the same name, The Celluloid Closet was made by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, two openly gay documentary filmmakers who had already won Academy Awards for tackling subjects close to LGBT viewers’ lives in The Times of Harvey Milk and Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt.

Their 1995 documentary features a treasure trove of film clips, as well as interviews with numerous industry professionals who talk about how they perceived certain movies while they were growing up, how they had to work within and around the Code and what the challenges were in producing an authentic representation of gay life. Among the best-known interviewees are playwright Armistead Maupin, actor-director Harvey Fierstein and writer-provocateur Quentin Crisp, with mainstream actors like Tom Hanks, Whoopi Goldberg and Susan Sarandon (all of whom portrayed gay characters during their careers) also contributing their impressions.

The opening clip crystallises the early years’ depiction of same-sex activity: In the 1934 film Wonder Bar, a man and woman are dancing at a ball when another man approaches to ask whether he can “cut in”. The woman moves towards him, assuming the request is directed towards her, only to be rebuffed when the two men grab each other’s hands and start dancing. A few steps behind them, singer Al Jolson’s eyes are big as plates. He throws a limp wrist into the air and exclaims, “Boys will be boys!”

But such tolerance, even if mocking or condescending in tone, was soon torpedoed by the Hays Code, which sought to clamp down on films’ generally permissive attitude with regard to sexuality – by then, big-name filmmakers like D.W. Griffith and Cecil B. DeMille had already made blockbuster films showing full-fledged (heterosexual) orgies. Starting in the early 1930s, the Code curtailed depictions of rape, abortion, sex perversion (i.e. any positive representation of LGBT life), prostitution, nudity, white slavery and the use of profanity, among others.

Thus, gay characters were driven into the background, their stories were made to look straight, or it was made clear that their lifestyle was abominable. And they were almost always killed off by the final act. But while some viewers were happy to see characters similar to themselves, the representation was terribly one-sided, even tragic.

For most of the 20th century, films consistently presented gay characters as outcasts who were to be made fun of, judged as degenerates or pitied for the miserable lives they lead. Generally speaking, the characters were trapped and unable or unwilling to effect change, which made them powerless and frequently led to them committing suicide or dying in various ways. In one eye-opening sequence, The Celluloid Closet shows us one death after another of these films’ gay characters: by gunshot, by stabbing, by hanging, by fire, by crossbow… even by having a tree fall on them.

Narrator Lily Tomlin correctly points out that “Hollywood, that great maker of myths, taught straight people what to think about gay people, and gay people what to think about themselves.” When all you see of gay life is a one-dimensional depiction of melancholy ending in tragedy, there is inevitably an effect on all viewers irrespective of their sexuality. Of course, there are people identifying as one or more of the letters in LGBT who are sad or suicidal, just like their straight counterparts, but representations need to reflect the diversity of real life, which only comes from telling more stories and treating all characters as full human beings with real agency.

But even when characters, especially those based on real-life individuals, were mostly stripped of their sexuality, traces remained. Perhaps it is because many filmmakers remained committed to reflecting real life. Or perhaps the reason is that, throughout the filmmaking process, some screenwriters were gay, some directors were gay, some actors and actresses were gay, and so on, and they wanted to include part of themselves and what they knew in the product they were creating.

This is a documentary that adds depth and nuance to characters and narratives we thought we knew. We see how affection between men – approached with surprising sensitivity – was often there if we looked a little more closely. An excerpt from Their First Mistake, in which Laurel and Hardy share a bed, help each other take care of a baby and confess their bond to each other, makes this plain for all to see. So, too, does a scene from Wings, the first-ever Best Picture Oscar winner, which features two men stroking each other’s hair, with one planting a kiss on the other’s lips.

Cabaret scribe Jay Presson Allen laments the fact that the 1950s were an era of such “towering dullness” because the stories being told were all terribly safe and uninspiring, but the ever-irreverent Gore Vidal lets us in on a juicy gay angle in the biblical epic Ben-Hur, released in 1959, which he had a hand in writing.

It is said that sunlight is the best of disinfectants. Films with LGBT characters or storylines provide sunlight by highlighting people and plots that are not as well-established as the decades of straight storylines, thus washing away the veneer of grime that had built up over decades of misrepresentation. And while this documentary certainly does not pretend that every classic film falls somewhere on the Kinsey scale, it does encourage us to examine them more critically and potentially to discover the rainbow in the black and white.

Although its focus is squarely on the U.S. film industry, The Celluloid Closet makes little mention of the broader historical context, namely that the advent of the modern gay rights movement (the 1969 Stonewall riots) coincided with the downfall of the dreadful Code, and that the subsequent AIDS crisis of the 1980s and early 1990s pushed LGBT stories out of the metaphorical closet and into the limelight.

It would be fascinating to see an updated account of LGBT representation in film, as a great deal has changed since 1995. The number of films built around gay characters who do not fold under pressure but stand up for themselves or, better yet, are simply part of a story other than their sexuality, has risen sharply over the past few years.

As witty and entertaining as it is informative, The Celluloid Closet remains the gold standard for information about and insight into the traces of homosexuality in films during the first 100 years of cinematic history. Over the ensuing quarter of a century, films like Brokeback Mountain, Milk, Blue is the Warmest Colour and Moonlight would all make a big splash on the global circuit. Myriad more, from those of Sebastián Lelio, João Pedro Rodrigues, Marco Berger and Kimberly Peirce to the ones of Dee Rees, Todd Haynes, Xavier Dolan and Pedro Almodóvar, have already given a firm indication that the next 100 years will produce an infinitely greater variety of movies than before – in whatever way their storytellers choose.

Tom of Finland (2017)

André Crous

Tom of Finland is a likeable but hastily drawn sketch of the Finnish soldier and artist whose work is responsible for many a gay man’s wet dreams.

Tom of FinlandFinland
3*

Director:
Dome Karukoski
Screenwriter:
Aleksi Bardy
Director of Photography:
Lasse Frank

Running time: 115 minutes

Pencil sketches of muscle men, leather uniforms and enormous penises. These works of art, long produced underground before finally making their way to gallery exhibits and then even onto a few of Finland’s stamps, are the creations of Touko Laaksonen. “Tom of Finland”, as he would later be known, came of age during the Second World War and put his fantasies on paper in order to forget about his miserable experiences as a soldier and as a man trapped in an ultra-conservative and very anti-gay society.

Some of the early scenes in Dome Karukoski’s Tom of Finland take place in Helsinki ahead of the 1952 Olympic Games and show the police clearing out a park that has become a popular cruising spot for the city’s gay community. When they catch men doing the old in-out against a tree trunk or kissing in the shadows of heavy foliage, they gang up to beat the victim with their truncheons until he can no longer offer any resistance. It is a chilling reminder of how backward and intolerant some Western societies were – and not long ago. Finland, where same-sex marriage only became possible in March 2017, had taken until 1971 to decriminalise homosexuality, although Tom of Finland (perhaps purposefully) neglects to tell us this and thus sketches a conservative Finnish society forever threatening to people like Laaksonen, portrayed by Pekka Strang.

Dome Karukoski’s biopic of arguably Finland’s most famous artist snaps from one narrative block to another as it scrambles to cram around four decades of life into two hours while pretending to take its time. The first 10 minutes alone cover four separate periods in Laaksonen’s life, and over time, we return to almost all of them in the same fitful, fragmentary manner.

The scenes have room to breathe, but the transitions between them are abrupt and often leave us scratching our heads about the missing amount of time. In addition, the two hours are rather awkwardly framed by a major leather event that, while it offers a powerful culmination and affirmation of Laaksonen’s life, feels rushed and tacked on without any proper groundwork.

There are very few narrative threads that cut across the entire film, although one of the most important (albeit, regrettably, one of the weakest) involves Laaksonen’s sister, Kaija, who never manages to accept his sexuality. Throughout their lives, she lives in bitter denial that homosexuality even exists. We gather that she wants to ignore the tragedy of her own life as a spinster by focusing on her brother’s life, even as he ends up spending most of it with a loving partner, Veli “Nipa” Mäkinen (played by the gorgeous Lauri Tilkanen).

Unlike in another biopic of a gay artist (Julian Schnabel’s glorious depiction of Cuban poet Reinaldo Arenas in the inimitable Before Night Falls), the society portrayed in Tom of Finland is one of binary oppositions. The only person who does not fall neatly into the “gay = good”/”straight = menacing” categories is the quiet wife of an army captain who tolerates her husband’s meetings with other men. It is a real pity we do not get to see more of her, or of her kind, in this film.

As far as “Tom” himself is concerned, it remains unclear whether he ever feels like he fits in. Certainly, on his first trip to California, in the late 1970s, the warm weather and the men holding hands in public immediately signal a break from the frigid confines of Helsinki, where people still give him a dirty look if he is too intimate with Nipa. Towards the end of his life, Nipa has a persistent cough, and although his death is ultimately ascribed to throat cancer, the film’s ambiguity suggests he was very likely an early victim of the as yet undiagnosed AIDS virus.

Laaksonen, whose graphite sported members the size of baseball bats, also had a thing for leather, but we never get any indication of where this fixation originated. Perhaps it goes back to his early focus on men in uniforms, although we can’t be sure. His muse, a leather-clad biker with a prominent moustache and a police cap, is the imaginary Kake (Niklas Hogner), who becomes a central character in his work. Laaksonen says he is only satisfied with his own work if it makes him hard, but we never see him hot and bothered, even in the company of an imagined Kake, nor, for that matter, do we see anyone else getting horny from his pictures. This is a truly mystifying omission, as the film would have benefitted immensely from showing how Tom of Finland’s works offered pleasure to the gay community at large – or to himself.

Tom of Finland is more a patchwork of moments in the title character’s life than an engaging story of his life, his struggles and his motivations. By the end of the film, we still don’t know much about him, and while his Second World War trauma revisits him from time to time, these flashbacks are too scattered and superficial to add much to our understanding of his emotions. Karukoski’s film is unprovocative and doesn’t dig very deep. And although we get one or two vague notions of the life of a ground-breaking artist, the story leaves us unaffected.

Undertow (2009)

André Crous

In the Peruvian Undertow (Contracorriente), it takes a tragic loss of life – and the appearance of a ghost – to make a family man comfortable with his own sexuality, which, the film suggests, also makes him more of a man.

Cotracorriente / Undertow (2009)Peru
4*

Director:
Javier Fuentes-León
Screenwriters:
Javier Fuentes-León
Julio Rojas
Director of Photography:
Mauricio Vidal

Running time: 100 minutes

Original title: Contracorriente

“There are a thousand ways to be a man”, says the boyfriend of Undertow‘s main character, the handsome curly-haired Miguel (Cristian Mercado), whose wife, Mariela, is close to giving birth to their first child. In his tiny fishing village on the Peruvian coast, being a man necessarily involves having a family (unless you’re the priest), and having friends depends on acting like a man.

In the film’s stunning opening close-up, Miguel turns his head and gently places it on Mariela’s bare belly to feel the baby kicking. He suggests it will be a boy and playfully calls the baby “Miguelito”. Mariela scolds him, concerned it might be a girl and that she might be confused if she heard her father calling her “Miguelito” through the womb. Babies can hear everything, she says. So can we, just a few minutes in, as it is made clear that in this town a man is a man and a woman a woman.

This makes Miguel’s extra-conjugal relationship with Santiago (Manolo Cardona) something of an existential problem, and despite being in a relationship that has clearly matured over time, Miguel is still far from comfortable viewing their bond as something entirely “manly”.

And yet, it is clear the relationship is not some infatuation. Eschewing the uncertainty that so often accompanies the start of a same-sex liaison, especially in a conservative society like this one in rural Peru with its (religious and non-religious) traditions, director Javier Fuentes-León starts his début feature in medias res, after the two have already known each other for a period of time.

Santiago, an artist who mostly keeps to himself, is an outsider in town and gets on some people’s nerves as he goes around taking photos of people and events to paint at home. His house even gets egged on a regular basis by children whose parents no doubt sanction their actions.

The first time we see Santiago and Miguel together, their interaction is intimate and informal. Clearly, this is not some fugacious fling. But Miguel has compartmentalised it as something that only takes place far from home, and he takes care never to meet or speak to Santiago in public. Understandably, Santiago’s frustration eventually reaches boiling point, particularly as Miguel is settling further into his role as a traditional family man. “I’m sick of playing dumb. You can; I can’t”, he admonishes him.

And then, out of the blue, a mere 30 minutes into the film, Santiago drowns. But there is no time to grieve as he announces his own death to Miguel, by showing up in the form of a (very lifelike) phantom in Miguel’s own home. And he keeps showing up, everywhere, the physical manifestation of Miguel’s memory of him, or of his guilt. Santiago is bound to wander aimlessly until his spirit finds peace. 

Thus begins one of the most thrilling, emotionally gripping sequences of scenes imaginable, as Miguel grows used to being out and about in public with his (albeit late and invisible) boyfriend, because no one can see them. It goes without saying that this is the perfect way for Miguel to grow in confidence, at least until the inevitable ceiling hits him on the head: The moment the town finds out about Miguel’s recent dalliances with the man they all simply refer to as “the artist”.

Along the way, former obstacles fall the one after the other, and halfway through the film, when the couple even recreates the most famous shot from Fred Zinnemann’s From Here to Eternity, there can no longer be any question in even the most conservative viewer’s mind that Miguel and Santiago should be afforded the same empathy we have always granted their equally fictional mixed-sex counterparts.

Santiago’s persistent presence in the film is as comical as it is beautiful. There are no scenes of anguish over him being dead – after all, to Miguel he looks and feels just as real as before – and even in death he has remained as understanding of Miguel’s fragile domestic situation as before: When he turns up next to the bed while Miguel is having sex with his wife (but thinking of Santiago), he covers his eyes but encourages Miguel to continue as if he weren’t there.

Undertow‘s final moments are deeply moving and tie a neat bow on Miguel’s blossoming into manhood, adding colour and closure by way of an honest conversation whose absence made the final moments of Brokeback Mountain feel like an open wound that would never heal. 

Yes, love is selfish. Miguel doesn’t play right by Santiago while he is alive, and even after his death, he refuses to acknowledge their relationship. He wants to maintain his reputation in the eyes of the community by having a wife and a son. He wants to have his cake but eat his banana, too.

But by the time we reach the ending, an allegorical connection with Jesus Christ, who carried his cross along the Via Dolorosa in full view of a crowd of people after fighting long and hard with his inner demons, becomes clear. This is a man. This is what a man does when he is honest about who he is. He keeps his promise. And he ensures the one he loves finds peace, even if that means he has to sacrifice his companionship forever.

Taekwondo (2016)

André Crous

Two Taekwondo training partners who know little about each other spend a few days in the company of seven other men. Are we just imagining it, or is there a spark between them?

TaekwondoArgentina
3.5*

Directors:
Marco Berger
Martín Farina
Screenwriter:
Marco Berger
Director of Photography:
Martín Farina

Running time: 105 minutes

If you’re a gay man, you’ve often wondered whether a particular guy is gay. When you finally find out he is, you tell yourself, “It was glaringly obvious all along!” Perhaps you even pat yourself on the back and praise your own “gaydar”. And when you find out he’s not, it suddenly seems just as self-evident. While we’re wondering, the possibilities often appear to be both endless and contradictory.

Marco Berger specialises in warm, friendly tension resolved at the very last moment thanks to the briefest of happy ends. His films focus almost exclusively on unspoken desire capped by a tender moment of contact that makes us feel like everything will work out in the end if we are just patient enough for it to happen.

The Argentine filmmaker’s latest feature, co-directed by Martín Farina (whose homoerotically charged football documentary, Fulboy, Berger co-edited), is titled Taekwondo and features a real ensemble cast for the first time in his career. The entire film is set in a large house in the countryside, where a group of nine strapping young men – all friends of the affable, curly-haired Fernando (Lucas Papa) – are hanging out. It’s December, and summer is already in full swing. This means a lot of lazing around, primarily in and around the swimming pool, and mostly in very skimpy clothes. Sometimes, none at all.

In the charmingly verdant, near-symmetrical opening shot, we see a newcomer arrive at the house. Germán (Gabriel Epstein) is an acquaintance of Fernando’s from their Taekwondo class and is joining the gang for a relaxing, fun time. He is the odd one out from the beginning because the eight have known each other for a long time. Fortunately for him, Fernando makes a point of finding him wherever he is, speaking to him, sitting next to him in larger groups, lying next to him by the pool and even sleeping in the same room. We quickly learn that Germán is gay, but what is the deal with Fernando?

This is a question that lingers for most of the film’s 105-minute running time. It always hangs in the background but is pushed centre stage every time Germán peeks at him (we know why), or he glances at Germán (does it mean what we think it means?), or the scantily clad men around them playfully call each other “cocksuckers”. The film also raises a few related but more general questions – ones that almost anyone who is gay has asked themselves at one time or another: What does it mean when someone looks at me? When does a look become a stare? And how do I distinguish between a stare born out of simple curiosity and a stare that is meaningful?

Taekwondo is divided into three interwoven sections: the delicate, silent dance between Germán and Fernando; the many conversations between Diego, Fede (nicknamed “Fatso”), Juan, Lucho, Maxi and Tomás, the majority of which concerns sex with women; and the questionable intentions of Leo, who stalks around in an attempt to get Fernando’s attention.

The film’s major flaw is its handling of the many speaking parts. The second section mentioned above, which consists of loose discussions between various speakers, is particularly problematic because, beyond Germán and Fernando, the characters are simply not memorable or well-defined. In fact, it will likely take a second viewing to recognise all the men at the house.

Taekwondo does go overboard by pelting us with close-ups of crotches both covered and exposed, even when the point of view is not connected to anyone in particular. This kind of ogling by the camera, while not exactly comparable to the gross gaze that Abdellatif Kechiche deployed in Blue is the Warmest Colour, is pointless and voids whatever sensuality the shots may have generated if used more discreetly.

If the two directors had utilised the camera as a substitute for specific characters’ point of view, the film would have been infinitely more engaging and immersive. But the gratuitous abundance of full-frontal close-ups simply leads nowhere and becomes annoyingly repetitive. By contrast, scenes like the one in which all nine of the men squeeze into the sauna drip with sensuality precisely because there are no full-frontals. 

All the while, we are grateful that someone as captivating as Epstein was cast to play Germán and that he portrays him as someone who is careful but never pitiful. Germán has no problem being gay, but because he is unfamiliar with the other guys’ sentiments about homosexuality, he doesn’t bring it up. The film’s two comical highlights are the scenes in which he shares his feelings with another gay friend – once over the phone and another time in person.

Berger has always been at his most effective when his stories are simple and focused on two main characters. This was the case in arguably his two best films to date: Plan B and Hawaii. Taekwondo loses time by presenting non-essential storylines and characters. It also negates some of Berger’s trademark sunshine by including a marginal character clearly uncomfortable with his own sexuality. His presence taints the otherwise laid-back, albeit sometimes sexually tense, atmosphere.

But it is fun to see how Berger and Farina work to tease us to breaking point with the promise of something happening. Viewers will have to bide their time, but those who know Berger’s films (this is Farina’s first fiction film behind the camera) can also rest assured that he always delivers in the end.

It might appear that time is standing still in this idyllic summer film, but the small steps that Germán and Fernando take always make us smile out of pure exhilaration for them to realise and benefit from something that is clear to almost everyone else. Taekwondo would have been served better by having fewer in-your-face crotch shots and more clear-cut characters, but the easygoing ambience and the playful camaraderie make for an environment the viewer can easily get used to.

Look out for Marco Berger making a cameo appearance halfway through the film as an anonymous character whose companion is hit in the head with a tennis ball.

God’s Own Country (2017)

André Crous

God’s Own Country borrows so much from Ang Lee’s famous cowboy romance it should have been titled “Brokeback on the Moors”.

God's Own CountryUK
3.5*

Director:
Francis Lee
Screenwriter:
Francis Lee
Director of Photography:
Joshua James Richards

Running time: 105 minutes

Two strapping young lads herding sheep by day and making love to each other one night out in the field? Check. Do we see spit being used instead of lube? Yes. Is there an awkward silence the next morning? Absolutely. Does the one deliberately look in front of him while the other changes his underwear in the background? That, too. And is there evident yearning when one of them smells a piece of clothing left behind by the one who is no longer there? Yes, even that.

God’s Own Country, an often assured feature-film début by British director Francis Lee, borrows whole-cloth from Brokeback Mountain without adding much of its own, although the story has been altered slightly for the sake of updating and transposing Ang Lee’s landmark 2005 film to the grittier moors of the English countryside.

The central character here is Johnny Saxby (Josh O’Connor), a farm boy barely out of his teens, whom we first lay eyes on late one night when he is throwing up in the toilet bowl of his parents’ farmhouse in Yorkshire. The next morning, we learn this is a regular occurrence, and we soon realise why: In this small farming community, being gay is not yet entirely acceptable, and even though Johnny has frequent encounters (penetration, never kissing) with whoever locks eyes with him at the bar or an auction, the idea of a relationship with a man is a foreign concept to him.

His father has suffered a stroke and realises his son is not up to the job of taking on his role on the farm. Thus, a (presumably) low-paying position as a temporary farmhand opens up, and this is when a brooding young Romanian migrant, Gheorghe (Alec Secăreanu, who looks like he could be Oscar Isaac’s brother) arrives on the scene, not without his own baggage. Things develop more or less as we expect, although these two characters are much more secure in their sexuality than Jack and Ennis the cowboys, their famous fictional counterparts from the early 2000s, who were admittedly a product of their time.

Lee’s handling of the relationship is very sensitive at the outset, and the two characters complement each other in just the right way: the immature Johnny, whose idea of the world only extends as far as the closest pub, has had plenty of sexual encounters but no intimacy, while Gheorghe, who has travelled to the United Kingdom on his own and seems much wiser about the ways of the world, takes on the role of both lover and father to the slightly awkward Englishman. The scene in which the two finally kiss, after much reluctance from Johnny, is paced just right and a striking testament to Gheorghe’s patience and tenderness.

Unfortunately, the film’s final moments are an absolute travesty – the kind of fairytale development that lessens the film’s thoughtfulness and is wholly at odds with the rest of the plot. It feels almost like it was tacked on as an afterthought for the sake of greater viewer satisfaction and commercial success, but the resolution to the climax’s dramatic complication is a myopic idea of romance that one character is too callow to deserve and the other is too good to concede.

The ending is a big disappointment, but the rest of the film does a good job of making the rough contours of a relationship seem less sharp-edged.

All in all, while the meaning of its title remains an enigma, God’s Own Country is mostly a compelling reworking of a tale we have seen before, and the reason lies primarily with the small group of very committed actors. Besides O’Connor and Secăreanu, Ian Hart as Johnny’s stern but paternal father and Gemma Jones as the devoted grandmother both warm our hearts with their candid but caring interactions with Johnny.

Viewed at the 2017 Berlin International Film Festival.