Saturday, February 18, 2012
IN THE MIDDLE
Today's gay film was the movie version of the Ken Hanes play
Essentially a three character play opened up, this film uses engaging dramatic devices to conduct a debate between a reparative therapist curing gayness and a therapist who repairs the damage of the reparative therapist. Stay with me.
The gay shrink has his lover, a journalist, pose as a troubled gay ostensibly to write an exposé of the ungay-ing practice.
Trouble is that the "client" is caught in the middle of it and succumbs to looking at both sides and not liking what he finds in the therapy or at home.
The outcome, of course, is not what anyone would have expected. Well not these two shrinks who have a high priority in being right.
The client, Frank, is definitely in the middle but by the end he figures it out whereas the other two?
Very clever, the play is well written and it appears that the film makers decided to let it alone. It is only really taken "outside" at several points, a squash game and a last scene in a park.
It remains a play.
Which is good. It makes it possible for all of us to see the play and not get all into cinematography and all.
It is a debate which, inevitable, misses love and the heart and the humanity of the "argument".
The actors are great, we have seen them before but forget their names. The fate of the usual character actor.
Not a spoiler to let you know that Frank was already fixed but better for the experience of these two head shrinkers having it out around him.
It is a 3 out of Netflix5 for me. A thought piece, well done.
