Sunday, August 26, 2012
POST POST MODERN GAY
Today's film was a gay film, famous actually, which just came out too late for my gay film fest.
Two men meet in a club, go home together, talk, get together again, talk, get together again and then say goodbye.
Goodbye because one of them is off to America for two years.
One gets the feeling that is not the end but that will be up to the two men.
Both are changed radically by their time together and there is love too.
This film is quintessentially gay without one single stereotype or typical reference.
First they are British, which actually doesn't mean much as gay is as global now as everything else. Second, they are beyond the coming out, working it out phases. Sort of.
That is the substance of the interaction between them.
Most importantly they are quite different types. I don't mean gay types. I mean that one is introspective, an introvert, close to friends and acquired family (who are mostly straight) and the other is outgoing, almost mean and aggressive. Outspoken and opinionated. They clash and mesh. Very nice.
Very contemporary. How do I know? I know a hundred very contemporary gay men and this is a lot about what their life is like. I am a fly on a lot of walls.
This film is definitely worth seeing over and over. I watched the "making of" part and the people here are quite serious. They know what they are doing. They have worked the ground over and over.
Oddly, the film was done in sequence which is hardly done at all any more. Studios and budgets and all that.
But this is alive for it. You can feel the buildup. It is the sequence of things that make it work.
This film was picked up by the Sundance production people and is distributed by Criterion which is now doing special films. This is special.
A 5 out of Netflix5.
Labels: best films, gay films
