A New Week exploring queer cinema (IN & OUT)

Frank Oz’s In & Out is one of these movies that plays perfectly with sterotypes, has some aces in the sleeve, but survives thanks to its leading actor. Because if it hadn’t been for Kevin Kline’s joyfull performance, this whole think would have sunked completely, not even getting close to something like a success in any level.

Everything starts when, Cameron Drake, a well known actor from a small town in Indiana, while recieving an oscar for his performance of a gay character, thanks his english high school teacher, Howard Bracket, whom he based his performance on. The thing is that Howard is getting ready to marry his long time fiancé Emily and he never thought about his homosexuality. Suddenly Howard’s life turns upside down, as the whole town questions his sexuality and slowly a lot of gay stereotypes fit on him. Even worse an openly gay TV reporter, Peter Malloy, arrives in town, suspecting that Howard is just trying too hard not to accept the truth.

The film puts all the stereoptypes and tries to talk about gay people in denial, about how an information like that can change people’s reaction twoards you, about loosing your ground, your whole identity. Of cousre is a comedy, of course everthing is lightweight, of course it falls into cliches. Still there is a solid cast that manages to pull this film out of the camp, out of the hysterical and avoid it stay on the queer section film because no-one else would be intrested.

Kevin Kline is great as Howard never going to the extreme and never being afraid to play it gay. Tom Selleck tries his best but has so little to do, still he shaved his mustache and is so far away from his Magnum character he is a joy, proving that his comedy skills endure beyond Friends. My lovely Joan Cusack once more plays a role she can do in her sleep, but still is no wonder that she managed to attract award attention, even an Oscar nomination. Clever lines, great actors, comedic timing at its best and three really inspired moments save In & Out from being just another comedy on gay people.

Of course no matter what I am saying when I saw it back in 1997 the film had so much more meaning to me, no matter how distanced I can be right now. In 1997 I was myslef trying to realise what is going on with me. I knew that I was gay but still I was hoping that all the signs were fake. I was at a point of trying to avoid my homosexuality. So when I went to see this film I was pretty sure that Howard was not gay, that he was a victim of stereotypes…

You can add there Howard being a Barbra Streisand fan and you got every sign of gayness in one guy who still tries to be straight. Still I was hoping that Howard at the end will turn out to be straight, like a sign i needed to go back to the “normal” side. I was this kid that the rest of his fellow students thought of as gay, and I hope that i would prove them wrong. Things for me evolved idependantly of the film, but at that time it was a film i lived along. Nowadays I can spot easily guys like that, who have a long long road till they realise their identity… Still the signs are bullshit, onle a gaydar can spot things right.

Still as Barbra Streisand and Barry Gibb sing we have nothing to be Guilty for

 

In search for a…

In 1996 a movie called Before Sunrise went out in the cinemas, that I didn’t saw at that time. It was in 1998 at 2.00 a.m. that I happened to be up and watching TV. i was ready to turn it off but a movie was starting. i didn’t see the title but I saw Ethan Hawk’s and Julie Delpy’s names and I was like “What is it?” and I started watching. A young man on a train is watching a girl and slowly they start talking and talking and talking…

They get down from the train they spent a night in Wien and they keep analyzing their lives, their generations, they keep telling stories till the sun is up and they have to go to their separate ways, in an end that leaves you wondering what will happen…

Last week I went to a theatre and I saw another film with two people meeting In Search of a Midnight Kiss. The story is us simple as the previous as a boy meets a girl and they spend a day together, talking, confessing and having small time adventures in the streets of LA. They go on talking about and actually getting t know each other in a more honest way that you will ever get to know your long time companion, probably they will never have the chance. Wilson and Vivian though don’t have a romantic meeting. They are children of the ‘00 (oh what an awful way to describe yourself a the generation of zeroes) and they rarely travel, they rarely go out and flirt.

Going out is more of show off, meeting people is more difficult than ever, and by meeting I mean new people or even your friends. The internet is fast and so easy to access, so you meet your friends online, distances are vanished by some binaries. Wilson puts an ad “Misanthrope looking for misanthrope” and just in order to say that he did try. Vivian’s call is fast and clear , she has 4 more other men to meet, they will meet for five minutes, she doesn’t want to waste her New Year’s Eve with someone she will hate the next day. For sure you know that they will stay together and they will spend the day together, but what matters is the way. They will open up to a complete stranger, they don’t have the fear of being misjudged, the impersonal LA background just gives them the opportunity to wonder around and keep on igniting new conversations, new small time adventures, in a city that is ready to swallow both, as they moved there full of dreams, to end up placing their hopes on a complete stranger.

Alex Holdridge has created a rmantic comedy that manages to escape the cliches of the film, based on clever lines, two charismatic leads and the city that creates and devours dreams.But still no matter how magical you may consider the film to be there is so little chance that it could be the next Before Sunset, not in lack of talent by the actors or the writer/director. The problem is that it never leaves reality, never manages to become this dream meeting. It always stays on the cynical reality of the internet dating. Probably ’s Celine and Jesse talked about as much as Holdridge’s Wilson and Vivian, but their story is still a fairy tale. Wilson and Vivian just get into the statistics of a wonderful blind date, but still they met in order to have a date.

And that is the main problem of the internet meetings, the blind dates,the arranged gatherings, you may meet the man/woman of your dreams but there is no dream like environment you always miss the magic of serendipity. When I saw Jesse and Celine I was enchanted by them,Wilson and Vivian made follow them but they never ended in my fantasy world. Got to go I have some friends to meet…

 

A New Week exploring queer cinema (THE DEEP END)

David Siegel and Scott McGehee teamed up in 1993 as a director and writing duo, for the thriller Suture. For 8 years they stayed seperated when their second team up, based on 1940 Elizabeth Sanxay Holding’s novel, offered us one of the most intresting films of 2003 that was tragicallly ignored by audiences around the world despite its festival reputation.

Mrgarette Hall raises her children alone as her husband is always away in business travels. One day she discovers that her son, Beau, has an homosexual affair with an older guy, Darby Reese. Margarette discovers one morning Darby dead near her house, while the previous night he had a fight with Beau. margaret decides to cover up for her son, who would be the prime suspect and throws the body in the Lake Tahoe. Lake Tahoe, the tenth deepest lake in the world, is a long, cold body of clear, turquoise water thriving at 6,000 feet in the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range. Isolated by snow-covered mountain tops, ponderosa pines, and upper class wood homes, is the perfect place to keep a secret. Soon enough Margaret is visited by Alek Al Spera, who holds evidence of Beau and Darcy’s sex sessions and blackmails her. Everyone knows a different secret but if someone puts everything together…

The film is not actuall concerned about gay issue and how to deal with it. No it has nothing to do with any political statement on the subject, trying to break stereotypes or repeat them. Its subject is not even how a parent should deal with their children homosexuality. The Deep End is a great, well built thriller with little flaws and a great cast. Without basing his suspence on violence or the mystery, it manages to keep you at the edge of your seat. Despite some loss of rythme and being a bit too calm at points, it is dark and cinematographed in a unique way, making you dive into the deep dark waters of the lake along with its hereos.

But why add it on the queer section? Actually the whole story ticks around the hidden secret and the shame of the homosexual affair, the blackmail, the mother’s shock, the fear of the father discovering. When Margarette decides to stand for her son, she is still afraid of all the social critisism, her husband’s reaction. Al appears to blackmail her not for hiding a possible murderer, but for her sons homosexual adventures with a 30 year old guy. The directors never put it in the center of the attention, but they know the suspence created by the revelation. If Beau, accurately played by Jonathan Tucker, was having an affair with a woman there would be no story. It’s this need to hide things that iniciate the secrets and the blackmailing. Even if Margaret decides to protect her son and not disown him, she is still afraid. Beau is too comlicated to realise what is going on, while Al tries to make business with a sexual life that cannot surface. And the great thing they didn’t try to spice up any gy sex scene in order to establish a solid base of viewers (in other word keep your hand out of your pants if you look to see Tucker and Josh Lucas in hot scenes)

The two directors show a great love for their two leading characters, giving them enough depth and multidimentional possibilities, fully expoited by the wonderful and Golden Globe nominated Tilda Swinton (years before her oscar win for Michael Clayton) and ER’s Goran Visnjic. The two of them manage to keep up with the switches of their characters, making them beleivable and down to earth, no matter the situations they are dealing. In every step they take the secrets keep them bound and unable to break free. You probably missed it on its original release and also missed it when it was out on DVD, but still is one of these gems you have to discover, quiet and powerful, great performances, wonderful photography. Not a queer film in its core, but a true one to its subject and the way it tretas people. This tones of reality is at the fact what helps the creators to turn everyday life into suspence.

 

Some things must stay as they are…

The Dark Night is finally out and breaking box office records.

The Christian Bale incident is still a mystery.

Heath Ledger really stole the movie and wins in every scene he is in, having the juicy role that few actors could turn into a character and not a caricature. So suddenly the bored journalist have nothing to do but trying to create inexistencial stories that will sell. Do you care if Ledger’s last complete performance will earn him an oscar? Why bother about a story like that. Do you care who is going to replace him in the new movie (because it’s true that there will be a sequel after that kind of success). Moreover why replace him? why try to recreate another Joker story so soon, why not let the story to settle down, find some other dark Batman enemies for the next movie (i.e. re-introduce Catwoman a character so well built by Michelle Pfeifer, a second choice to Annette Benning, and eternally destroyed by Halle Berry and the dreadfull Pitof) there are so many in the comic books. The Batman chronicles are enormous and full of wonderful stories.

People insist on saying that Daniel day Lewis should replace Ledger on the next movie, but in his honour, Lewis just told at his acceptance speeches to let Ledger rest in piece and his family to grieve. It’s true that the Dark Night really won a great audience because it works a bit like a great tribute to the actor, since it’s a great conclusion with an exceptional performance. The same may happen with Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus with Colin Firth, Jude Law and Johnny Depp stepping in to complete Ledger’s performance. Thanks to the story and some re-writes the creators of the film managed to keep Ledger’s scenes, while the rest ofthe actors will play the rest of the incarnations of Tony as he travels between imaginary worlds. Atribute or an exploitation I don’t know. But still is more honest than all these fake articles about Ledger deserving an award or not. Probably if he was alive the Academy wouldn’t even consider it an option.

I have to admit that my conclusion in my Last Goodbye to Heath Ledger was really wrong, the “no more gossips” ending was really too good to be true.

 

A New Week exploring queer cinema (ANGELOS)

it is usually mentioned as the first gay film and for sure in 1982 it was a great shock to anyone to watch such a film, especially when it managed to win the three main awards in the Thessaloniki Film Festival. If you hate spoilers don’t read the rest of it, and don’t see the trailer that reveals all (don’t ask me why).

Angelos is a young gay guy in his early twenties living in Athens. He comes from a dysfunctional family, with an acoholic lazy father, an hysterical mother and a handicapped sister. As it is expected he hides his sexuality from his family. When he meets a sailor Michalis he falls hard for him and decides to move in with him. Michalis slowly makes him go out in drag and pushes him into prostitution. Angelos slowly enters in a dark world, selling out his body for money, on his lover profit. During this period he learns that his grandomtehr and hsi mother were also prostitutes, while he is called to join the army. Still he goes on working in the streets, till one day his beaten up by some furious policemen while being with a client. The army decharges him and his secret is revealed to his family, leading his father to commit suicide out of shame. Slowly Angelos realizes that he is being taken advantage by his male lover and he ends up killing him.

The film is based on a true story and it tries hard to stay on the objective side of things. In a way Giorgos Katakouzinos’ direction tries to embrace his problematic character and shows the narrow minded and blind society that surround him in the darkest colours possible, without trying to excuse his hero’s actions. Angelos is one of these doomed characters that really has not a slight piece of hope left, and that is the biggest problem of this movie. Even when Angelos is in love and actually happy he is never left a single moment of  happiness.

His family is a great burden and actual nightmare, a problem on its own, while he has to struggle with his sexuality. His lover is one of these bastards that take advantage of him nearly from the start and no matter what goes on in his life Angelos seems too lost and confused to actually enjoy it. His quest for love just leads him to the next bad step. The worst of all is that this kind of story is too close to the truth of the early 80’s Greece, where prostitution was one of the few solutions left for uneducated gay guys. No matter how hard Katakoyuzinow tries to live up some scenes on a gay party, or some frivolity moments with the transvestites in the streets, Angelos’ fate is over imposed on the film making it a bit monotonous.

The bad lighten shots come over you and adds to the ill-fated story we watch, while Michalis Maniatis interpretation of the young guy lacks any effort of change of mood. On one hand he is good with his quite behaviour and his lost look, as he highlights Angelos nearly pathetic view of life, leaving himself being led by others. On the other hand he never manages to rise above the rythmless script, staying to quite and to transparent even in moments that a reaction is needed. You cannot blame the brave actor for this, as I think it was Katakouzinos’ will to let his hero being blown by the wind. On the other side Katerina Helmy manages to shine in her much better written and hysterical role, while the former Minister of Education Eleni Kourkoula plays her first role as a mentally handicapped girl.

What really makes the movie tick is the way it potrays the hypocrisy of the greek society in some key scenes of the movie. The shocked village throwing stones to Angelos’ grandmother when she started revealing dark secrets for the whoring of different women in the village in their husbands’ knowledge, the way the alcoholic and lazy father decides to commit suicide ashamed of his son, the shocked policemen that beat angelos, the police director who cannot accept that a soldier is also a faggot, the way Michalis tries to stay as mucho as he can depsite sleeping with men. Small moments that link you with a harsh reality that is still alive and kicking (you in the face).

The 126 minutes of the film are quite longer from what the script could support and Katakouzinos tries to say everything in one story, without totally controlling it and loosing in the decoupage game, but still it was the first and fearfully the last film in the 80’s that could go into that path (plus it was a time when greek “quality movies” had to have great silences and a slow paced rythme). He won me over for trying to show Angelos’ effort to break free, for falling into kitsch and camp only because of the ’80’s and not becauuse of his subject, for trying to show society’s faults, for turning againist hyposcrisy, for adding to the greek filmography men kissing and having sex. Maybe he never manages to balance everything but still is a must see for any one intrested in queer cinema around the world, despite the usual faults.

 

A New Week exploring queer cinema (MYSTERIOUS SKIN)

We arrive in what I consider to be the peak of Greg Araki’s filmogaphy. In Mysterious Skin style stays in the picture but the sensitivity of Araki’s first steps returns and really moves you, part because of the original story part because Araki for the first time films his heroes with love and tenderness, but still staying on the edge of what is filmable or not.

The story is divided in two characters.

The 8 year old Brad lackey in 1981 woke up having lost five hours of his life. For ten years he tries to discover what had happened during this time, being sure that he was abducted by aliens, while his father never really seems to care about the incident.

On the other side you have Neil McCormick who at the age of 8 was in love with his coach, who introduced him to his first sexual experiences, while his mother doesn’t really cares. 10 years later the openly gay Neil is still passionate about his coach and pushes his sexual experiences to the limit, while being unable to let any one near him.

Brad tries so hard to remember while Neil cannot forget, both lost in the tyrrany of their memories.

Araki chose to adapt for the screen Scott Heim’s first and critically and commercially successful novel, and that was a great thing. On one hand the novel’s dark material and the mind games that memory plays, allowed him to keep his imagery alive as in his previous movies, on the other hand the tight story never let the plot get lost into lynch-like mazes and out of the blue resolutions. It’s probably the first time that Araki actually like his characters, he feels for them and captures them.

He is also lucky to have such a talented cast to play Neil and Brad in the different ages, with Joseph Gordon-Levitt outstanding as the 18 year old Neil, followed by Brady Corbet (lately seen in the american version of Michael Haneke’s Funny Games). He also has a great supporting cast with Elizabeth Shue as Neil’s mother and the well-known in the indy films Bill Sage as the paedophile coach.

The subject of paederasty is always at the edge, even by mentioning or implying it. Araki dares to enter and create images of it and never becomes exploitive of the subject. He never treats the subject as an erotic situation, on the contrary his voluptuous camera, creates a thriller level suspense as you never know when is going to stop. Earnest and direct he slwly crates a tension that will not allow you to stop watching it. i saw it on video with my mother and despite the fact that she hated the subject and the gay scenes made her realy uncomfortable she desperately wanted to see the end of the story and what was next.

It was the first time that Araki actually embraced hsi story and didn’t let his stylistic tendencies to control the movie. For the Araki fans his most complete film, even though not his most flamboyant. For the rest a great movie that you should have never missed, and deserved much more attention. For me unmissable and beyond its queer cinema label.

and a clip with Mylene Farmer’s sublime Redonne-Moi

 

A New Week exploring queer cinema (NOWHERE)

Since we started the Greg Araki cycle I will go on from where Doom Generation left. Actually it leads to Nowhere. The plot is nearly undescribable but still let’s try to sum up what is going on in that film.

Nowhere chronicles 24 hours of some alienated Los Angeles teenagers. Despair, alienation, failing relationships and imagine the rest. Things are centered around 18-year-old Dark, an alienated UCLA film student, his bisexual African-American girlfriend Mel, her purple-haired, acid-tongued lesbian girlfriend Lucifer, Dark’s homosexual classmate Montgomery, and Montgomery’s poetess friend Alyssa. Into the set entera queer industrial rock star named Cowboy; his drug-addicted lover and band mate Bart, the local drug dealer Handjob, his live-in S&M girls Kris and Kozzy, the intellectual Dingbat and her older brother Duckey, the bulimic Egg, Alyssa’s self-destructive twin brother Shad and his girlfriend Lilith. Mel’s little brother Zero and his blond girlfriend Zoe, plus a Teen Idol so famous that no one needs to utter his name, a trio of Atari gang members, nattering Valley girls, scary drag queens, a pragmatic party, Logan from Baywatch and a mysterious alien from outer space that only Dark sees.

Confused, yes it’s normal, Araki actually takes the idea of Totally F***ed up and puts it on acid, combining it with visuals he tested in Doom Generation. If Totally F***ed up was portraying the Los Angels bored generation X and Doom Generation tried to be an ellegory of sexual discovery and self distruction, nowhere just throws evrything on you and leaves it up to you to find any meaning. I don’t know if Araki actually cared about plot, he just had the oportunity to create unique set-pieces and a series of events that you will never see in a mainstream movie.

The first half of themovie just passes by with people talking abou sex or doiong sex to prove that the new generation is so corrupted and in need of something to believe. First you realize that no matter how much you think about your sex life compared to the 1997 Araki generation you are the most conservative guy (girl) of the world. Kinky, homosexual, S/M, fetishes anything on your screen shot in a frenzy way that it’s more anxious than erotic. Slowly religion comes in as a result of lost morals and lost soul, as comes the invisible alien to kill all the sinners. Till the end you are in limbo of what you have been watching.

The film is also a who is who of the yound actors of the time. You get to have two beverly Hills stars Shanen Doherty and Kathleen Robertson, you have Married with Children Christine Applegate, you have a pre-American Beauty/Pie Mena Suvari, Heather Graham shagging Ryan Philippe, Rose McGowan, Baywatch’s Jaason Simmons, Chiarra Mastroianni, denise Richards in her first steps, some porn actors and the Araki casual connecting all this trilogy (Totally, Doom and this) James Duval. Sex is in the air and it’s funny to watch all of them playing characters so close to them or that they will never risk to play again, once the mainstream accepted them.

What is left in the end is a movie that you can love for it’s style and the visual valor but if you need a story you are doomed. Araki is out of control and probably lost, and his lynch-style story needed a lot more to be actually acceptable. Still his style, the music, the rythme save him from a complete turkey. He really shows that the american society no matter how much liberated wants to be, no matter I don;t care about manners, is always imprisoned of a conservatism that slowly wins over them. The masks of heterosexuality and comme-il-faut falls down each second of the movie.

The greatest thing about these Araki films is that they gave him the oportunity to get rid of all these stuff and later show an emotional side that we have almost forgot. if you want to see it the whole film is on you tube in 9 parts.

 

A New Week exploring queer cinema (THE DOOM GENERATION)

For some strange reason this was actually the movie that marked Greg Araki’s Style, despite the fact that it is only this and his following one (Nowhere) that actually adopted such extreme visuals and surrealism as a style.

Jordan White and Amy Blue, two troubled teens, pick up an adolescent drifter, Xavier Red, when they somehow save him from the attack of some homophobic gang. After a while they just throw him on the street, only to met him up later in a store. A murder takes place and the three of them flee together, bonded strongly after this common fate. The bisexual Xavier will make the two kids explore themselves and their limits, as the three of them will jump into a road trip into Hell, full of sex, perversion, fasists, talking heads (not the band), violence and godsend signs of the up coming apocalypse.

This is supposed to be an “Heterosexual film by Greg Araki” and I have to admit that in that way Araki tries to define the new face of the queer cinema. A cinema that doesn’t concentrate on portraying homosexual couples or kids. Quite the contrary it tries to present the complete scale of sexuality. Avoiding the simplicity of the boy-meet-girls or boy-meets-boy that actually conquers in the usual American filmography, Araki likesto explore the hidden secrets of his country and everything that you can consider abnormal.

And it’s true that during this trip to Hell (ok it’s America but the symbolisms here come and go like that) Amy, Jordan and the sexually charged Xavier meet so many people, and they live up to the next extreme. From a hunted trio they turn into the next Natural Born Killers, but here there is no political correctness to stop them. They drive, the fuck, they kill as long as Araki believes that there is another limit to cross.

When you talk about style here is the movie. The whole story is actually based on the visuals and the next extreme that the director-writer wants to explore. It’s true that the road movie formula, that explores America really gives him the right to present no matter how many peculiar cases he thinks of. After a while you even stop thinking about them being a bit too much. The whole film is out of the normal right from the start. If you are a fan of narrative cinema and you love analyzing the story, yo really are doomed here. You don’t have any chance of loving this.

Of course you cannot say that the film is a queer film in the typical sense. There is too much of Rose McGowan’s tits in the shots, homosexuality is nearly mentioned, no matter how hot you can consider Jonathan Schaech to be, or James Duval (though I have to admit Schaech look in his voyeristic scene is really something). Araki films all the three of them with passion and  makes sexuality to conquer  the air.

This film is about speed, frenzy rhythm, hysteria, nudity, exploration of sex. No actual characters, rare connection to reality, despite making an interesting allegory, that is to pushed to actually convince you. Style is the question here and that’s why most of people who loved Araki connect him with this movie. It’s really powerful and stays in your mind only for its visuals. But to tell you the truth I don’t think that these visuals and the eccentricities are actual what makes Araki’s films rally tick and 10 years after this 1995 film he proved me right. I think Araki is more sensitive and much better when he manages to control his appetite for stylish cinema. The hype never actually helped him, especially when the film sometimes is considered as another Trainspotting, another Kids or just a Rose McGowan vehicle. Too bad that most people connect Araki with this kind of movie.

 

A New Week exploring queer cinema (THE NEXT BEST THING)

Madonna is coming in Athens and since sales starts on Friday I feel obliged to talk about John Schlesinger’s The Next Best Thing, Maddy’s queer movie.

Abbie is around 40 having an on-again-off-again-affair with Kevin. Abbie desperately tries to keep on going with Kevin, who one day decides to dump her for good. Abbie runs to her friend Robert for help. Robert openly gay never liked Kevin, and tries to show her the bright side of life. they get drunk, the laugh and they wake up naked next to each other. After a few weeks Abbie is pregnant, and Robert is obviously the father, so they decide to raise the child together. What a great thing raising a kid with your best friend, no marital restrictions, a family and complete understanding. The problem is that it’s not so easy to balance things and you can never say you have counted everything. They both enter in relationships that is hard to keep. What happens then when Abbie decided to move on?

The film really has a big point to talk about. No matter how much people try to go away from the social conventions and heteronormative rules, we are still drowned by them.  Abbie is sure that has found the perfect partner for life, so does Robert.  Soon they realize that they still have the need of an actual relationship. Their perfect new-found family is jeopardized every time Robert is on a date, or Abbe meets another guy. The question was who would be the first to crack. Unfortunately the screenplay cannot go that deep into the characters. The film is treated like a romantic comedy or as a TV drama movie, i cannot tell. The dark side of these characters is only scratched, because people were afraid to move to that direction, despite having the perfect cast to do so.

Schlesinger loses his rhythm bit by bit. He tries to talk about gay life, unconventional families, love, parenthood, court system but he still wants to keep things light and joyous. Unfortunatelly things are not that light, so the humour is lost really quickly, while his effort to avoid darkness makes the dramatic  aspect shallow and the viewer never gets to  care.

I don’t know where the whole thing got lost. Madonna could be the perfect Abbie, who’s bitchiness and stubbornness is shown from the beginning, while she tries to actually chain Kevin with her. On the contrary they tried to squeeze to much of sweetness in her character, while Madonna tries to prove that she is just playing a 40 year old desperate to have some family, while she still shines. Rupert Everett has proven his ability to play the extreme gay to the straight acting gay, to the straight. He is never given the lines and most of the film he plays the pathetic guy, while he is to sexy to be that pathetic. Benjamin Bratt never makes any impact, Alias Michael Vartan is really sexy and cute, but never convincing as the bastard  he has to play and  a character actor like Illeana  Douglas is once more waisted on nothing.

A subject so shallow treated that the movie’s 108 minutes seem to have no end, especially as the court scenes sarts and you watch people being more and more silly. At the end you just feel that Madonna should just stick to the shows. Not because she is that bad as an actor, or that she makes bad choices. She will always be bigger than her characters and that can never work. That’s why she managed to work out Evita Peron, the heroine had the right analogy of glam and flare.

What stayed from film was actually Madonna’s cover to Don Mclean’s classic, American Pie. I loved the original too much,

but I have to admit that she managed to make it survive the Millennium.

 

A New Week exploring queer cinema (TOTALLY F***ED UP)

I was looking my list of movies and I realized the lack of a Greg Araki film. Araki, if you ask me, is in this category of directors that exists only thanks to movie geeks and queer cinema. His movies are rarely complete, his scenarios tend to be more and more incoherent and his surreal and sexually charged atmosphere is the only argument of defense.

Totally Fucked Up is Araki’s third film and the one that started his Teenage Apocalypse Trilogy (that also includes Doom Generation and Nowhere).

The film chronicles the dysfunctional lives of six Los Angeles gay adolescents who have formed a family unit and struggle to get along with each other and with life in the face of various major obstacles. With Andy his main center of attention we follow them as their parents kicked them out, they’re broke and bored, their lovers cheat on them, and they’re harassed by fag-bashers. If things are going to be this way, maybe suicide isn’t a bad idea; at least not in the mind of Andy, our major protagonist, who gives the film its title by describing himself as “totally fucked up.”

The movie is not on everyone’s taste. I can say that is rather boring in the way it tries to become the Godard of the queer generation X. people talking to the camera, a mocumentarish cinematography, the grain to show the poor media or the artistic style. Araki who had some serious issues himself tries to portray a generation that doesn’t know where it’s going. Neither does the director. He tries hard to be philosophical, he tries hard to keep the rhythm but he looses the battle. At the end what remains is a stylish, simple cinematography that never actually prepares you for the hyper-kinetic follow ups. What makes the film tick is the sensibility at it’s core, the need to show how life works. No matter how often the rhythm is lost, there is an episode that will atract your attention. Plus you meet James Duval, actually Araki’s alter ego, that you will see nearly in every film of his.

In total the movie is a must see, thanks to its status in the queer cinema genre. Araki is an interesting cinematographer that got too exploitive at a point, before coming back to his sensitive roots. Tottally F***ed up is the film at the edge of his early period with his grandiose one. Simple and truthful lacks the decoupage that could make it tick, but still remains a great documentation of the outcasts and a gay life that is neither partying all the time, neither I am sad because I am gay.

The big disadvantage of the film is that you cannot exclude it from its genre, you cannot see it outside of th queer movement, because then you stay with a mediocre film of good intentions and some stylish efforts that work at some points but never as a whole.