Movie Review: The Kids Are All Right (2010)

The Kids are All Right opens with Laser (Josh Hutcherson), a fifteen-year-old skateboarder capable of getting into some mischief. He and his friend Clay barrel down a neighborhood street, knocking over curbside trashcans and wreaking suburban havoc. In a garage, Clay smashes up a prescription pill, snorts it, and then commands that Laser do the same. He does, and soon they're sky high, wrestling in Clay's living room as his trashy father berates them. As the father jokingly wrestles his cracked-out teenage son to the ground, Laser looks on with a passive, almost envious smile.

Following Laser is a good place to start this film. The son of two lesbian mothers and the less ambitious, less talented sibling to an older, valedictorian sister, Laser is the only male in his family, and also the youngest and most powerless. He's a good kid, pretty reasonable and fairly level-headed, but he's at an age where committing meaningless criminal acts begins to look like an appealing opportunity. Will he become wayward and impressionable, or will he develop a strong, independent personality? Does his look as he watches his friend's father suggest a silent yearning for a male role model? What does it mean for a boy to be raised by two alternately doting and high-strung mothers yet have no positive older men to look up to?

The opening of The Kids Are All Right suggests all of these themes, and when Laser soon after initiates the movie's main plot--getting in touch with the anonymous donor who contributed half of the kids' genes via a sperm bank almost two decades ago--the screenplay further cements the idea that this is Laser's story.

It's not. His acts of delinquency go unnoticed and unpunished by his parents. His desire for a father figure remains unfulfilled, even after meeting his biological father. Quickly, as the film switches to the moms as the main characters, Laser drifts to the periphery of the film and the family, almost serving as a nonperson in much of the proceedings. During emotional scenes as the rest of the family breaks down in tears, he is oddly silent and awkwardly non-responsive, almost emotionally detached from the people who are supposedly closest to him. I know "teenage boys don't cry," but trust me, they do. Laser never does, perhaps because within the scenes we see he has no relationship with anyone. One of his mothers, Nic (Annette Bening), the powerful, bread-winning matriarch of the family, constantly cuts him off, mocks him, or dismisses him. (The film's final line, in fact, is a sarcastic "Thank you, Laser" directed to him in the backseat before the camera moves to focus exclusively on the two mothers, who we are made to believe are much more important than him. The sarcasm is appropriate given the context, but it's also uncomfortably dismissive given that Laser's prior remark may be deeper than its surface appears.) His other mother, Jules (Julianne Moore), has too many personal issues to resolve within the film's time span for her to have much of a relationship with either of her kids, and his sister Joni (Mia Washikowska) maintains a civil but altogether unintimate friendship with him.

At best, his role in the film is warped by his mothers into an irrelevant subplot where they attempt to project onto him a level of meaning that they would appreciate yet that has nothing to do with him or reality. Concerned about his only close relationship--the dysfunctional friendship with his idiot punk friend Clay--Nic and and Jules begin to assume that their son is gay. There's absolutely no reason to assume this; there's nothing gay about the kid, and any mother with any sense and likewise any lesbian with any gaydar should know that (and trust me, both of these are intuitions that exist in a very real, very physical sense), but through some combination of wishful thinking and an attempt to justify their son's need to have someone with a penis in his life, they wander into a silly subplot of questioning and interrogation. "You know you can tell us anything and we won't judge you," they tell him. It's supposed to ironically comical--imagine two gay parents being judgmental and unsupportive of their gay son!--but the scene comes across as insulting and unrealistic. Later, when Nic jokingly confesses, "I wish you were gay--then maybe you'd be more sensitive," the remark is oddly stereotypical, bluntly unloving, and reveals an unspoken chasm between the two. She judges him for not being gay. In a world where men are bullies (Clay), slobs (Clay's father), nincompoops (an effete friend who, in a brief scene, delivers a silly monologue about açaí smoothies), sex objects (the couple, oddly enough, watch vintage gay male porn during sex), racist tropes (an Hispanic gardener is ridiculed and then fired for no reason by Jules), wallpaper (Joni's best friend is a passive, nonsexual Scrabble player), or villains (the biological father), Nic desperately tries to find some justification for Laser and his presence in her life. "Maybe, God willing," she seems to think, "he will be gay, and then I can in some way relate to him."

I'm not saying this is how real lesbians or real lesbian mothers think and behave. I think it's far from impossible for a middle aged lesbian woman to have a relationship with her teenage straight son. But, given Laser's presence in this film, writer-director Lisa Cholodenko suggests otherwise. Maybe it's Josh Hutcherson's fault. He was okay in Disney's Bridge to Terabithia (2007), but maybe he didn't have the acting chops to pull off more meaningful scenes, and perhaps those intended scenes were left on the cutting room floor. That doesn't seem likely, though.

Laser only has two other major--though very brief--segments in the film. One is an irrelevant scene in which he and the sperm donor Paul (Mark Ruffalo) attempt to bond while shooting hoops. They get into a heated discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of burial and cremation. Whether this scene hints at Laser's obsession with death--or at any other deeper psychological meaning--is never disclosed; the topic is never mentioned again. The other segment is a pair of scenes involving him, Paul, and Clay. Paul witnesses Clay's rude, controlling behavior toward Laser, and rather than perceiving a nonexistent homoerotic subtext or clothing his advice in the meaningless self-help jargon that the moms are prone to speaking in ("How do you feel that your relationship with Clay is developing your path to self-actualization?"), Paul bluntly and honestly tells Laser that he doesn't like Clay's disrespectful behavior. Laser defensively dismisses Paul as being a misinterpreting, interfering idiot, but in their next scene together, as Clay tries to force Laser to hold a stray dog still while Clay pisses on its head, Laser finally stands up for himself and ends his friendship with the loser. Paul's amiable honesty enacts Laser's only change--and one of the only positive developments--in the film, whereas the mothers' doting and clinical "love" only results in confusion and frustration.

And yet, despite this, the film presents Paul as the villain. Mark Rufallo plays the character as he plays many of his roles: charming, relaxed, harmless, and aimless. As a young man he donated sperm out of combination of wanting to help people and needing the sixty dollars. Whether his intentions were truly noble or not is irrelevant; can the donation of sperm (or blood or plasma or any renewable resource) ever be deemed a serious, altruistic sacrifice? In any case, people were willing to pay for his sperm, and the family in the film would perhaps never have existed if not for donors like him. As a fortysomething, he owns and operates a successful, nice-looking, upscale casual restaurant using organic ingredients that he grows himself in a local cooperative farm. His employees all seem to like him, and I think most people would agree that--with his nice, large home and his cool record collection, his extensive wine collection and his BMW motorcycle--he has done pretty well for himself. Maybe he hasn't changed the world in any drastic way, but what would our country be without cool restaurants, and how many people honestly change the world anyway?

None of that is good enough for Nic, however. If she's to have a man in her life, he needs to be the perfect kind of man, a textbook example of a positive role model. She ridicules him for having dropped out of college, and she dismisses his autodidacticism as being dangerous, even though he is probably more successful and happier than many people with college degrees. She dismisses his notable career as mere employment in the "food service industry," as though he is flipping burgers and operating a fryer. As an emergency room nurse, she curses his motorcycle driving, though he operates the vehicle with the fullest measure of safety. When Paul offers Jules the support and encouragement that Nic refuses to offer (Jules wants to start her own landscaping business, which Nic routinely dismisses as a foolish proposal)--in fact, when he offers anyone in the family the kind of bare bones, realistic, human advice that he's good for, inspired not by self-help books with boldfaced terms like "developmental process" but by actual exposure to reality--Nic attacks him as an interloping, vicious rogue.

But Paul is not foolhardy, nor he is an interloper. The kids contact him first; and their repeated contact brings him deeper into their lives. It is Nic's idea to invite him over to dinner at their house in order to "kill him with kindness." He plays along like a good sport, mostly because he has an earnest interest in understanding and loving these kindred spirits, but it is entirely their fault that he is a part of their lives.

At the first meeting between Paul and the kids, Laser sees his motorcycle and expresses his enthusiastic desire to ride one. He never has, however, because his parents refuse to let him. If Paul were dangerous or careless, or even if he simply wanted to impress or ingratiate himself into the lives of these new acquaintances, he might say something along the lines of, "What they don't know won't hurt them!" How many thoughtless adults try to buy the love of children by letting them do things they're not supposed to do? Nevertheless, it never crosses Paul's mind to violate the real parents' rule, and Laser never rides the motorcycle in the movie.

This early scene solidifies Paul's rather noble character, and further scenes--such as his honest talk with Laser about Clay--illustrate his presence as an honest, realistic, and positive influence. At one point he tells Joni, who is preparing to leave for college in a month, that the only way to initiate her path to independent adulthood is to initiate it herself. It's not the typical advice that parents give to children--that any adults give to children--but it's true. No adult should be dominated by a controlling mother for her entire life. Paul even bonds with Nic, albeit very briefly, over a shared love for the songwriter Joni Mitchell (the daughter's namesake).

His most damningly positive influence, however, is with Jules. Starved for affection, attention, encouragement, and purpose, Paul provides for the insecure Jules everything that the controlling, judgmental, disinterested Nic denies. Stirred by his good vibes, and weirdly aroused by his resemblance to her children, Jules initiates a frantic, stress-inducing love affair with him. Though he is complicit, she initiates it and she allows it to persist, despite her reservations.

Why does she have sex--lots of sex--with a man? Why does she watch gay male sex during lovemaking with her wife? Has she ever had sex with a man before? Is there some psychological need that only a man can fulfill? Is she as gay as we thought she was? Is she as gay as she thought she was? The affair is the major focus of the film's many divergent, confused subplots, yet these interesting questions are either never raised or scarcely discussed. That's okay, since what's most important is Jules's need to feel loved, but it's odd that this lesbian-made film manifests that need in such an uncomfortably sexual way. I didn't like how these films were dismissed as mere comedy. When a middle aged, married lesbian has an exuberant affair with a man she's just met, I want more than a few jokes. I want insight.

But Lisa Cholodenko doesn't offer insight. Instead, the affair--and Nic's discovery of the affair--is used as the kick that sends Paul's character toppling down. Joni dismisses his positive influence, discoloring his entire personality because of one mistake that wasn't entirely his fault. Laser, who can so easily remove people from his life because he apparently forms no attachments to anyone, shrugs him off with a hateful glance and nary a goodbye. Following an earnest, naive, and completely unbelievable confession of love, Jules hangs up on him in disgust, in a way pushing all the responsibility onto him for her mistake. Nic, however, is given the final word; in an angry telling off, she accuses him of being an "interloper" and tells him that if he wants a family, he should go create his own instead of ruining other people's. That's Paul's last scene. The film continues for about fifteen more minutes, but it continues without Paul, who is outcast without a chance to defend himself. In these final scenes, happiness abounds and normality returns. Jules makes a tearful apology. Everyone cries (except Laser). Everyone hugs (except Laser). Joni grows up and goes to college. The couple holds hands, and all is right in the world.

The Kids Are All Right would be quite interesting if it highlighted its unfairness toward Paul. His only real flaw in the movie is a presumptuous dismissal he gives to a waitress/lover (played in a brief but convincing role by the beautiful Yaya DaCosta), with whom he ends his affair by explaining that he wants a serious relationship (and thus assuming that she is incapable of being serious). Even this flaw, however, reveals a yearning toward some goodness (i.e., he is in love with Jules, which is the real reason for the breakup). Despite his dearth of serious shortcomings, the film gives him the short shrift. By giving the last word to the film's least likable character, Nic, whose only saving grace (and she even admits this in a pointed comeback that's supposed to make us fully side with her) is that she's monogamous, the film effectively vilifies Paul and lends credence to all of Nic's prejudgments of him (that he is ignorant for dropping out of school, that he is reckless for driving a motorcycle, etc.). While the film could serve as a contrast to Nic's triumph--either through the cinematography or the structure or the title or something--it doesn't. The unrealistically happy epilogue, in which Paul disappears and is forgotten about, reinforces Nic's victory. Cholodenko wants us to conclude that Paul was harmful. Though he only exacerbated preexisting problems, we are supposed to conclude that he created them. Though he could very well play a positive, albeit limited, role in the children's lives, we must conclude that this is an impossibility. As in the beginning, the family can only truly function if Nic is in complete control. "Thank you, Laser," but please shut up.

The Kids Are All Right is a scattered, confused, and rather offensive film. Lisa Cholodenko's cinematic condemnation of Paul is an accusation that men are at worst destructive influences or at best unnecessary. I know that many male filmmakers--and in fact men throughout history--
have been making some of the same accusations against women since the dawn of time. I know that in a majority of movies and books they don't even have to prove these accusations; they can simply assume them, like in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest with its sexist hero, its evil antifeminine villains, and its acclaim of mindless, men-praising prostitutes. But the solution to this unjust societal structure isn't to create a mere mirror image of hatred. A narrow-minded, mistaken condemnation of all men is no closer to reality, justice, or progress than all the misogynistic portrayals that have come before it. It does nothing to balance the scales, but merely upsets them.

What is to become of Laser, uninvolved and unimportant in the back seat of the car? Must he simply accept that he is purposeless? Joni might be "all right," but will Laser ever be?

A dramatically inert and cinematographically flavorless film, though The Kids Are All Right boasts a couple of fine performances (notably Mia Wasikowska and Julianne Moore) and a few interesting moments, its puzzling screenplay raises troubling questions that it no way attempts to answer.

The Kids Are All Right (2010)
d/w: Lisa Cholodenko
(Annette Bening, Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo)
4/10

Movie Review: Wild Tigers I Have Known (2006)

Cam Archer's debut feature film, Wild Tigers I Have Known, at times perfectly illustrates what it's like to realize that you are gay at the age of thirteen.

Malcolm Stumpf plays the film's coming-of-age hero, Logan, a boy who spends a lot of time alone or avoiding being picked on or delving into idealized, not-quite-sexual masturbation fantasies. By most standards Logan should measure up to being deemed cool by his junior high peers: he has an awesome wardrobe (heart-splattered sweaters, vintage tees, fashionably cut hoodies) and wispy salon hair, he's just intelligent and funny and soft spoken enough to not be offensive in either direction (neither too brainy or too dumb), and he's neither fat nor ugly. He should be quite popular, and yet his only friend, Joey (Max Paradise), is a nerdy, awkward child with a horrible haircut and the most bizarre bedroom ever filmed (think lava lamps, globes, and slide projectors).

Logan's alienation is more of a self-fulfilling prophecy, a defense mechanism from within that has forced him to remove himself from "normal" friends so that others, as well as he himself, can avoid discovering how severe his abnormality is. Logan is gay, a fact he doesn't quite understand. He denies being gay--"gay," after all, is an insulting term, so who in their right mind would ever admit to being it?--but knows that he likes boys, a fact he confesses to an uncomfortable Joey late in the film. If he can avoid being too close to people, then Logan can avoid ever having to reveal his secrets to others, and he can avoid the rejection that may come from his confused, frightened peers when this secrets are inevitably revealed. Logan has chosen loneliness, but a prevaricating conversation with his guidance counselor reveals he dreams of a world where he is loved by others.

He mostly wants to be loved by Rodeo (Patrick White), an older, sullen rebel without a cause whose quest to be a true loner drives him to befriend the uncool, younger kid. Rodeo tells Logan exactly what he wants to hear--that he doesn't hate him--and their friendship begins as a meaningful one. But the relationship enters darker territory when Rodeo begins feeding his own self-esteem at the expense of Logan's affections by fueling the boy's obvious though secret desires. It's a scenario that can only end in disaster, and it perfectly illustrates the disastrous nature of most teenage relationships, where each side is driven more by its own alienated insecurity than by any mutual understanding.

Cam Archer has beautifully photographed a sad childhood--an intense era of raging hormones, of crushing loneliness, of desperation, of morbid depression, of constantly fearing failure and rejection, of yearning to be loved and understood, and of being unable to understand even yourself. With cinematography by Aaron Platt, Archer has painted an impressionistic vision of a contradictory time: a time that is beautiful and yet obsessed with ugliness, a time that we wish would just hurry up and pass and yet carries with it such important moments in life, a time when our bodies demand sex though our minds can't quite comprehend it. Much of the film is spent with Logan alone, either watching him navigate his loneliness in bathrooms or while staring at the television, or else entering into his mind in more personal journeys--elegant yet sex-free sex fantasies that emphasize his own desire to be beautiful as much as his desire to see beauty in the flesh, frightened flashes of bullies, and vague yearnings of death.

There isn't much dialogue or action in the movie, which is perhaps best given the amateurish acting of the young cast. Fairuza Balk, as Logan's exhausted and demanding mother, gives a solid turn as a woman who can provide just the right tenderness at precisely the right moment yet who mostly resorts to thoughtless criticism and stress-inducing nagging. In that respect she's a typical, complex mother, a woman who's not always a teenager's best friend yet will always be there with love and forgiveness. The screenplay doesn't demand much of Stumpf rather than his mere presence, tortured yet surviving, so in that regard Stumpf is solid. His subtle facial expressions, mixed with subjective sound, editing, and photography, comprise the basic plot of this artsy film: an emotional journey from fear and self-loathing into independence and security. A subplot involving mountain lions, one of which has recently wandered onto school grounds provoking fear and its extermination, cleverly manifests the movie's theme of irrational fear. The mountain lion, as frightened as the kids it encounters, not wishing to harm anyone except to defend itself, is a lot like any kid let loose on a junior high campus: capable of serious damage but mostly just wanting to find and get back to its place in the world.

Wild Tigers I Have Known is an elegantly filmed, poignant, and genuine debut film, likely the first of many notable films to come from the young Cam Archer. It's not perfect in its presentation. I for one am tired of films about gay or sexually confused teenagers always featuring a scene in which the youngster dresses in makeup and women's clothing in a bathroom (L.I.E., Billy Elliot, Ma Vie en Rose, Hallam Foe). I never did nor ever felt interested in doing that, something that hints at a desire to be female (or at least the ease that would come in securing boyfriends if one were female) which, I think, is more prevalent in films about gay men than in reality. Yet despite cliches like this, the film is overall truthful and fresh.

Wild Tigers I Have Known (2006)
d/w: Cam Archer
(Malcolm Stumpf, Fairuza Balk, Patrick White)
7/10

Movie Review: Milk (2008)

A couple of months ago, I expressed an optimistic excitement for the Harvey Milk biopic that recently came out. Having now seen the movie, I thought I'd clarify my disappointment.

Milk isn't a terrible movie--it's not even a bad movie--but it's nowhere near the level of gay masterpiece I hoped it would be. It's a conventional, unambiguous rallying cry with no real impact.

Gus Van Sant has done some very original, highly stylized, downright weird films in the past decade. My Own Private Idaho was Shakespeare's world populated by gay prostitutes, with still life sex scenes and split screens and over-the-top dialogue; Psycho was a more surreal (and more scandalous) shot-for-shot replay of the Hitchcock original; Elephant was a hyper-realistic photograph of teenage violence starring no-name high school actors; and so on. His most conventional film was Good Will Hunting, but that at least was moving and had momentum, as well as a terrific soundtrack. Milk is just plain standard. Each character--though based on real people--can be summed up in a simple sentence, such as Emile Hirsch's Cleve Jones, the tenacious queer who... well, I don't even need a full sentence. That's about it.

Sean Penn is convincing and sweet as the 40-year-old New York insurance man who realizes how boring his life is and decides to head west and make an impact. He seems to settle on a life of gay political activism simply because it's the most convenient; the attention, the theatrics, and the social bonding seem almost as important--if not more so--than the actual revolution.

Which is an interesting idea, but not one that the movie really allows you to dwell on. Milk, with its fast-paced biopic structure (here's one important event... then here's another one a year later... then a close friend dies... and then there's a small triumph... and then...) and its attention to political activism, wants to be a cry for equality, not a complex, ambiguous character study. Harvey is reduced to the role of hero, champion, martyr. You're not allowed to be skeptical of his background, his relationships, his motivation, his manipulative methods. You know he's the good guy because he's on the side of equality--the ends justify the means and all that--and so you have to root for him, and that's that.

But I don't enjoy that. I like rooting for villains. I like feeling sorry for the assholes. I like believing, even for just one turbulent moment, that what the psycho killer is saying makes perfect sense. And I can't stand a flawless hero. I can't stand being forced to side with someone.

And as for Harvey Milk as portrayed in this film--well, he just wasn't that inspirational. Look, I'm queer and I'm liberal and all of that. It's a subject that's very close to me. Plus, I'm a sucker for inspiration, and I cry several times a year in movie theaters. But his speeches and his rallies never made me feel anything other than mildly interested on an intellectual level. The bad direction is part of that--the cinematography choices were dreadful, with very little camerawork standing out as exceptional. With each march and protest, a still camera looks head-on at the faces of the few stars as they march forward. Why? If we're supposed to be immersed in the riot, to feel like we're a part of it, why would be facing the rioters? Why would we be so still? Why not throw the camera into the action, shakily following behind the other marchers? But there's none of that.

Maybe Van Sant was trying to prove that gay people are just as normal and boring as straight people, that their inspirational biopics can be just as color-by-numbers and boring as straight biopics. But who wants to see that? Harvey was loud--"My name is Harvey Milk, and I'm here to recruit you!"--Harvey was theatrical. The gay movement at that time loved to shout out loud. So why such a stifling story?

There's only one aspect of the film that's interesting, and that's the relationship between Harvey Milk and Dan White (Josh Brolin, in a fine performance), the straight-laced police officer and political rival. Their awkward dance is compelling--Dan "the man" tries to please and work with, however distantly, his minority colleague, while Harvey desires only to destroy the competitor who represents everything he detests and opposes. Dan keeps promises that Harvey breaks. Dan drunkenly stumbles in the shadows of his fading conservative beliefs--beliefs he doesn't even necessarily understand or trust anymore--while Harvey milks up the limelight. It's a sad and scary battle of wits, and one that paints a dark, political tinge on the otherwise spotless Harvey, but the theme is confined to a few short scenes and left largely unexplored.

As a movie focusing strictly on Dan vs. Harvey, this could have been a good film, but by expanding this into an eight-year-long historical examination of how great San Francisco is and how wonderful and downtrodden gay people always are, the movie strays into the realm of simple, sweeping statements. I'm disappointed by how much critical acclaim this film is getting; aside from Penn and Brolin it's rather lackluster.

Milk
d: Gus Van Sant w: Dustin Lance Black
(Sean Penn, Josh Brolin)
6/10

Real Men Die of Heart Disease

In a recent Hungry Man advertisement, three overweight construction workers realize that their snacks of choice--a large, pink Slurpee-type beverage, what appears to be a a large orange juice in a plastic container, and a yogurt (or perhaps ice cream? or gelato?)--have turned them into socializing, sentimental women:



The solution to restoring manhood? Swanson's Hungry Man frozen dinners, which get you full like a real man by packing you with, in the case of the "Country Fried Beef Patties," 45 g of fat (69% 2000 cal RDA), 50 mg of cholesterol (17%), 2160 mg of sodium (90%), and 24 g of sugar.

Or the "Hearty Breakfast": 1170 calories, 21 g of saturated fat (105%), 255 mg of cholesterol (85%), 74% of sodium, and 42% of daily recommended carbohydrates. All this for breakfast, mind you, with a beverage and at least two more meals around the corner.

Or, just for fun's sake, the XXL Roasted Carved Turkey (turkey's lean and healthy, right?): 225% sodium, 130% saturated fat, 89% total fat, 55% cholesterol, 58% carbohydrates, 1450 calories.

So to sum up: men must reject the immunity-building active cultures of low fat yogurt and Vitamin C of orange juice (the country's most popular breakfast juice), the temptation to use straws or spoons, and even the desire to imbibe unhealthy, sugar-saturated beverages (a medium Slurpee has 95 grams of sugar), especially those that fall within certain ranges of the color spectrum, in favor of obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and cruelty to animals. Because to be a man is to show reckless disregard for oneself while consuming and destroying everything in one's path. And to be a woman is--this is true--to have a longer average life span.

Otherwise you might as well hold your buddy's dick at the urinal.

Yes, what we sustain our bodies with is this important. Important enough to blur the essential mental distinctions between silly broads and actual people. On a similar note, vegans, eating tofu is making you homo. Just listen to this faggot.

Anticipating MILK

Gus Van Sant, the openly gay auteur behind My Own Private Idaho, Elephant, and Good Will Hunting is releasing a biopic in the next few months about Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official from San Francisco who was assassinated in 1978. Sean Penn's playing the title role, and I'm really excited about the trailer and the film, which also stars Emile Hersch, Diego Luna, and Josh Brolin.

Anyway, the trailer has gotten me thinking about gay films and how there really aren't many good gay films for us, by us, and about us. In fact, this might be the first masterpiece, assuming it's as good as the preview suggests. Queer people have always ruled literature, theater, art, fashion, and cuisine, and we've had some occasional breaks in television and music (I'm talking Elton John, not techno), but in the cinematic world we've always been left far behind, with lots of offensive, inaccurate, and just plain badly made portrayals. See my review of Dressed to Kill, where transsexuals are psychotic schizophrenics (see also Psycho, Silence of the Lambs...), or In & Out, where a man just suddenly (and comedically!) discovers that because he's effeminate he's also gay (much to the chagrin of the poor, helpless straight fiancee caught in the middle, who's just trying to find a nice man who doesn't take it up the ass). Or Philadelphia, with a straight director and a straight cast convincing a straight audience that gay people can be interesting when they're suffering to death from headline-grabbing illnesses. I won't even go into the insipid genre of gay-targeted movies, the kind you find in the showcase window of Lambda Rising, where there's always a shirtless twink on the cover, if not several, all abs and pectoral muscles and bedroom eyes, as if a film can't possibly be interesting if there's not a serious fuck factor. Another Gay Sequel, The Fluffer, Edge of Seventeen. God knows, most gay-themed films are as interesting as most teen sex comedies. How unique can the story of discovering you're attracted to boys, much to the possible disagreement of your mother, possibly be? Either that or you make it controversial, throwing in AIDS and prostitution, as if that's an integral part in every queer person's life.

Anyway, I thought I'd examine the few good gay movies that we have been offered in the past....

Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001): There may be very few good queer films, but at least one of them is flawless. This rock musical by and starring John Cameron Mitchell is about a confused, young, effeminate East Berlin boy who sees an out from the bland, communist world of oppressive mothers and colorless Gummi Bears by marrying an older American Marine. One catch, though: in order to get the proper marriage certificate and visa he has to become a woman, undergoing a brutal surgery that leaves him with one angry, bleeding inch of mutilated crotch. Abandoned in a Kansas City trailer park (the center of the country, a character who's in the center of a lot of dichotomies...), having become a woman without really wanting or needing to be one, Hedwig launches a quest of self-discovery that involves fucking a spineless, Bible thumping teenager (Michael Pitt) and starting a failed rock band. In the end, the film's about loving yourself--discovering who you are inside and learning to accept it, and how loving oneself is essential to loving and accepting everyone else. Forgiveness, wholeness within self-identity, sexual freedom... it's all embraced within a flawless film that's rounded out by great rock music, artful cinematography, a hilarious script, and powerful, convincing acting.

Queer as Folk (UK, 1999): Technically this was a television series, but its production, content, and running time suggest more of a very long, episodic film to American audiences. A not very physically attractive yet confident and personality-rich gay sex machine (Stuart) fuels his ego by constantly alluring his best friend of over a decade, an insecure and nerdy yet lovable gay man who loves science fiction and is actually more attractive but doesn't seem so because of his confidence issues (Vince). They get drunk, go to drug-drenched clubs, and hook up with strangers while dealing with judgmental parents, friends who die of drug overdoses, lesbian parent friends, and societal oppression. But, unlike the horrible American remake (which replaced hot scenes of pornography for actual content), it never came off as silly, pointless, forced, or sensational. Meanwhile, Vince stares longingly at Stuart and longs for the unrequited love affair that can never really happen, the tug-and-pull that enriches them both because of its inchoate quality. A break occurs when Vince meets a flawed Australian who actually gives him reciprocated love and attention (but, self-deriding Vince thinks, how genuine can that love and attention be if it's directed toward me?), the friendship dissolves when Stuart becomes jealous and Vince finally gives up on his impossible teases, and they end up in a cafe trying to speak truthfully to each other for the first time since meeting at age fourteen: "You can't [love him]. You can't even respect him. He loves Vince Tyler, so that makes him stupid. The moment he said it, it all just died.... You've done nothing, Vince. You go to work. You have a drink. You sit and watch cheap science fiction. Small world. What's there that's so impressive about that? What is there to love?" At which point depressed but knowing Vince shies off and agrees, "Yeah..." only to be rebutted by a dead-certain Stuart: "It was good enough for me." No consummation, no swelling score, no steamy sex, just one sad, reflective homo admitting that love is more than methamphetamines and techno music, political anarchy and taut abs. An emotional and realistic scene in an evocative and compelling series, and one that the American show comes nowhere close to.

Elephant (2003): This low-budget Gus Van Sant film, full of amateur high school actors (some of them quite bad), is loosely about the Columbine massacre. It's a strangely paced film that a few people adore and a lot of people hate, and I think its one of the most misunderstood movies of recent history. It's smart because it doesn't follow Hollywood formulae. Case in point: toward the end of the film, after the bloodshed begins, an intimidating-looking black character is introduced (Benny, with a title screen and everything) who looks prepared to save the day. He walks tall and strong toward the gunner, only to be as quickly and mercilessly shot down as everyone else who gets in the way. What the movie's really about, though, is gay alienation and how the current gay culture is failing gay children. What is The Fluffer really doing to advance self-esteem and gay rights? One point early on we witness a meeting of a gay-straight alliance, where the hip, well-adjusted students in attendance are discussing fashion and other frivolous topics. Meanwhile, the gay students who end up becoming the gunmen are having awkward sexual encounters, denying their deep-rooted feelings, and plotting acts of violence while enduring bullying for reasons they can't understand. Being gay might be fashionable these days for those who have the cajones to embrace it, but we're still a long way from teaching people not to hate themselves for being unable to understand their feelings of sexual attraction.

Capote (2005): A movie about an openly gay historical figure who's neither a tragic martyr nor a schizophrenic villain... a complex person grappling with issues of self-importance, deception, insecurity, fame... a complex person who also happens to be gay... just like many complex people in reality!

Angels in America (2003): An HBO original film based on Tony Kushner's Pullitzer Prize winning play about the AIDS epidemic: arch-conservative Ray Cohn (Al Pacino), despite getting AIDS from bareback fucking gay prostitutes, denies being a faggot because faggots are weak, unorganized, and pitiful, whereas he is strong, well-organized, and powerful. It's a statement on the origins of the AIDS epidemic, when Reagan refused to do anything to prevent it because it only affected drug addicts and homosexuals, that the rich conservative is able to dismiss his Kaposi sarcoma as liver disease and help fight it with the most expensive drug treatments while sincere, hardworking homosexuals with the same illness shit and bleed themselves to death because they're actual "faggots." This play/film is very "issue-oriented"--AIDS, Mormonism, etc.--but it works because of the poetic writing, the fantastic acting, the emotive direction. Jeffrey Wright as Belize (a country midway between north and south), Roy's genuine nurse who operates somewhere between male and female, black and white, bitter and compassionate, past and present, is the epitome of progress away from oppression, and is description of Heaven to a dying, frightened Cohn is one of the most beautiful passages of prose-poetry: "Bit city, overgrown with weeds. But flowering weeds. On every corner a wrecking crew and something new and crooked going up catty-corner to that. Windows missing in every edifice like teeth, gritty wind, and a gray, high sky full of ravens. Prophet birds, Roy. Piles of trash, but lapidary like rubies and obsidian, and diamond-colored cowspit streamers in the wind. And voting booths. And everyone in Balenciaga gowns with red corsages, and big dance palaces full of music and lights and racial impurity and gender confusion. And all the deities are creole, mulatto, brown as the mouths of rivers. Race, taste, and history finally overcome. And you ain't there."

The Laramie Project (2002): Another HBO original film, this one about the aftermath of Matthew Shepard's homophobic murder in Laramie, Wyoming, based on a Broadway play based on interviews with actual citizens from Laramie following the murder and trial. Matthew's lesbian best friend (Christina Ricci) reflects on his angelic qualities and her coping with his death. His sometime chaffeur (Steve Buscemi) muses that instead of dying in the pitch black barrenness that is rural Wyoming at night, he may have found solace in the shining stars and the flickering city lights in the distance. A closeted gay man with a broken leg watches the memorial march seen from the window on one side of his apartment expand to a massive movement by the time he limps to the window on the other side. And numerous other people, all completely real, struggle through the anger, sadness, and confusion of a despicable crime.

Happy Birthday (2002): I can't in good faith call this a "good" film, but I do have a strong soft-spot for it. This unheard-of feature debut from gay, Malaysian director Yen Tan is a ponderous, black-and-white, ensemble piece held together by the unnecessary fact that all of the main characters (half a dozen or so) happen to be celebrating birthdays on the date when most of the action falls. The budget was nonexistent, some of the actors seem to have been pulled from the street, a few of the subplots are distracting, and the birthday gimmick that ties it together is strange, but a few notable strengths stand out: some courageous new themes, some very talented unknown faces, and dialogue that, overall, is sharp and moving. Benjamin Patrick (who, according to IMDb, hasn't been in anything else--which is very unfortunate) plays an Overeater Anonymous who sells diet pills over the phone and yearns to not be ashamed of himself. Devashish Saxena plays a gay, Pakistani refugee who finds peace and love in the United States only to be deported by an INS that doesn't consider constant homophobic assaults from family and neighbors to be a justified foundation for refugee status. Ethel Lung portrays a young, Asian lesbian trying to conceal all the minutiae of her queer life from her visiting, conservative mother. The stories are humane, intimate, and unique, and the multilingual, ensemble direction is fascinating. With some hard script-editing and a larger budget, Tan could turn this noble first draft into a mesmerizing film. Unfortunately, I don't think that'll happen. Of the mere 47 people who have voted for it on IMDb, the average is only 5.6 stars; even Paul didn't bother to sit past the first few minutes. I guess it's too hard to overlook a ten-dollar budget.

My Own Private Idaho (1991): In this eccentric update of Shakespeare's 1 Henry IV, Keanu Reeves plays a confident, wealthy sex idol who slums it up in the gay, urban underground, fucking around with the affections of a hustling, destitute River Phoenix (in a career-defining, Oscar-worthy role). When his magnate father suddenly passes, though, he must reject his silly faggot nonsense and embrace the straight, conservative, whitebread lifestyle, abandoning all of the loves and friends he's known in the past. It's the Shakespearian equivalent of Roy Cohn's "Republicans don't get AIDS." An emotional, humorous, and highly stylistic film, worthy of several viewings.

The Birdcage (1996): Surprisingly, I'm not a fan of the French original (La Cage aux folles, 1978), but the Americanized remake with Nathan Lane and Robin Williams is hysterical screwball comedy with a queer twist. Williams and Lane play a long-term gay couple on the outs who live above the night club (The Birdcage) they own. Williams has a grown son from a former straight relationship (one treated with the proper complexities of love), and the son intends to marry the daughter of a conservative politician up for election, who insists on meeting the groom-to-be's lovely parents. When the real mother gets caught in traffic, the drag-dressing Lane--having been unfairly cut out of the picture to conceal the homo element--steps in (cognito) to assume the maternal role, in a dawdling, traditional, Barbara Bush style. Things unravel, hijinx ensue. It's a mainstream comedy with serious hetero-input, aimed at a broad crowd (my ex-stepfather saw it and loved it, for example), but unlike I Know Pronounce You Chuck and Larry or Boat Trip, it manages to avoid condescension and spite. In the end, it's Williams and Lane who are loving, clever, and likable, and Gene Hackman as the uptight father-in-law-to-be must rectify himself.

Boys Don't Cry (1999): It's hard to express an enjoyment for this film when it's as bleak as it is, but this true story of a female-to-male transsexual's love affair and subsequent arrest, rape, and murder in 1993 Lincoln, Nebraska, is powerful, important, emotionally-wrought, and unforgettable. Hilary Swank won a deserved Oscar as the skinny, shy boy just trying to live his life as innocently, compassionately, and inoffensively as possible, and Chloe Sevigny gives a fine performance as his confused but loving girlfriend. The movie is disturbing, but sometimes that's how our lives are.

Nico and Dani (2000, Krampack): A simple, coming-of-age gay tale from Spain that manages to add a little bit more than the typical genre film. High schooler Dani (Fernando Ramallo) has the hots for his skinny, cool friend Nico (Jordi Vilches), an ambiguous tease who desperately wants to bang as many chicks as possible while on vacation at the beach. Dani's unrequited infatuation reaches a breaking point, throwing the friendship into confusion and drama. It's a standard film (with beautiful settings, actors, and cinematography) with a plot that every gay boy has undergone, but a few touching scenes rise it above the rest.

Some Honorable Mentions that don't quite count: American Beauty, Dog Day Afternoon, Mysterious Skin, Monster, Todo sobre mi madre, Gods and Monsters (which, to be fair, I haven't seen in a long time, so I can't really comment on)

Movie Review: Dressed to Kill (1980)

Brian De Palma's 1980 sexual thriller is as schizophrenic as its transgendered antagonist, a mishmash film that juxtaposes masterful, taut scenes of suspense with implausible, poorly acted moments of happenstance and illogic. Never before or since have terrible and wonderful scenes coexisted so seamlessly in one film.

The movie opens with a starch-haired Angie Dickinson and her pornographic body double arousing herself in a shower while gazing with opium eyes at a shirtless, shaving Michael Caine. It's an erotic dream, of course; in reality, Dickinson's character Kate is married to a clumsily sexual businessman and Dr. Robert Elliott is merely her married, ethical psychiatrist in the Upper East Side, whom she sees frequently to talk about her sexual frustrations. Women are all about sex in Dressed to Kill, with money as a side interest. Kate wants to screw doctors and Wall Street brokers, while the only other female character, Liz Blake (Nancy Allen), is a high end escort who brokers stock deals on one phone while arranging $500 "hot lunch" dates on another and who collects art only as a financial investment (you see, the price rises when the artist dies).

One morning, after a session of miserable, marital sex; an expository conversation with her teenage Harry Potter-look-alike son Peter, a manic inventor developing a room-sized supercomputer that both "carries" and "stores" binary numbers (thousands of them!); and a visit to Dr. Elliott in which she offers her body up only to be rejected, Kate goes to the art museum to stare at paintings of gorillas, people watch, record entries like "egg nog" in her schedule, and cruise for sex with strangers. She's a classy broad dressed all in white with white gloves on, and when a possible sexmate ignores her advances, she removes her left glove to reveal her enormous wedding ring, proving to him that she wasn't interested in the first place while also giving him the cue to make the next move. He hastily runs off, and she forgets her glove on the bench while she chases him through the museum's various rooms and corridors.

This is the first scene in which De Palma reveals that he's not just a hack. Ten minutes without dialogue (overlaid with an outdated score) ensue as the two engage in a cat-and-mouse game of flirtatious stalking. He feigns indifference and disgust at her advances. She gives up in frustration. He smiles and stares and follows her. She approaches; he ducks away and disappears. Finally, he discovers her glove, puts it on his own hand, and lays it on her shoulder from behind--contact! She screams. It's more than she bargained before, and she runs out of the museum, only later realizing that he was trying to return her glove. In the end, he's in a taxicab, waving her glove out the backseat window, and as she approaches he all but rapes her, much to her delight.

Aggressive fucking in his opulent apartment follows, and as she rifles through his stuff while dressing, she discovers his letter from the health department confirming his syphilis ("You have contracted a venereal disease!"). The story has a moral after all: a single act of extramarital sex leads to blindness, dementia, and death, though her death is instantaneous. A bulky blond has been following her and waits outside the elevator for no good reason (if she's stalking Kate, she should be running down the stairs she was hiding in during the afternoon of fucking, not waiting for the elevator to descend seven floors and then ascend seven more floors on the oft-chance that Kate has coincidentally happened to forget her wedding ring on the syphilitic businessman's end table, returning to the seventh floor where the bulky blond stands awkwardly poised with a straight razor, somehow knowing that Kate would be coming back up) and enters, hacking her to death in a poorly-edited, fakey death scene. Like I said, an illogical moment of ineffective sensationalism follows immediately on the heels of ten flawless minutes.

Anyway, the elevator stops on the sixth floor while the blond's still hacking away, exposing the grisly sight to a cowardly businessman who instantly flees down the stairs and Liz Blake the high-end whore, whose hands-almost-on-the-frozen-face-while-eyes-shake-and-widen reaction is one of the worst "I'm witnessing a murder" expressions I've ever seen.

The blond gets away (nobody tries to stop her--nobody ever tries to stop her throughout the movie), and everyone ends up in the office of Detective Marino (Dennis Franz, who's sometimes good and sometimes awful, like everything else in this movie), including Dr. Elliott, whose reasons for being called there are valid--he was one of the last people known to have seen Kate and also knew a lot about her mental condition on that day--but who is harassed by Marino for no good reason in a poorly written moment of unrealistic plotting and directorial misdirection. Marino wants to know about the "weirdos" that Robert consults because he's convinced that even though the murder happened hours and miles away from her appointment at his office the murderer must have been one of his crazy patients. (You see, the only people who go to expensive psychiatrists in New York are psychopaths.)

And guess what!, the good doctor keeps getting calls from one of his patients, Bobbi, a whining, pathetic man trapped in a woman's body who admits she stole Robert's razor, fears she might be a naughty girl, and intends to murder his little "cocktease" patient, all because he won't sign some papers to help her get her official sex reassignment surgery. But Dr. Elliott doesn't tell the police this; he wants to get in touch with her first, make amends, make certain that she really committed the murder that she predicts and then confesses to in her voicemails before getting her in trouble. WTF?

It makes sense in the end--you see, Robert predictably is Bobbi--but before the outrageously offensive climax and resolution, the movie has one more minority group to insult--those black men, all of whom, from gangbangers to security guards, just want to attack and rape silly, sex-starved white women. But that's just an added bonus, in case demeaning caricatures of women and transgendered people weren't quite enough.

Back to Bobbi/Robert, who is finally caught and shot one stormy night in his office, having been tracked down and duped by Liz in conjunction with the technologically savvy Peter (who uses everything from stopwatches to video cameras to homemade mace in his detective work). You see, Dr. Elliott is schizophrenically torn between two sides, his natural "male side" (vain, ragingly heterosexual, hormonally-charged) and his optimal "female side" (petty, jealous, violent). When the male side gets aroused--say, by Kate's cockteasing advances or Liz's prostitute beauty--the envious female side tries to compensate by killing the intruder and shrinking his enormous boner. This laughable explanation is offered by the reputed Dr. Levy in the final scene, who's introduced simply to make it all official.

De Palma attempts to one-up Psycho. He doesn't.

Still don't buy it? Well, a light-hearted bonus scene is thrown in during which Liz reductively explains transsexual behavior and surgery to Peter during a hot lunch at an exquisite restaurant while a staunch old woman eavesdrops in the background while exaggeratedly expressing her shock and disgust. We're supposed to sympathize with this old woman--it's all rather unsettling, isn't it!--or at best see ourselves as more "progressive" (read: jaded) than her--yes, yes, it is unsettling, but it's just a part of this crazy, mixed-up world we live in!

Out of context, a handful of well-executed scenes occupy this clumsy, insulting film. De Palma can evoke tension and even some good acting and witty dialogue when he's focused; it's just the sum of the parts that don't cohere, and the gaps between them are massive. He also uses unfair trickery to aid his twist. Bobbi is played by not one, not two, but three characters--Michael Caine, a male voice on the phone, and a female body double for the murder and stalking scenes. How are we supposed to figure out the twist when we're presented with lies? (Oh yeah, because it's extremely predictable.) A really good mystery shouldn't have to resort to that.

Dressed to Kill (1980)
d/w: Brian De Palma
(Michael Caine, Nancy Allen, Angie Dickinson, Dennis Franz)
4/10