queer film round up--long post

I've been thinking about this post for a while, since I've watched now three different gay (or supposedly gay) movies, one of which has proven to be contentious, and all show the range of gay movie-making over the last ten years or so.

Like I mentioned before, I think, I've been on kind of a tear with the gay films. Part of this is that these movies have been in my queue for a couple of years now. I just recently watched the Aileen Wuornos documentaries that were popular after 'Monster' came out, and 'Party Monster: The Shockumentary' that was made about the club kids in NYC, and I know I put those in the queue when the movies came out, so around 2001? Anyway, I'm not going to talk about those now, but that is sort of a time-stamp for me for when these other films got added to the queue. So I wasn't necessarily clamoring to see most of them anymore, they were just there, so got sent. I don't mix the line-up around too much. Mostly because i'm lazy.

Anyway, here are the three latest reviews, and then some commentary afterward.

1. Lost and Delirious:

Mischa Barton, who I have seen in a couple of older, pre-'OC' teen movies now, is really annoying in general, and in this movie as a passive, shy teen who inadvertently ends up rooming as the third girl in a lesbian couple's room at an all-girl's boarding school, with disasterous results. This movie got some great reviews on Netflix, which is puzzling. It's a font of cliche--the extravagant, 'out' girl, the peer pressure, the closeted teen who boasts really loudly about how she's screwing a boy just to prove she's straight, the older teacher, who of course is a dyke, who never-the-less doesn't do ANYTHING to stop events when they get bad. Because of course the couple breaks up, and all hell breaks loose. But you would think that at least the dyke teacher would have known enough to move one of fighting couple out of the dorm room. DUH.

Anyway, Piper Perabo plays the 'out' teen, which I put in quotes, because she insists she's not a lesbian, just a girl in love with another girl. Which is very annoying, but at least understandable. I mean, it's like saying 'Im not a feminist, but I believe women are equal to men' or whatever. It doesn't help anyone to hide from the label. I know there is a lot of debate surrounding labels and queerness right now, and I'll try to get into that in a bit.

At first, I was all on board with the film--I enjoy coming out stories, and I totally thought they'd work it out--but by the end, I was just so exasperated. The teachers didn't help, Mischa Barton didn't help, and of course it all ends in an overly-dramatic, tragic way, because god forbid queers end up happy and together. And this movie was only from 2001, like I said.

2. Bent:

This 1997 movie was amazing. It is also very very hard to watch. It's a Nazi movie, which would not be something I'd normally pick, and it actually sat near my DVD player for three weeks or so, but once I read somewhere that 'Bent' was actually one of the best queer plays of the 20th century, I figured I should at least watch it.

I'm glad I did. Surprisingly, Clive Owen was the lead. I guess I hadn't paid attention to who was in the film, except to note that Mick Jagger also has a small cameo as a drag queen (and is awesome, by the way. I wish people would use him more...). Clive plays a gay man in Berlin during the Nazi rise to power. I think Germany had already been fighting for a while, but the war wasn't close to being done, so people still didn't know how bad things really were. The film is very stagy, as filmed plays are, but that wasn't overly distracting. Anyway, after eluding the Gestapo for a while, Clive and his lover are picked up for being gay and are sent to a concentration camp. A lot of bad things happen, but I think the film/play is ultimately about the redemption of a wheeler/dealer guy into a man who could truly love someone else. Clive Owen is an amazing actor, and I have much more respect for him than I did after 'Closer', which was horrible.

3. Imagine Me & You:

Piper Perabo again, as another confused lesbian. When this movie came out, I was very interested in seeing it, and I do think I moved it up in the queue. It looked like a genuine romantic-comedy for lesbians, which would be great! Sort of a gay 'Four Weddings and a Funeral.' Instead, the movie is a poorly thought out love triangle, with lesbians thrown in for extra zest. It is supposed to be a movie about love at first sight, at least according to the director's statement that accompanies the extra features. Instead, it is about the dissolution of a perfectly good marriage, as the woman doesn't realize she's gay until directly after the wedding, when she makes fumbling attempts to be a lesbian by watching porn and by asking her straight co-workers if they'd ever considered switching teams because she's fallen in love with a woman, for some reason.

Anyway, the settings are beautiful, Matthew Goode makes a wonderful groom, and is the only believable character in this whole mess. His new wife who he has JUST married, acts like a bitch for months and then he has to be the one to tell her she's really in love with someone else. Anthony Head, on the other hand, plays the father of the bride as a dottering fool, and was just embarrassing.

This is the straightest gay movie in the bunch, and was really disappointing for that.

Anyway, the comments I wanted to make really were about what makes a movie gay, and how to preserve gay cinema without selling out. I think 'Bent' is probably the way to go for the intelligentsia--you can't go too wrong working with such great material, but for when you just want a fluffy romantic comedy, there has to be a way to do it in a sensitive fashion. Couples don't have to be ripped apart. People shouldn't have to prove they can be lesbians by shouting "I can do this" from the top of a car. Can do what? Leave your husband? Lick pussy? Love a girl? 'Imagine Me & You' had all the window dressing, but none of the heart. It's like the straight man who wrote it thought that he didn't have to do anything besides changing the gender of the third party to make a queer movie, but I think gays deserve more respect than that. We're not all home-wreckers out to convert straight women. These points were never really made in the movie. No stereotypes were really addressed or dealt with, and we're left with the feeling that the director/writer was trying to sort of gloss over the fact that these were two women and just focus on the fact that it was love at first sight, but that doesn't lead to anyone really identifying with the characters. In fact, the gay couple in 'Four Weddings & a Funeral' is really a much more sensitive depiction of a gay relationship. I know it's possible for this to happen. I want the flashiness of 'Imagine Me & You'--the beautiful sets, the gorgeous actors, paired with a much more realistic story.

On the other hand, though, Spanky is the first and only woman I've ever been with either, and I didn't come out until fairly late, so I did go through the same sorts of questioning stages that the bride in the movie did. But I also knew Spanky for many many years, and if I'd been married, whether directly so, or for years, I wouldn't have explored the 'other option.' In fact, that actually happened to me during the waning stages of my last male relationship, but it wasn't until years later that Spanky and I got together.

I think that anyone who's in a long term relationship, whether gay or straight, faces the temptation of other people once in a while. And everyone has to make the choice whether to follow that or to stay committed to the vows you made, whether they were just in your heart or blessed by the government/priest, etc. You can't help being attracted to other people, but you can make sure that you don't act on those feelings. In my opinion, 'Imagine Me & You' didn't really make the case for the two girls falling in love. Sure, I think it eventually could have happened, if they'd spent enough time together and if her husband was horrible, but I don't know... this was too fake.

What, then, makes a movie a queer movie? It is more than having gay characters. Is it even reasonable to ask that question? Maybe the real goal is to have straight movies with gay characters just written in as if it is just one aspect of their personality. But what if you actually do want to tell a story that is about a specific aspect of the gay experience, like coming out, for example? Shouldn't a movie that is purportedly about a gay experience at least have a gay person's feedback or input in the planning stages, so that it doesn't wind up like Imagine Me & You? That would be like a movie aimed at an African American audience made entirely by white people.

Sadly, most of the gay/lesbian movies that are specifically for gays are really poorly done--usually they're first time scripts, or first time directors, or are made with little money, and thus low production values. I don't know what the answer is, but it's an interesting discussion.

Sorry this didn't really have much to do with knitting, but as you know, I watch a lot of movies while knitting, so this is what I think about. Spanky's friends got into a huge discussion about Imagine Me & You, and I'd like to thank them for really sparking my reactions to the film. I promise the next post will be knitting related. I have baby showers to document,after all.