Again, the gay movies at the Palm Springs Film Festival that I saw – cause there were others.

Let My People Go

Basic Idea: Comedy about European lovers who are separated and must go through lots of zany plot twists to eventually get back together again. Director: Mikael Buch

The Good:

• It’s a farce, and as such, constructed pretty well with engaging and attractive characters
• Nicolas Maury, who plays Ruben, is great at physical comedy in the tradition that goes back to Buster Keaton – a joy to watch
• Carmen Maura – isn’t any movie with Ms. Maura worth watching just for that?
• The overall message of the film is pro-tolerance – and affirmation of a family’s love for their gay son.
• at 80 minutes, a good length for a comedy like this

The Bad:

• Not enough of Teemu (Jarrku Niemi), Ruben’s Finnish boyfriend, who is adorable but absent for much of the film
• I couldn’t think of anything else I didn’t like!

Time to Spare

Family Values: This Dutch film by Job Gosschalk about the lives and loves of two siblings shows what really holds a family together, and it has nothing to do with sexual orientation.

The Good:

• I enjoyed the melodrama plot construction – it started out one way, and you thought it was going to be about one thing and then it made a major switch (also see The Bad)
• Intergenerational gay relationship! That works! Hello!
• The inclusion of friends to form families of choice
• Character flaws are to be expected, and that adds to what makes us interesting rather than disqualifying us from this or that relationship

The Bad:

• The movie starts out to be one thing – a relationship movie, and turns into something else – a cancer movie! (get out those tissues now, folks)
• Perhaps an unrealistic depiction of a cancer patient’s suffering and treatment

August

The Idea: Can you say Gay Love Triangle? Or, as one of my friends put it, indelicately but fairly accurately, Two Tops Fighting Over Their Bottom. Another friend absolutely loathed this Eldar Rapaport movie, and warned me ahead of time – but I didn’t hate it, not at all. See below.

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The Good:

• High production values (look at the trailer): cinematography, sound, music
• Cute guys, from the leads to the supporting players, shirts off or otherwise naked much of the time. They look like the out-of-work soap actors you see if you go to the gym during the day in Hollywood.
• Lingering shots, more of a dream than real life, which I (usually) enjoyed
• Shows off L.A., making it look much nicer (and cleaner!) than it does in day-to-day life

The Bad:

• this was a full-length version of an award-winning short, but the story itself did not appear to be expanded – plot-lite.
• I’ve never known any gay men (and I’ve known really a lot of them) to obsess over a relationship as much as these guys do.
• The title, referring to the month, in which it’s unbearably hot in L.A. Despite the efforts at perspiration and AC and fans and such, I didn’t get the sense of heat, nothing like the searing sun in your eyes as you drive west in L.A. on a summer day. Maybe it was the coolness of the characters – even the Latin lover, quite restrained.

Questions:

• Don’t you love these L.A. movies (or any movie, really) where the main characters obviously have these chic, pricey lives but have no apparent means of support (here I’m referring to Jonathan, the guy in the middle of this triangle, played by the handsome Daniel Dugan). Maybe he works in an art gallery with his galpal Nina, maybe not. At any rate, it’s not the kind of job where he’d have the nice apartment and furniture and clothes (oh wait, they are naked much of the time…). Also, Raul, the Latin lover (the smokin’ Adrian Gonzalez) is supposed to be an Argentinean immigrant having trouble actually staying in the country so he works as a bartender at an establishment which has no customers (save the other two characters and their friends) but is married to Nina for the green card, etc. So these two live together – Jonathan and Raul – yet neither one appears to have anything more than a kind of crappy job – so how they go to all these nice places for lunch and dinner (and Malibu B&B’s for the weekend!) is anybody’s guess. Troy (the mean lover trying to break up the other two, played by Murray Bartlett) DOES have a job, and a good one. So maybe he’s bankrolling the whole bunch?
• Troy and Raul – I’m sorry, but for me these two guys were so amazingly hot and I would’ve just dumped Jonathan (younger and cute, but a piece of work) and called it a day. The longer we spent with the character of Jonathan the less I liked him and the less I thought it was plausible either one of these two hunks would have chosen him. Then again, maybe that’s just me. Honestly, if you’re a gay man with a pulse, you will mostly enjoy this movie.

Another post to come about two other movies I saw at the festival, including Sal by James Franco. I have some video of the Q&A taken with my new Android. Stay tuned!