★★★ | Gerontophilia
Toronto based filmmaker Bruce LaBruce is no stranger to controversy, and so it is that, in his latest movie, Gerontophilia, he turns to the subject of age gap relationships, which, according to LaBruce transgress a very strong cultural taboo.
Lake is an unusual young man with an unusual fetish. Though he has a girlfriend, he is attracted to old men, a fetish he gets the chance to pursue when he starts a job as an orderly in an old people’s home. Whilst in the home, he is appalled at the way the inmates are treated and strikes up a relationship with Mr Peabody, weaning him off the medication that keeps him easy to manage, and eventually helping him to escape so they can set-off on a road-trip together. So far, so good, but for me the problem at the heart of the movie was that the central relationship between Lake and Mr Peabody didn’t really ring true. Maybe Pierre-Gabriel Lajoie had been encouraged to play Lake with a sort of wide-eyed innocence throughout, but it made it hard to believe that there was a strong sexual bond between the two men.
However, with the veteran Walter Borden putting in a wittily amusing performance as Mr Peabody, it is a very enjoyable film, as much about how modern society responds to old age as it is about age-gap relationships.
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"Greg Mitchell has lived in central London for over 20 years and has somehow managed to avoid the rat race by adapting himself to a variety of different jobs. Actor, singer, dancer - chauffeur, delivery driver, sales assistant - pornstar, escort, gogo daddy - and now tantric masseur and writer. You name it, he's done it."
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