THEGAYUK

Category: Film

  • FILM REVIEW | Foxcatcher

    ★★★★ | Foxcatcher

    John Eleuthère du Pont the spoilt heir to the vast Dupont chemical fortune was a dangerous paranoid psychopath who ended up destroying lives when he didn’t get his own way. The fact that he was also a deeply disturbed closeted homosexual is also very obvious in this new chilling true crime drama based on his life, yet it is a fact that nearly all the critics, without exception, have chosen to ignore.

    Du Pont lived in the shadows of his dominant elderly aristocratic mother on their vast estate in Pennsylvania which he had renamed Foxcatcher Farm. His mother’s one obsession was her herd of thoroughbred horses and the Trophy Room that housed all their awards was the most important place in their Mansion. Du Pont deeply resented his Mother’s preference to her stallions over him, and so he built a gym in the grounds to focus on his one big addiction to the sport of wrestling, well wrestlers in particular.

    The year is 1987, and three years prior Mark Shultz and his brother Dave had won Gold Medals for wrestling at the Olympic Games in Los Angeles. Whilst Dave has settled down in Colorado and got married, had children and has a job coaching, Mark has a sad solitary life where his main daily function is to train for the next World Games. When he gets a phone call out of the blue from multi-millionaire du Pont inviting him to fly to Pennsylvania as his guest for a meeting, having nothing to lose, he accepts the free plane ticket and goes.

    Du Pont tells Mark that he wants not just to underwrite all his expenses but for him to establish a team of wrestlers under the Foxcatcher banner that he would like to help train for the World Games. If they all live on campus, he will also pay them generous wages too. It’s an offer that loner Mark cannot refuse and without even questioning, du Pont’s possible motives, throws his few worldly possessions in a Uhaul truck and drives across country to his new rather lush quarters on the Estate.

    Du Pont had wanted both of the Shultz brothers to lead his new team, but when Mark failed to persuade Dave to join him, du Pont lavished all his attention on just Mark. The new training facilities pay off, and three months later Mark won a Gold Medal at the World Games and schizophrenic du Pont started to treat the young athlete more like a son whenever he was in a good mood. Up to this point Shultz had kept to his highly disciplined routine which excluded things like alcohol but pressured by du Pont he tried and liked recreational drugs which would eventually lead to the decline in the two men’s relationships.

    Director Bennett Miller shows that du Pont clearly gets off on physical contact with Shultz when the two men attempt to wrestle (du Pont misguidedly thinks he also has a talent for the sport too) and leaves the implication that this may have satisfied the effete older man’s homosexual desires. However, when du Pont doesn’t get what he wants and it seems that Shultz’s new unhealthy addictions render him unable to win matches, he throws a heap of money at Dave to persuade him to come and train the Team after all.

    The vain du Pont who is now underwriting the US Wrestling Team for the Seoul Olympics insists on being recognised as the official coach even though Dave Shultz is actually doing the work. Dave accepts this to a point but a now sober Mark is deeply resentful of du Pont and his power, and although he is still prepared to accept his money, he refuses to have anything do with the man who he once allowed to fawn over him. After he fails to win a Gold Medal at the Olympics, Mark finally moves out of the Foxcatcher Estate leaving his brother to face a fate that no-one could have predicted.

    Miller, working with a script by E. Max Frye & Dan Futterman, allows this excellent creepy tale to unravel at a pace that is a little too slow at times. It’s a great ‘vehicle’ for the talented comic actor Steve Carrell to show his remarkable range playing the thoroughly unpleasant du Pont, but as good as he is I don’t think he will join the list of actors who wore prosthetic noses and won an Oscar for their efforts. He was joined on screen by the great Vanessa Redgrave who had a very tiny lame role as the mother; Channing Tatum as Mark which was at least a role that suited his expressionless style of acting; and Mark Ruffalo who was totally superb as a beefed up Dave.

    P.S. Back to the question of du Pont’s sexuality that Miller throws us so many clues about, from him waking up a near-naked Shultz after midnight to give him a book (!), to his insistence on demonstrating intimate crutch grabbing wrestling moves that he wasn’t trained to do, to the sight of his horrified mother watching her effeminate son getting ‘low’ on the mat etc. To a gay audience this will undoubtedly appear as a classic case of a rich older effete man chasing a big dumb blond sports jock: known as a ‘chicken hawk’: not too dissimilar to ‘foxcatcher’.

  • 2014: A year of amazing movies, how many did you see?

    Celebrate the end of 2014 with this rather sensational mega-mash video by the film website JoBlo.com that collects the best moments from 330 memorable movies released this year.

  • FILM REVIEW | The Interview

    ★★★ | The Interview

    With the North Korean Government furious about the Hollywood comedy that dared to portray an assassination of their Supreme Leader, they hacked into Sony’s computers and scared the Studio to make them panic enough to withdraw the movie from all US screens before its release date on Christmas Day. Even President Obama pitched in to this unprecedented major public controversy, and so a few days later Sony relented and allowed the movie to be shown in a few theatres and online after all.

    t’s not due in UK cinemas until February 6th but we had THEGAYUK’s Contributing Editor Roger Walker-Dack take a sneak preview to review the film and tell us if the fuss was really justified. Here is his report:-

    If the North Korean Government hadn’t insisted on making this the most talked about movie this Christmas there is little doubt that this off-colour sophomoric comedy would have quickly passed through cinemas practically unnoticed by most of us. It’s crude and smutty humor that, like most movies that the actor James Franco is connected with these days, is overly obsessed with being ‘gay’, and it also relies heavily on his and the writers obvious fascination with anal matters too.

    If you have been anywhere near a newspaper this past week you will know that this comedy is about a fictionalised attempt to assassinate Kim Jong-Un the Supreme Leader of North Korea. Mr. Jong Un felt so miffed at the idea that he may have had his people hack Sony’s computers and issue threats of dire consequences if the movie was shown. If only he had bothered to watch the film himself then I think if he would be outraged at anything, it would be much more about how the plot totally disintegrates towards the end and just sinks into a rather pathetic bloody battle giving the film a very unfunny finale.

    Essentially its the story of a lightweight TV presenter Dave Skylark who fills his nightly talk show with ridiculous reality items but then one night the singer Eminem accidentally comes out as ‘gay’ and for once the show’s ratings soar. It whets the appetite of Adam the show’s producer who is desperate for more serious content, which they suddenly think, is possible when they discover in magazine that the North Korean Leader is a big fan of the show. He has refused interviews with the world’s press to date but agrees to grant one to his hero Dave Skylark. A fact that attracts the attention of the CIA who recruit both Dave and Adam with a request that they seize this unique opportunity to take the Leader out.

    The plan almost fails before it begins when nice-but-dim Dave decides to do things his way when they arrive in Korea, and then he changes his mind completely anyway after a day of male bonding with his new ‘best friend’ the ‘Kate Perry’ loving Kim. Adam meanwhile does some ‘bonding’ of his own with their ferocious female guide Sook and afterwards together they plot to sabotage the rather innocuous interview that Leader’s handlers are insisting on.

    The movie is a reuniting of Seth Rogan (who also is a co-director and co-writer with Evan Goldberg) and James Franco after their first, and much superior comedy ‘This Is The End’ in 2013. The two have great screen chemistry together but the lion share of the laughs is left to Rogan who is much more at home in these frat-boy comedies than his co-star. The one thing Franco is good at however is over-acting which suits him to a tee in his role of the eager-to-please tabloid TV presenter.

    There are a few good laughs … mainly at the Korean’s expense in this silly uneven comedy … and compared to something that is really offensive like ‘Borat’ in the end this is tame stuff that will very soon be forgotten, and in the end we are much more likely to remember the drama surrounding it instead.

  • FILM REVIEW | Into The Woods

    ★★★★★ | Into The Woods

    Hollywood has a knack of bungling the adaption of hit Broadway musicals when it tries to capture the same magic for the silver screen.

    Just think of the turgid Les Miserables in 2012 or the excruciatingly painful ‘Nine’ in 2009. However when they get it right as with Tim Burton’s take on Sweeney Todd, or discovering Jennifer Hudson in Bill Condon version of Dreamgirls, then the results are wonderfully entertaining. Of the two musical movies vying for our attention this Christmas, one at least is as good as it can get, and something that its original writer and composer Stephen Sondheim can be relieved and even happy about.

    ‘Into The Woods’ is a wonderful mix of classic light and dark fairy tales that Sondheim uses to weave around an original story of his own. It’s the tale of a Baker and his childless wife who have been cursed by a witch after the Baker’s late father had stolen her magic beans. To enable them to break the spell so that they can conceive a baby, the witch sets them a list of things they must acquire for her before the 3rd midnight. It includes a cloak as red as blood, that they ‘relieve’ Red Riding Hood of; a cow that is milky white which they barter with Jack of Jack & the Beanstalk; the slipper as pure as gold that they get from Cinderella as she is running from the Prince; and the hair as yellow as corn which is snipped off Rapunzel after she lowers it out of the window of the tower she is imprisoned in .

    As the Baker and his wife go about encountering all these characters we get a slice of each of their stories. Jack egged on by his mother steals from the Giant who lives at the top of the Beanstalk, and when he is pursued, kills him only to have the rage of the Giant’s wife inflicted on the whole village. Cinderella gets to go to the Kings Festival thanks to her Fairy Godmother, but when she is eventually tracked down by the Prince, she discovers he is not quite as wonderful as we thought. He quips in defence ‘I’m meant to be charming, not sincere!’ Rapunzel is pursued by the Prince’s younger brother but when her mother (the witch) discovers the lovers she blinds him. Luckily Rapunzel’s tears give him back his sight.

    The real magic though is in Sondheim’s outstanding music in what is probably one of his best ever scores. Director Rob Marshall opens the movie with a long take of the song ‘I Wish’ which cleverly introduces all the major characters and sets the storyline up from the start. It establishes a pattern for really making the extraordinary songs a much more integral part of the story than usual. What Marshall has added to some pieces is a campy touch of humor that may offend real Sondheim elitists, but in most instances, as in the case of the two Princes so brilliantly mugging their way through the song ‘Agony’, it will surely provoke a spontaneous round of applause from the audience as it did last night when I saw it.

    The stage musical has been revived many times on Broadway and on London’s West End and the role of the Witch has been played by a whole slew of the cream of musical theatre. In the movie, however, The Witch is played by Meryl Streep who really adds much more dimension to the part in what is one of her best performances for years. She is both funny and scary and proves that she can really deliver a song with more nuance and power than most.

    In fact, Marshall could not have selected a more perfect ensemble cast than he did. Brits James Corden and Emily Blunt had remarkable chemistry together playing the central characters of The Baker and his wife; Anna Kendrick was sublime as Cinderella, as was the ever-fabulous Christine Barenski as her Wicked Stepmother; a welcome return to the screen for Tracey Ullman as Jack’s mother; Chris Pine and Billy Magnussen played the handsome Princes; and in two scene-stealing roles wonderfully talented Lilla Crawford was Little Red Hood and young Daniel Huddlestone was Jack. Plus lest I forget a brief cameo from Johnny Depp as The Wolf.

    Using the line from one of the best songs (‘Children Will Listen’) the adverts for the movie warn ‘Be careful what you wish for’. If you are a Sondheim fan or just like musicals, then you’ll learn to that after you see this movie that wishes do come true though, and in many ways.

    P.S. Last month we reported in THEGAYUK of the buzz surrounding Meryl Streep’s performance would lead to another Oscar Nomination. Now we can tell you emphatically that we are convinced she is a dead shoo-in for one!

  • FILM REVIEW | Leviathan

    ★★★★★ | Leviathan
    Award-winning Russian director Andrey Zvagaintsev’s new epic movie opens to the dramatic tones of a Phillip Glass prelude as the camera scans over the desolate sight of a remote small fishing community that looks like it may have seen better times. It is on the Kola Peninsula in northern Russia and its almost deserted coastline is littered with discarded wrecks of boats and the carcases of whales. One of the last residents is Kolya an ex-fisherman now eking out a bare living as a motor mechanic with his pretty younger second wife and his teenage son in a riverside property that the crooked local mayor wants to seize from him in order to construct a new major development.

    Kolya is no easy pushover however and enlists the help of Dimitri his ex-army buddy who is now a lawyer in Moscow. The two of them put up a brave fight but they stand no real chance of winning when they find out that everyone in authority in the town is clearly on the mayor’s ‘payroll’, including the local police force and the repugnant Orthodox Christian clergy. Dimitri, however, has an ace up his sleeve as he possesses a detailed File of evidence about the Mayor’s corruption that could be his undoing, but playing this hand could also backfire as it is clear that the Mayor will stop at absolutely nothing to continue to fill his pockets and increase his power.

    Nothing quite pans out in this drama as one would expect, and what seems to start out as a political satire on the inbred Russian system of corruption turns into a murder mystery with more than the occasional masterly touches of some brilliant black humour. Zvagaintsev’s passionate portrait is of a culture where the benefits of a contemporary society are still restricted to a privileged few, whilst most of the local population’s lives are firmly stuck in the past which they have no way or means of escaping. The despair and hopelessness seem even more pronounced with such stunning dramatic cinematography that focuses on the cold steel blue of the oft-barren landscape.

    The ‘leviathan’ large sea monster that writer/director Zvyagintsev refers too here is metaphorical but the epic struggle that the likes of Kolya must deal with in this very loose retelling of the Book of Job, is not with his faith in God but with the unwieldy and unforgiving Russian state.

    It is an extraordinary near perfect masterpiece of storytelling that keeps one on the edge of the seat for the lengthy 142 minutes, and it is very clear to see why it is swooping up Best Picture Awards all over the place, and is on the shortlist for an Academy Award too.

  • Top Ten List of Fab Gay Films to Fill a Christmas Stocking

    Here’s our Top Ten List of Fab Films to Fill a Christmas Stocking to suit any (movie) buff boyfriend from Amazon that will still arrive by the 25th if you have still not bought a Christmas gift for ‘him indoors’?

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  • FILM REVIEW | The Hundred Foot Journey

    ★ | The Hundred Foot Journey

    A more apt title for this preposterous and painfully unfunny comedy would be ‘Lost in Translation’. Based on a best-selling novel by Richard C. Morais this new movie from the Oscar-nominated king of syrupy schmaltz Lasse Hallstrom (Cider House Rules & Chocolat) and produced by Oprah Winfrey and Stephen Spielberg must have seemed like a fantastic idea on paper as they managed to persuade none other than Oscar Winner Helen Mirren to be their very uncomfortable looking star. After filming this very inane and somewhat patronising piece she could only have only ended up asking the same question as we do now i.e. whatever possessed her!

    The story is of an Indian family who has to leave Mumbai in a hurry when their restaurant is destroyed and the matriarch is killed after a political uprising. They seek asylum in London and settle in a cramped home next to Heathrow Airport right under the flight path. However it’s not the fact that they can almost touch the planes as they land that drives them out, but the cold and damp English climate and they set off in a dilapidated camper van to warmer climes of France.

    When their van breaks down outside Saint-Antonin-Noble-Vala small picturesque one-street village in the middle of nowhere, Father spies an empty restaurant for sale that he deems will be perfect for the family to establish their new Indian Restaurant. This village evidently only has one other eating establishment (other than the café where everyone has breakfast) and this is smack opposite their new venue. It is in fact just a hundred feet from their front door. This very popular fine dining establishment, which possesses a coveted Michelin star, and a fancy Chef, is run by a chauffeured driven Grand Dame who, for some inexplicable reason, is paranoid about the new competition from a fast-food Indian eatery run by a cook.

    The rivalry is petty and too silly for words and is as ridiculous as the silly French accent of the English speaking Madame Mallory. After a chance encounter, Hassan the Indian cook falls in love with Marguerite a sous chef who works for Madame and she encourages him to read a recipe book about fine French cuisine. Then after a few attempts at re-creating classic dishes and before you can say Nigella Lawson he is a cordon-bleu chef and immediately deserts his family to work for Madame herself. Next stop for him is Paris and an even fancier restaurant where as Chef de Cuisine he becomes an overnight sensation winning more Michelin stars with easy.

    However, fame and success isn’t everything for Hassan and as he misses his family he hurries back to Madame‘s country restaurant where he can get the taste of both Marguerite and fresh local produce once again.

    This rather innocuous tale is an excruciating 2 hours long and has no redeeming features other than the location of the small town, and the rather scrumptious food.

  • FILM REVIEW | CitizenFour

    ★★★★★ | CitizenFour

    After you have watched Laura Poitras’s powerful documentary on the NSA Whistleblower Edward Snowden you will never want to use your bank debit card, mobile phone or even turn your computer on ever again. Whilst it’s not always easy to totally understand the intricate technical details of what Snowden reveals, it is, however, impossible not to avoid his very serious warning that Big Brother is most certainly spying on every single one of us.

    What’s remarkable about this extraordinary movie is that is that Poitras was part of the whole process of Snowden going public with his astonishing information, so what we see is a blow by blow account as she films this unprecedented event from the very beginning. Oscar-nominated Poitras (‘My Country My Country’) was in the middle of making another film about surveillance when Snowden contacted her anonymously, using the pseudonym ‘Citizenfour’, and asked for her help in exposing the government’s practice of indiscriminately wholesale spying on all its citizens. Unlike others with conspiracy theories Snowden, a computer intelligence expert who worked for one of the NSA’s main contractors, had hard proof to back up all his claims but as this was classified information he knew that revealing the details would be both difficult and dangerous.

    In May 2013 he flew from Hawaii from Hong Kong where he had arranged to meet up with Poitras and Washington Post journalist Glenn Greenwald. They had deliberately chosen this Chinese territory as it has no extradition treaty with the US and both Poitras and Snowden knew that the moment they started to go public with the story the US Government (and maybe the British one too) would want to skin them alive.

    When the three meet Snowden makes it clear about his intentions to reveal how widespread these surveillance programs are, but he is unsure about exactly what information he should make public without compromising national security. Here the journalists take the lead, and they with British journalist Ewan MacAskill, make the decisions on what to release to the media and when. These few days in with the ‘team’ in Hong Kong holed up in Snowden’s undisclosed hotel room are tense and nerve racking to witness, and asides from worrying about future consequences, Snowden also wants to ensure that when the story breaks that it focuses on the revelations themselves and not about him personally.

    It turns out he was right to be concerned as when the world starts to reel with the news of the far-reaching relentless spying that government agencies have been doing aided and abetted by the likes of the major cellphone and broadband providers, the NSA and the US Government desperately try to move the focal point by accusing Snowden of traitorous acts rather than attempting to explain why all this surveillance is happening. His life is definitely in danger and the UN consulate in Hong Kong help spirit him away to a safer location whilst they can work out his next move.

    The one thing that one is sure of after seeing Snowden at close quarters and intently watching and listening to him as he shares the information he is about to reveal and explain exactly why he feels the need to take such actions, is that this very regular-type-joe simply thinks that the world has a right to now. He is devoid of any committed political convictions and he even takes great strides to ensure that his actions do not place even the smallest risk to national security. Whatever doubts one may have had about him previously thanks to the highly personal vitriolic backlash in the media that followed the disclosures, they are totally banished when one realises what a responsible and sincere individual Snowden is. He is, in fact, a true patriot and hero.

    Once he was publicly identified as being the Whistleblower, there is a very tense time when he is talking with his long-term girlfriend back home who had no inkling at all of his plans for her own good. Now he worries that the authorities will put pressure on her in retaliation, but one of the high points the movie finishes on is seeing the two of them reunited in their flat in Moscow after the Russians eventually gave him asylum.

    Credit is also due to the intrepid Greenwald who became both the moderator and the front-man who articulately dealt with the world’s media throughout the whole process. His ‘reward’ was British Immigration Authorities ‘detaining’ his partner at Heathrow airport for four hours to ‘question’ him. In fact less we should think that this is whole surveillance thing is a problem for just the American public, Snowden makes it very clear that the UK agency GCHQ have far less legal restraints placed upon them and their spying on all British citizens is probably even more intense and widespread.

    Although the movie ends with the concern of Snowden’s future (the Russians gave him a one year visa) there is naturally the much more vexing question of what will happen to all this wholesale spying once this current furore dies down. The sad thing is, we know the answer.

    P.S. This excellent movie has just won the IDA’s Best Documentary Award and has also been shortlisted for a Nomination for the Academy Award for Best Documentary.

  • FILM REVIEW | Mr. Turner

    ★★★★★ | Mr. Turner

    Mike Leigh’s stunning biopic of J.M.W.Turner is the portrait of the leading English Romantic landscape artist who was evidently also quite a philanderer and misanthrope too. Set in the 1820’s (although Leigh never tells us that) the movie focuses on the last 20 years of the painter’s life when he was at the height of his success and his work was being exhibited at the Royal Academy and also commissioned by wealthy aristocrats.

    Leigh’s story starts when Turner returns from a painting trip in Belgium to his London home that he shares with his elderly father who dotes on him and acts as his studio assistant, and also the sad-looking maid who allows Turner to have his way with her whenever he gets the urge. The maid just seems to be the latest of several mistresses, as the previously estranged one who has two simpering grown up daughters by Turner often comes around to harangue him looking for support which he never ever gives them.

    When his precious father dies, Turner sinks into a deep depression and is even more bad-tempered with nearly everyone he comes into contact with. In one rather glorious scene when he is visiting the Summer Exhibition as it is being hung at the Royal Academy he is openly disparaging about the work of the other Academicians who constitute a veritable who’s who roll call of every major artist of the day (Constable, Stothard, Callcot etc).

    On a trip to the small seaside town of Margate, which would become the inspiration for many of his most famous paintings, Turner meets the twice-widowed Mrs. Booth who becomes his live-in mistress, and later the pair moves to a house in Chelsea where Turner lives out the rest of his days.

    Leigh and his cinematographer Dick Pope don’t just show Turner in action manically slathering paint over his canvasses but also capture evocative and powerful images of the landscapes often at dawn just as Turner would have viewed them. They are a real visual joy. As too are the sets of Victorian Britain that production designer Suzie Davies has lovingly recreated.

    Like all Leigh’s movies, Mr. Turner is created through an improvisational method from which the final script evolves. Enabling his actors to have more input than normal into creating their characters certainly plays off, as so brilliantly demonstrated by Timothy Spall who gives a career-best performance as Mr. Turner. With his expressive squashy face he so convincingly portrays the short-tempered genius that never lets anything distract him from his work. Even when he faces public ridicule after he experiments with his painting style, and also right to the very end when he is on his death bed he cannot but help himself seize one final perfect moment to sketch.

    The talented cast is mainly made up of many of Leigh’s regular actors that include Dorothy Atkinson pitch perfect as the put-upon maid, Marion Bailey as the loyal Mrs. Booth and veteran actor Paul Jesson as Mr. Turner Snr.

    Overly long with a running time of 150 minutes which makes the action seem too slow and stretched out at times, nevertheless this screen biography lovingly gives a wonderful portrait for the only artist to ever now have a whole permanent gallery dedicated to his work at The Tate Gallery in London. Mr Spall’s (potentially) award-winning performance also makes this an unmissable film.

    In Cinemas Now

  • FILM REVIEW | Me, Myself And Mum

    ★★★★ | Me, Myself And Mum

    Guillaume has to ‘come out’ to his entire family but that’s no easy task in this quirky French comedy which has a neat twist on this perennial situation. His problem is that they all pronounced that he was ‘gay’ from birth and have treated him as an effeminate camp boy ever since. The trouble is that he now has to risk their disappointment and wrath by revealing the truth. He is actually 100% heterosexual.

    Allegedly based on the true story of Guillaume Gallienne the director/writer/star of the movie who was a real mommy’s boy. Born into a wealthy aristocratic family, Guillaume dotes on his mother who seems to do little beyond reading and smoking cigarettes looking very bored. stretched out elegantly dressed on chaise lounges, and who insists on treating him as the daughter she never had. He has perfected all her mannerisms to a tee and sounds so much like her that he often gets mistaken for her when people hear his voice. His father is in total despair about him and so lavishes all his attention on his two older athletic sons who he globe-trots with as they follow their very masculine pursuits whilst leaving Guillaume at home. Or worse still, sending him off to a very rough looking town in Spain to learn flamenco dancing as befitting a girly boy.

    Guillaume thinks his mother does know best so he goes along with her firm belief that he is gay and even has a crush on a football jock at the British Boarding School he is banished too. That is until of course he actually realises that he doesn’t really lust after other boys like he should, and it’s quite a shock to even him when he does eventually fall in love.

    Gallienne is a much-loved actor/writer and a member of the prestigious Comédie-Française, and this movie is adapted from his own play with which in fact, he uses to start this film with. With his really odd appearance, this 40-year-old actor not only convincingly plays teenage Guillaume BUT also, by channelling Catherine Deneuve, actually plays Maman too. Both are really joyous performances and simply the reason why this oddball comedy works so very well.

    There are some wonderfully funny passages thanks to Guillaume allowing us to observe him being humiliated so often. And taking all the abuse that is heaped on him in such good humour. This very unusual take on sexual identity does leave you grinning an awful lot.

    Winner of 2 Awards at Cannes Film Festival, this crowd-pleaser of a movie also picked up 3 Cesars (French Oscars) and is now set to hopefully wow Francophile British audiences too.

  • FILM REVIEW | Eastern Boys

    ★★★★★ | Eastern Boys

    Filmmaker Robin Campilio’s disturbing new thriller sharply contrasts two different sides of society in contemporary France with a very chilling effect.

    The first chapter of his four-part story is a near cinéma vérité scene of the Gard de Nord where a gang of Eastern European youths is trailing the platforms and aimlessly but obviously set on something illegal. One of them is a skinny baby-faced hustler who catches the attention of a 50 year-old businessman with whom he plays cat and mouse game throughout the station environs. When the youth allows himself to be cornered, they strike up an arrangement to meet at the man’s apartment the next day.

    What wealthy Daniel thought would be a hot date with this young Ukrainian turns out to be a frightening home invasion when the entire gang arrive and strip his luxury apartment completely bare. Taunted by the cocky Russian ringleader Boss with some overtly sexual advances, Daniel seems both terrorized and aroused at the same time.

    The third chapter opens with the surprising return of Marek the hustler … the time on his own … who offers to have sex as they originally had arranged. Despite the boy’s total indifference as he lays naked and motionless on bed Daniel still penetrates him, but the moment that it is over Marek quickly dresses and leaves without uttering a word. What is assumed would just be a one-off visit, is in fact repeated. At first its infrequently and then quite regularly but just as the youth starts to experience real feelings for Daniel, the older man decides that he wants to develop what they have into a non-sexual friendship.

    It is obvious that both of them are still threatened by the hold that ‘Boss’ and the gang have over Marek, who still lives with them in a hotel full of other illegal immigrants in the suburbs. The only way for them to ever be free of the menace is to move away, but Boss has Marek’s only papers … his passport …. stored away in his safe. Their concern that trying to retrieve this will be nigh on impossible and extremely dangerous proves to be well-founded.

    The relationship between Daniel and Marek is powerfully erotic especially as this sharp-suited savvy business man who has been viciously robbed by the boy and his thuggish pals, is yet somehow still attracted and is prepared to expose himself to potential danger again. And the different relationships that both of these men have with the charismatic but completely scary and unhinged Boss is both mesmerizing and unnerving.

    The movie, which picked up the prestigious Horizons Award at the Venice Film Festival, was beautifully filmed, and had stunningly convincing performances from all three protagonists. (Olivier Rabourdin who looks like he could be Kevin Spacey’s twin played Daniel).

    The morality of portraying all the immigrant boys in such a stereotypical manner is questionable, but that aside, this excellent drama will definitely rank as one of the best gay themed movies of this year.

    Available from Amazon | iTunes