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Tag: Matchbox Films

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  • FILM REVIEW | Wasp, Sexual tension in Provence

    A gay couple and a jilted woman spend a weekend together in a house in Provence. It’s a triangle that becomes messy, in the new film ‘Wasp.’ ★★★★

    Olivier (Simon Haycock) and James (Hugo Bolton) have been together for a year. Caroline (Elly Condron), a college friend of James, has just been dumped by her French boyfriend of 3 years. So James invites Caroline to spend the week with him and Olivier in a house that belongs to Olivier’s family. It’s a beautiful house, typical French Chateau, with an outdoor pool, a trampoline in the backyard, and amazing views of the valley. Olivier is a privileged man; he’s 30, handsome, has a great job, and comes from a well-off family. And he’s got a younger good looking trophy boyfriend in James. He also used to sleep with woman.
    So the tension, not just sexual but all sorts, builds up as the week progresses. Caroline hears Olivier and James having sex upstairs, yet she’s vulnerable and feels a bit left out.
    Olivier starts noticing Caroline more and more. He steals glances at her from across the pool, and Caroline notices. She plays it up, teases Olivier, until James realises what is happening right in front of him. And the relationship between all three of them may never be the same again.
    Director/Writer Phillippe Audi-Dor makes an auspicious debut film. His style of long shots of various places and objects (wasps being one of them) brings out the beauty of the locale, as well as helps to build up and sustain tension between the three characters. Audi-Dor begin filming Wasp just four months after graduating from film school, and what an impressive debut it is. And while the films winds down with a very melodramatic ending, Wasp is an impressive filmmaking debut with a just as impressive cast.

  • FILM REVIEW | Hidden Away, A Spanish Teenage Gay Love Story

    Don’t be fooled into thinking that Hidden Away is just another boy meets boy love story with a less than great cover photo of its two male leads. It’s a very well told and acted Spanish teenage gay love story that’s very heartwarming and enduring as well. ★★★★

    Hidden Away is not told as a simple coming of age story, and it’s not told in chronological order, which makes understanding and piecing the film together a bit confusing. Director Mikel Rueda has decided to tell the story in a way in which is supposedly meant for the viewer to put themselves into the characters shoes. So it opens with Ibrahim, a 14-year-old young man, walking along the road hitchhiking, escaping from something which we won’t know until the very end. He’s from Morocco, but had gone to Spain a few years back looking for a better future. He’s been living in shelters, hoping to get his official papers so that he can stay in Spain. He lives in Bilbao, fully settled, attending school and living in a shelter for boys just like him. Then there is Rafa, also 14, Spanish, living with his parents. Rafa hangs out with boys just like himself, yet there’s one thing different about Rafa. He doesn’t like girls. There is one girl in particular who practically throws herself at him, but he just doesn’t reciprocate, much to the horror of his friends. Even though Ibrahim and Rafa’s paths initially cross (at one point in a club urinal), they don’t meet until a bit later in the film. And there’s a spark. A spark that at first betells an evolving and very close friendship between the young men, but then evolves into more than that. While there is no actual sex scenes in this film, Rafa and Ibrahim’s bond appears to be more than just physical, it’s emotional as well.

    Ibrahim gets mixed up with a local gang that gets him to sell drugs, while Rafa whiles away the time looking for any reason to be with him. They initially bond over a cigarette, but their friendship, and romance, blossoms after they spend a day together hanging out and going bowling. It’s a relationship that we know is too good to be true. And when Ibrahim receives a letter from the government wanting to extradite him back to Morocco, he sees no other way but to run away, with Rafa by his side.

    It’s the performances that make this film fantastic. German Alcaruz as Rafa brings an innocence to his part, a young man who knows what he wants and doesn’t care what his friends think. His facial expressions will melt your heart – Alcarazu gives a believable and touching performance. Adil Koukouh is also very good as Ibrahim. He’s bigger and more mature looking than Rafa, but he also has a special something that makes Rafa’s attraction to him seem very credible. Also very very good is Joseba Ugalde as Rafa’s best friend Guille. He knows he’s losing Rafa to Ibrahim and he’s OK with it, even when Rafa and Ibrahim have to go on the run, there’s a very touching scene when Rafa and Guille say goodbye to each and Guille tells Rafa that’s he doesn’t quite understand what is going on.

    Hidden Away is a bit difficult to comprehend in the beginning as the scenes do jump around, and the subtitles on this film are quite small and at times hard to read, but stick with it till the very end and you will be rewarded with a love story that’s unique in it’s telling and at it’s very core is a film that tells the story of young love, young love that we’ve all experienced.

    Available to by from Amazon

     

  • FILM REVIEW | Floating Skyscapers

    ★★★★★ | Floating Skyscapers

    Polish writer/director Tomascz Wasilewski’s second feature film is a dark tragic love story that you immediately sense from the opening scenes that is doomed.

    Although it is Poland’s first ever gay movie, it is so much more a story about the search for one’s identity and about being accepted for one’s own true self and accepting others for who they are. Essentially it’s a movie about love. Love between a girl and a boy. Between boy and a boy. Between a mother and a son, and a father and a son. It is completely heartbreaking.

    Koba is a young man who has been training to be a champion swimmer for 15 years. He lives at home with his mother who makes somewhat unnatural and creepy demands on him, plus Sylwia his rather sullen girlfriend of two years. He is also in the closet and furtively seeks out brief sexual encounters with other male swimmers in the locker rooms after practice. And then one evening it all changes when one Sylwia drags him reluctantly along to an art opening and he meets Michel, and there is an immediate attraction between the two men.

    Michel is open about his sexuality although his wealthy family, with whom he still lives, are having difficulty with accepting it. The two men surreptitiously embark on a relationship which Sylwia suspects but will do nothing about beyond being hostile to Michel. Uncharacteristically Koba falls totally for his new lover and as a consequence much to the annoyance of all, he neglects both women in his life, and his training.

    When it finally reaches the point of no return and the men decide to leave the closet once and for all, Kuba is confronted by an embittered pregnant Sylwia, and the fervent demands of his mother that he abandons Michel completely and become a full time father and husband. This is however not the only tragedy that befalls them, and makes for such a bitterly sad ending.

    By using such austere and somewhat foreboding locations Wasilewski has heightened the darkness in this heavyhearted tale in a society that is still unceasingly hostile to most gay and lesbian people.

    Watching here in the US where the acceptance of LGBT rights is now racing along and is reflected in the recent Supreme Court rulings somehow makes this groundbreaking film seem even more poignant and pertinent.

    Recently I reviewed Out Loud the first ever film from Lebanon that dealt with gay issues, and also ‘In The Name of’ the 2nd ever-Polish gay movie (and this one won the coveted Teddy Award for Best Feature at the Berlin International Film Festival earlier this year).

    Change is happening, and these excellent movies are both witnesses to the fact, but also more importantly, instruments of the change too.

    Unmissable.

    Floating Skyscapers is Out Now on Matchbox Films

    BUY ON AMAZON | BUY ON ITUNES

  • FILM REVIEW | Floating Skycrapers

    Polish writer/director Tomascz Wasilewski’s second feature film is a dark tragic love story that you immediately sense from the opening scenes that is doomed. ★★★★★

    Although it is Poland’s first ever gay movie, it is so much more a story about the search for one’s identity and about being accepted for one’s own true self and accepting others for who they are. Essentially it’s a movie about love. Love between a girl and a boy. Between boy and a boy. Between a mother and a son, and a father and a son. It is completely heartbreaking.

    Koba is a young man who has been training to be a champion swimmer for 15 years. He lives at home with his mother who makes somewhat unnatural and creepy demands on him, plus Sylwia his rather sullen girlfriend of two years. He is also in the closet and furtively seeks out brief sexual encounters with other male swimmers in the locker rooms after practice. And then one evening it all changes when one Sylwia drags him reluctantly along to an Art Opening and he meets Michel, and there is an immediate attraction between the two men.

    Michel is open about his sexuality although his wealthy family, with whom he still lives, are having difficulty with accepting it. The two men surreptitiously embark on a relationship which Sylwia suspects but will do nothing about beyond being hostile to Michel. Uncharacteristically Koba falls totally for his new lover and as a consequence much to the annoyance of all, he neglects both women in his life, and his training.

    When it finally reaches the point of no return and the men decide to leave the closet once and for all, Kuba is confronted by an embittered pregnant Sylwia, and the fervent demands of his mother that he abandons Michel completely and become a full-time father and husband. This is however not the only tragedy that befalls them, and makes for such a bitterly sad ending.

    By using such austere and somewhat foreboding locations Wasilewski has heightened the darkness in this heavyhearted tale in a society that is still unceasingly hostile to most gay and lesbian people.

    Watching here in the US where the acceptance of LGBT rights is now racing along and is reflected in the recent Supreme Court rulings somehow makes this groundbreaking film seem even more poignant and pertinent.

    Recently I reviewed ‘Out Loud’ the first ever film from Lebanon that dealt with gay issues, and also ‘In The Name of’ the 2nd ever-Polish gay movie (and this one won the coveted Teddy Award for Best Feature at the Berlin International Film Festival earlier this year). Change is happening, and these excellent movies are both witnesses to the fact, but also more importantly, instruments of the change too.

    Unmissable.

    Buy Now on Amazon

     

  • MOVIE REVIEW: Having You

    ★★★ | Having You

    The two DVDs that came through my letterbox just after Christmas could not be more different, though both come from our friends over at Matchbox Films.

    The first of the two I watched was Having You, written and directed by Sam Hoare.

    There are some great performances here, from Andrew Buchan as recovering alcoholic Jack, from Philip Davis as his thoroughly nasty and unlikeable father, from Romola Garai, as Jack’s beautiful girlfriend, from the gorgeous Steven Cree as Jack’s business partner and sponsor, and from the ever watchable Anna Friel as Anna, a blast from the past who drops a bombshell on Jack that he finds difficult to come to terms with. It’s a gentle, watchable movie, which draws you in, but I confess to finding it somewhat manipulative with an ending that is just a little too pat to be convincing. None the less, worth catching if you have a couple of hours to spare one evening.

    BUY FROM AMAZON