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  • FILM REVIEW | Boy Erased

    FILM REVIEW | Boy Erased

    ★★★★ | Boy Erased

    In 2004, at the age of 19, American Garrard Conley was sent by his parents to a conversion therapy program to rid him of his homosexual feelings. This true story is now a film called Boy Erased.

    The amazing Lucas Hedges (Lady Bird, Manchester by the Sea) plays Garrard. He is a young man growing up in a small bible belt community in Arkansas. His father Marshall (Russell Crowe) is a respected pastor in the local church while his mother Nancy (Nicole Kidman) believes in everything her husband says. But Garrard is given a choice by his parents when he tells them he is gay: either agree to attend the church-support conversion therapy program where he will have to go to a camp with similar young adults or risk losing his family, a family that he is quite close to. Garrard has no choice but to go through therapy. Garrard is happy being gay – even entering into a relationship with a fellow student at college – but it is his religious upbringing (and a stern father) which helps him make the decision to go to therapy.

    Once he is at the Love in Action gay conversion therapy assessment program, he meets fellow young men like himself (including director and actor Xavier Dolan, and Joe Alwyn – at the time of this writing Taylor Swift’s boyfriend). They all struggle to not come to terms with the way they are, meanwhile all the time guided by the chief therapist Victor Sykes (writer and director of the film Joel Edgerton). But of course, Garrard has urges that he can’t control, while his parents feel that for him to lead a happy life is to lead the life of a straight man.

    The real Garrard Conley, of course, luckily survived his time in the therapy program to write the book which is now this film, and it’s a very good film. Hedges, as always, is fantastic. One never knows what he’s thinking because of his inquisitive facial expressions, and he steals the movie from the two heavyweight actors who are playing his parents. Crowe is excellent as the self-righteous father but Kidman is both warm and tender as the mother who loves her husband but perhaps loves her son a bit more. Boy Erased is at times heartbreaking, but for the most part, it’s triumphant.

    Boy Erased is out now and available to order from Amazon

  • DVD REVIEW | In Bloom

    ★★★★ | In Bloom

    This is the rather gritty story of a hip very young gay couple in Chicago’s ‘Boystown’ coming to terms with how tough one’s first love can be.

    Kurt is a small time drug dealer who supplies pot to his peers, whilst Paul his boyfriend of two years has a dead-end job in a local grocery store that he can hardly tolerate. When the long summer starts, they are having fun and very much into each other and seem the perfect couple, but some seven months later they have separated and can barely talk to each other.

    Everything had been going well with them until one night one of Kurt’s good-looking customers puts the moves on him, and although he initially resists Kevin’s advances, it does open his mind to the possibility that there is more to life outside of his cosy relationship with Paul. Suddenly that relationship starts to look painfully inadequate to him and in a fit of impulse, he starts a ‘break-up’ that he will only regret when it is far too late.

    If that is not bad enough, the real world outside is even scarier than usual right now as there is a serial killer on the prowl whose victims have all been young gay men from the area. With Kurt making late night deliveries to hip parties all over he is probably more at risk than most.

    This look at contemporary edgy youth culture is the work of filmmaker Chris Michael Birkmeier who based this work of fiction on his own story of when he broke up with his first ever boyfriend. The plot is steeped in innocence and naivete and full of well-meaning intentions. It’s a remarkable debut feature and as such one can overlook the slow-moving story line that almost grinds to a halt at times.

    Credit too for the great wee cast full of untried talent, and very good photography too.

    The comparisons between Mr Birkmeier and the French/Canadian wunderkind Xavier Dolan who picked up Awards at Cannes for his first movie at the tender age of 19, are natural. Especially when Birkmeier makes no bones about the fact that he is a big Dolan fan. But there is very little similarity in their work and this movie is of a much simpler construction and far more straightforward. The two young filmmaker’s works complement each other, rather than complete.

    No doubt at all that C M Birkmeier (as he bills himself) is one to watch in LGBT cinema, and I for one cannot wait to see how he follows this fascinating first movie.

    Available from Amazon and iTunes

  • FILM REVIEW | Elephant Song

    ★★★★ | Elephant Song

    At only 26 years old, French-Canadian Xavier Dolan already has five films under his directorial belt, all of which have been well received and critically acclaimed. In addition, he’s acted in 12 films, including the just released Elephant Song.

    In 2009, Dolan directed, produced, starred and wrote J’ai Tué Ma Mére (I Killed My Mother), a semi-autobiographical story about him as a young gay man at odds with his mother, and wrote the script when he was at the tender age of 17. It won 3 awards at the Cannes Film Festival. The next year he wrote, directed, produced and starred (again) in Les Amours Imaginaires (Heartbeats), a story about three close friends who are involved in a love triangle. In 2012 Dolan continued his string of emotional and heartfelt films by writing and directing Laurence Anyways. At 168 minutes, it was an ambitious project for the young director to do, it was about the struggle of a straight man who, over the course of ten years, transitions from male to female, and how it affects the relationship with his lover (with amazing performances by Melvil Poupajd and Suzanne Clément). Laurence Anyways won many awards, including two Cannes Film Festival Awards (the Queer Palm Award and Best Actress for Clément). Lawrence Anyways was also nominated for ten Canadian Screen Awards (winning two), and more importantly, at the Toronto International Film Festival, it won Best Canadian Feature film. Not bad for a local boy.

    2013 is when Dolan wore multiple hats in a film. In Tom á la Ferme (Tom at the Farm), Dolan, who wrote, produced, directed and starred, plays Tom, a young man who works in an advertising agency and travels to the Canadian countryside for the funeral of his 25-year-old boyfriend. The problem is that the grieving mother did not know that her son was gay, so she accepts Tom as his friend in the hopes that he can tell her all about her dead son’s life. Meanwhile, the deceased’s brother, 30-year-old Francis (an amazing Pierre-Yves Cardinal), knew that his brother gay but could never really accept it. Conflict, anguish, thought provoking moments, anger, love, and acceptance follow. More acclaim followed Dolan when Mommy was released in 2015. It stars French Canadian actress Anne Dorval who is a widowed mother overwhelmed by her teenage son (Antoine Olivier Pilon – a relevation) and his attention deficit disorder. Dolan wrote, produced and directed Mommy, and it won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and won nine Canadian Screen Awards, including Best Motion Picture.

    In the newly released Elephant Song, Dolan, who co-stars along with Bruce Greenwood and Catherine Keneer, plays Michael, a psychologically unwell young man in a mental institution who may or may not have had something to do with the disappearance of his psychiatrist. So it’s up to Greenwood’s Dr. Greene to interview Michael to try to get to the bottom of his colleague’s disappearance. During the interrogation, Michael plays mind games with Dr. Greene, alluding to the fact that he knows where his psychiatrist is but is not quite yet ready to tell. Michael is clearly a very disturbed young man, his very famous opera singer mother all but ignored him, and the one time he spent with his father was when he took him elephant hunting, with the boy Michael crying over his father’s killing of an elephant. And Michael alludes to a sexual relationship that he is having with his psychiatrist, so it’s up to Dr. Greene to take what Michael is saying with a grain of salt. Even the head nurse, Susan Peterson (Keneer), warns Dr. Greene to keep his distance from Michael. It’s a film that at its centrepiece is Dolan, who is perfect as Michael, very good looking yet very mischevious, you don’t know whether you want to hug him or to run away from him. And the film revisits the themes of homosexuality and the lack of acceptance so common in Dolan’s films.

    What’s next for Dolan besides conquering the world? He just finished shooting ‘It’s Only the End of the World,’ about a young man who returns home after 12 years to announce his impending death to his family. It stars Marion Cotillard and Vincent Cassel. Dolan will also be shooting his first film in the United States, to be titled The Death and Life of John F. Donovan, in 2016. It’s a fictional story about an actor who is famous for playing a Marvel-style superhero whose life and career are turned upside-down when his private correspondence with an 11-year-old fan is exposed and made to look indecent by a villainous gossip columnist. This one stars Hollywood heavyweights Kit Harrington, Jessica Chastain, and Susan Sarandon. If his previous films are anything to go by, these new films (and his future films) will be eagerly anticipated and will be must sees.

  • FILM REVIEW | Heartbeats

    ★★★★★ | Heartbeats

    If you have ever had an unrequited love, especially one in your (distant) youth then this wonderfully witty tongue-in-cheek movie from the remarkable multi-talented filmmaker Xavier Dolan will really appeal to you.

    The story is of a love triangle. Twenty-year-old best friends Marie and Francis spot Nicolas, a stunning Adonis, at a dinner party, and they both fall for him big time. Nicolas adores attention so encourages them to the point where they destroy their close friendship and become bitter rivals to win his heart. Nicolas is very self-absorbed and affected and it is impossible to tell if his androgynous personification will eventually reveal whether he is gay or straight. The three of them have sleepovers in Francis’s bed but nothing at all happens, and then one day they ago away to the country for the weekend, and after this life, for them, all will never be the same.

    As the story progresses Mr Dolan edits in some hilarious anecdotes in interview form from strangers whose love lives also fell part. The man definitely has a way with words.

    There is something totally entrancing about this second feature from Canada’s wunderkind filmmaker and as much as one can pick holes with annoying (and almost clichéd) touches like some of the slow motion scenes, you really sense that this is no ordinary movie from any ordinary director. Mr Dolan’s first movie I Killed My Mother a totally stunning and hilarious semi-autobiographic piece won 3 Awards at the Cannes Film Festival (and another 23 other Awards around the World) in 2009 when he was a mere 19-years-old.

    Sadly the US Distributor went into financial difficulties and the movie, trapped in legal no-mans-land, has never been seen beyond the Festival Circuit to date. Now at the ripe old age of 22, he has written, directed, starred, co-produced, edited, and designed the sets and the costumes for Heartbeats, which also picked up an Award at Cannes last year. He is an enormous precocious talent and I think this, his early work, shows that he is going to be one of THE most important filmmakers of the future.

    You would be a fool to miss this one.

  • FILM REVIEW | Tom At The Farm

    ★★★★ | Tom At The Farm

    Canadian filmmaker Xavier Dolan may be sick of being constantly described as a wunderkind, but when you are just 24 years old like he is and have already made four head-turning mind-blowing Award winning movies, then the description is more than apt. Not content with writing and directing each of them he usually loves to edit, design the costumes, create the music, and now in his latest one, a taut psychological thriller, he stars in it too.

    Tom is grieving the death of his boyfriend Guy (known to his family as Guillaume) and he travels to a rather bleak part of Northern Quebec to attend the funeral and share his loss with the family he has never even met. He quickly discovers from a very scary encounter with Francis, Guilliame’s older brother, that not only was he ‘not out’ to his mother, but that Francis had actually created an imaginary girlfriend so that she would never suspect. In the first of many threats, Francis menacingly insists that Tom stays and keeps quiet about being gay and also adds some credence to the existence of Guillaume’s ‘girlfriend’ before he then goes from the family farm for good, never to return.

    To avoid doing just this, immediately after the funeral Tom tries to leave to go back to the city but in his panic he forgets his luggage and turns the car around to head back to the Farm to retrieve it. In doing so he confronts Francis and so refuses to go along with the subterfuge, which results in first of the beatings he will get at the hands of this psychotic bully. It also soon becomes obvious that despite all the violence both men are attracted to each other…Tom to Francis despite all the vicious physical abuse… and Francis to Tom even though he is bitterly angry about his own repressed homosexuality.

    Tom settles into some sort of routine and looks almost set to stay at the Farm and when he actually arranges for the fake girlfriend to come visit to appease the mother, he refuses to leave even when it is obvious to her and Tom that he is in real danger if he stays there a moment longer with the mad sociopath brother. He claims that it’s because that Francis could not manage the Farm on the own, but it’s clear that he actually is drawn to Francis’s deranged behaviour.

    It is a superb fist-clenching piece with an atmosphere of real fear that never ever lets up. I am not sure what was worse, knowing what Francis was actually capable of (and there is much more that I haven’t even touched on) or the realisation of what a pliable and willing Tom would accept. In amongst all of this, there is one most glorious scene where the two men tango together in the barn where the intimacy will only give way to violence again. The high pitch tension never ever gives a clue as to how it will develop or end up.

    Mr. Dolan sporting tousled dirty blond hair turns in a convincingly effective performance as Tom, and it is matched by veteran Canadian actress Lise Roy playing the mother with such a defiant tone, and also Pierre Yves- Cardinal as a very intimidating latently gay Francis.

    I am unashamedly a big fan of Mr. Dolan’s work and have never subscribed to the notion sometimes proffered that he is always about style over substance… the reason I am passionate about the work is the fact that he combines both so very well. However with this movie you can sense a more mature quality, and I believe that Mr. Dolan really can quite rightly claim the crown of being an out queer Hitchcock.

    P.S. The only fact I have given this a less than perfect score is there were two strands of the plot that puzzled me. I couldn’t believe that the mother could have been so completely unaware of what was going on in either of her son’s life. And secondly would an urbane copy editor at a city ad agency really take to farming so eagerly as Tom did?

    It did however won the prestigious FIPRESCI Prize at the Venice Film Festival, and is a totally unmissable movie.

  • FILM REVIEW | In Bloom

    ★★★★ | In Bloom

    This is the rather gritty story of a hip very young gay couple in Chicago’s ‘Boystown’ coming to terms with how tough one’s first love can be.

    Kurt is a small time drug dealer who supplies pot to his peers, whilst Paul his boyfriend of two years has a dead-end job in a local grocery store that he can barely tolerate. When the long summer starts, they are having fun and very much into each other and seem the perfect couple, but some seven months later they have separated and can barely talk to each other.

    Everything had been going well with them until one night one of Kurt’s good-looking customers puts the moves on him, and although he initially resists Kevin’s advances does it opens his mind to the possibility that there is more to life outside of his cosy relationship with Paul. Suddenly that starts to look painfully inadequate to him now, and in a fit of impulse he starts a ‘break-up’ that he will only regret when it is far too late.

    If that is not bad enough, the real world outside is even scarier than usual right now as there is a serial killer on the prowl whose victims have all been young gay man from the area. With Kurt making late night deliveries to hip parties all over he is probably more at risk than most.

    This look at contemporary edgy youth culture is the work of a 22 year newbie filmmaker Chris Michael Birkmeier who based this work of fiction on his own story of when he broke up with his first ever boyfriend. The plot is steeped in innocence and naivete and full of well-meaning intentions. It’s a remarkable debut feature and as such one can overlook the slow-moving story line that almost grinds to a halt at times.

    Credit too for the great wee cast full of untried talent, and very good photography too.

    The comparisons between Mr Birkmeier and the French/Canadian wunderkind Xavier Dolan who picked up Awards at Cannes for his first movie at the tender age of 19, are natural. Especially when Birkmeier makes no bones of the fact that he is a big Dolan fan. But there is very little similarity in their work and this movie is of a much simpler construction and far more straightforward. The two young filmmaker’s works complement each other, rather than complete.

    No doubt at all that C M Birkmeier (as he bills himself) is one to watch in new queer cinema, and I for one cannot wait to see how he follows this fascinating first movie.