Protect Me from What I Want (2009)
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Fans of acting twin Elliott Tittensor could be forgiven for thinking that all their wet dreams have come true, when in this British short Elliott gets down to some manly hanky-panky with the object of his cinematic desire.
For here Tittensor plays Daz; a gay scally on the look out for some man-on-man action, only to find himself attracted to Saleem instead, namely a young Muslim hardly out to himself, let alone open to the thought of rampant gay sex. Exiting the scene faster than a discarded condom, it isn’t long before the two meet again. Only as a council bed-sit sees Daz instruct virginal Saleem in the art of man sex, could it be that Saleem has a lesson or two to teach Daz?
Written and directed by Dominic Leclerc, this touching short arrives like a cinematic shot of Channel 4’s Shameless, given Elliott Tittensor here effortlessly reprises his working class credentials, along the way casting his boxers to the floor in true Chatsworth fashion. And yet it is Naveed Choudhry who emotionally reaches out to you, his nervous glances aptly conveying the mindset of a young man too afraid to even give his name, forever living in fear of the repercussions the true nature of his sexuality would have, if it became known to his family.
For this is more than just a boys first time story, as Leclerc narratively touches upon the issue of what it means to be gay and Muslim in today’s society, along the way lacing his script with feelings of disgust and shame. Only as this well-executed work on loneliness and if anything, a longing for friendship and perhaps something more sets out to show, being gay and Muslim is not an oxymoron. Need more be said?
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Handsome middle class Manuel, hurt by his previous relationship and bored of being alone, meets Julio, a rugged, lonely, unemployed young man in a chat room. The two eventually meet up in person and the sexual spark is quickly ignited. And while sex is satisfying and frequent, it is their collective problems with intimacy, trust and the fear of being hurt that make them hesitant to commit fully. As their relationship develops, both reveal secrets from their past but these revelations might be real, imagined or outright lies. Who is being truthful, who is real, and who truly loves the other? (Spanish with English subtitles)
In today’s conservative, predominantly Catholic Poland, an open homosexual relationship is more likely to trigger gay bashing than gay pride; so it is in Tomasz Wasilewski’s sophomore feature, the feel-bad coming-out drama “Floating Skyscrapers.” Although the lead character is something of a lout as well as an emotional and intellectual cipher, this artfully shot, sexually provocative feature nabbed the Karlovy Vary fest’s East of the West competish kudo and is making the festival rounds.
Otherwise, Kuba seems to have few responsibilities or interests, apart from being a dab hand in the kitchen and indulging in wordless sexual encounters with men in bathroom stalls at the gym. When Sylwia drags Kuba to an art opening, he ungraciously decamps to a balcony, where he shares a joint and a long conversation with effeminate-looking college student Michal (Bartosz Gelner). Glimpsing the two men from across the room, Sylwia glowers at the way they seem to be really into each other. She soon has a lot more to scowl about, as Kuba abandons her and their plans every time Michal calls.
One of the weaknesses of the film is that while Kuba convincingly comes across as a closeted, self-loathing gay man, his sudden declaration of love for Michal at the one-hour mark seems out of character. Indeed, their relationship is shown to revolve around physical desire; we never get to hear their conversations or find out what makes the not particularly likable Kuba tick.
A gay love story straddling the Israel-Palestine divide. Roy (Michael Aloni) is a well-to-do Israeli lawyer, Nimr (Nicholas Jacob) a young Palestinian on an educational permit in Tel Aviv. They fall in love, then into a whole heap of trouble as Israeli security services start investigating Namir’s militant brother. There’s romance and tragedy, but little depth and no nuance. Aloni and Jacob make for beautiful lovers, yet first-time director Michael Mayer has a tough time playing a catchy tune with just two notes.
Blackbird opens with sexually repressed Randy (Julian Walker), a closeted black high school senior from a Southern Baptist family, singing a duet in his choir with another guy. The scene culminates with the two making out and taking their clothes off on stage and at least one member of the choir fainting in horror. Turns out this is just a wet dream, one of many that Randy will have throughout the film, which sometimes includes guys knocking on his window and asking, “Is this a gay party or can a dirty straight boy join in?” Randy tends to wake up from these dreams with jizz all over his hands, and stricken with the kind of guilt that gets him on his knees, begging the lord for forgiveness.
She slaps Randy in the face when he eats the pie she’s baked for her missing daughter, and arms herself with a baseball bat when finding irrefutable proof that he’s gay. To add to the film’s TMZ-triggered problems, having Isaiah “Not-Your-Little-Faggot” Washington, as Randy’s father, play the one gay-friendly voice in an ocean of homophobic hysteria is an embarrassingly forced mea culpa.
But for a film that wants to be something of a teen musical, a coming-of-age story, and a gay fairy tale all at once, it’s too often bogged down by an unnecessarily somber subplot about Randy’s sister, which never quite fits the narrative, and worn-out images of Jesus freaks trying to pray the gay away through exorcism. Indeed, being a closeted black gay boy in Mississippi is surely suffocating, but Blackbird is, like its main character, too naive to understand or, at least, to deploy the reparative powers of camp.
1909. Maurice Hall (James Wilby) is an undergraduate at Kings College, Cambridge. While there, he meets and falls in love with Clive Durham (Hugh Grant). Although they are very close, and continue to be so after University, their love is never consummated. But then Clive, scared by the arrest on an immorality charge of a University friend who later commits suicide, breaks off their relationship, leaving Maurice devastated….
E.M. Forster wrote Maurice around 1914 but due to concerns about the acceptability of its subject matter, he didn’t let it be published until after his death. The novel finally appeared in 1971. It’s usually considered one of his weaker novels, but as is often the way, the lesser novel makes for a better film. In my mind it’s the best of the three films Merchant Ivory made from Forster’s work, and one of their best films overall.
Why is this? There’s a case to be made that Forster as a novelist was crippled by his own sexual orientation, to which he never adjusted. (And let’s not forget that male homosexuality was illegal in Britain until 1967, leaving gay men open to blackmail and long prison sentences, not to mention possible Oscar Wilde-like public disgrace.) Maurice was clearly a very personal work, to which he rather sentimentally gave a happy ending. As Merchant and Ivory are a gay couple of long standing, you can see how this would appeal to them. I’m not sure if Ivory is correct in claiming that this film was the first unapologetic gay love story (complete with brief full-frontal male nudity), with his hero not suicidal at the end but happily in a relationship with gamekeeper Alec Scudder (Rupert Graves), one that cuts across class barriers as well as sexual ones. But it’s certainly an early example of such a film. It’s hard to imagine Merchant Ivory as radical filmmakers, but just this once, in their oh-so-discreet and polite way, they may have slipped something subversive past their audience. Seventeen years later – and I speak as someone who saw Maurice on its cinema release – it may be hard to realise what the fuss was about. But back in 1987, the AIDS epidemic was only six years old, and as Ivory says if Maurice had been made very much earlier it might have attracted more condemnation than it did.
Many Merchant Ivory films are full of surface pleasures: sumptuous costume and production design and camerawork, making a relatively small budget seem much larger, not to mention literate dialogue and fine performances from some very distinguished actors. But what is often missing is passion: you don’t sense an overwhelming urge to make this film rather than something else. That isn’t the case with Maurice though, which is constantly engaging and in places quite moving if a little overlong. Merchant Ivory’s usual scriptwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala was committed to a novel at the time and didn’t feel comfortable with the subject matter, so the screenplay is the work of Kit Hesketh-Harvey (of cabaret act Kit and the Widow) and Ivory. As Hesketh-Harvey admits, much of the dialogue comes straight from the book.
Apart from the central three (and Graves doesn’t appear until after the halfway mark), most of the roles are little more than adroitly-played cameos. (Helena Bonham Carter turns up uncredited as a spectator at a cricket match.) Although Wilby and Graves are excellent, it’s Hugh Grant’s Clive on which the film turns. Grant has played the silly-ass dithering Englishman a few too many times in Four Weddings and a Funeral and its follow-ups, so it’s easy to forget how good an actor he can be. Clive is one of his best roles, along with another gay role in the little-seen An Awfully Big Adventure. Clive’s platonic love for Maurice dominates the first half of the film and it’s Clive’s crisis of conscience which causes the key event in the film, when he rejects Maurice. Although we see Maurice leave for a hopefully happy future as a gay man, we end the film with Clive. As he gazes out of a window, the camera looks in at him, his wife Anne (a deft performance of uncloying sweetness from Phoebe Nicholls, an actress much underused by the British Film Industry) clearly in love with him but he will never be able to reciprocate, the frame of the window like the bars of a prison of his own making.
