Friday April 27, 2007 SGN.org |
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Volume 35 Issue 17 |
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Tuesday, Dec 02, 2008
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Boy Culture explores frustrations of Gay love |
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| Boy Culture explores frustrations of Gay love | ||
| Boy Culture explores frustrations of Gay love
by Derich Mantonela -
SGN A&E Writer Boy Culture Opens Friday at the Varsity Boy Culture, director/co-writer Q. Allan Brocka's made-in-Seattle adaptation of Matthew Rettenmund's 1995 novel about the frustrations of Gay love, is a cut above most Gay-themed films. Competent production values, generally insightful writing and direction and an attractive cast of up-and-coming newcomers make this a must-see for Gays and a "chance well taken" for intelligent mainstream audiences. The film's protagonist, a handsome, brooding 25-year-old hustler (Derek Magyar) who styles himself as "X," is a control freak that fears letting go emotionally. He provides an ironic voice-over which counteracts his words and actions onscreen. So, while he says sarcastic things and cuts down the very people he secretly wishes would love him, his inner voice tells us how sorry he is about that and how he wishes he could change. X has two roomies: Andrew (Darryl Stephens), a handsome, thoughtfully intelligent Black around X's age and Joey (Jonathon Trent), an 18-year-old sexually hyperactive twink. Guess what? Both of them have the hots for X, but while Andrew, all too aware of X's capacity for stinging rejections, pursues X stealthily and conditionally. One of Joey's come-ons is to stick his bare ass in the air and invite X into it. These ploys get neither guy anywhere with our anally-retentive anti-hero, who claims that the only way he can ever receive satisfaction (and temporary "closure" of his own needs) from sex is when he's paid for it. Hypocritically, he bristles at what he perceives as his roomies' occasional sexual promiscuity. Throughout the film, X references the priesthood and conventional morality, supposedly tongue-in-cheek but (we suspect) with more seriousness than he cares to admit. This brings us to one of Boy Culture's central themes: Gays who hate themselves for being Gay. Clearly, X has a problem with this and because of it he drives away the very people who could supply him with the love he so desperately needs (he admits to this in his voice-overs, but can barely broach the subject in person). Magyar's reined-in, subtle performance (together with his manly looks and body) is such that while we really ought to dislike his character, he's such a desperate, needy mess that we want to see him rescued and nurtured, rather like the lost puppy he is. As is the case with so many Gay-themed films ("Brokeback" included), the main characters of Boy Culture are so impossibly good-looking that it can be tough for us to critique them objectively. Kudos to the actors here that they are able to bridge that gap, so that we end up caring for them almost despite their physical attractiveness. Though much of it feels more like a play than a film (dialog and introspection dominate here, not the smatterings of naked sex, which never become graphic, by the way), Boy Culture takes a lively shortcut when X and Andrew head down to Portland where they stay with Andrew's shoot-from-the-hip, urban-eccentric Black family. Not only is X "accepted" as Andrew's lover (which the guys "pretend" to be for the sake of appearances, in one of the film's wry twists), Gay love is celebrated by them as if it were some kind of joyous heralding of an enlightened new age. The reticent, privacy-seeking son is somewhat chagrinned by this while X wavers between bemusement and confusion; and leave it to him to spoil their night together in Andrew's boyhood bed. When X takes on a new client, Gregory (the international star Patrick Bauchau), an ultra-sophisticated, handsome older gentleman with Old World manners and subtle Freudian insights, it's not about sex but about Gregory as Father Confessor to his emotionally-constipated hireling. Gregory tells X that he doesn't want to have sex with him until X desires him as much as he, Gregory, desires X. Gregory, in other words, pegs X right off the bat as a closeted romantic; the surest way into his heart is not through his pants but through his troubled ego. The Seattle Gay scene, at least as filtered through X's jaded eyes, is not portrayed in this film in a flattering light. When, in one of his many angst-ridden confessional modes, he says "I moved from a small town to a small city," he clearly means "small" in the sense of socially provincial and uptight -- but then, so is he. His tortured journey towards the enlightenment of love is what Boy Culture is all about. |
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