2022 Entry #010 01-28-22 “Testosterone” is a 2003 romantic dramedy film. An adaptation of the posthumous gay-themed transgressional novel by James Robert Baker, the film was directed by David Moreton, whose “Edge of Seventeen” remains firmly in my top 5 LGBTQ+ films of all time. Moreton also co-wrote the screenplay with Dennis Hensley (“Reunion”, “Rubdown”, “If We Took a Holiday”).
The story follows David Sutcliffe (“Under the Tuscan Sun”, “Happy Endings”) as Dean Seagrave, a successful but creatively struggling thirty-something graphic novelist living in Los Angeles. As revealed in an inventively illustrated opening, Dean believes he’s found true love with his hunky boyfriend Pablo, played by conservative nutjob Antonio Sabàto Jr. (“Deadly Skies”), only for Pablo to disappear one night when he goes out for cigarettes. A good beginning for a darkly humorous story where nothing is as it seems.
I mostly enjoyed this movie the first time that I saw it around 2005, but revisiting it now, I’m very close to loving it. The cast is camptastic with fun turns by gay icons Jennifer Coolidge (“The Broken Hearts Club: A Romantic Comedy”, the “Legally Blonde” films, “Single All the Way”) & Sônia Braga (“Kiss of the Spider Woman”, “Sex and the City”), with Dario Dukah (“10 Pesos”) as hot hotel employee Guillermo & electric performances by Celina Font as Sofia and Leonardo Brzezicki (“Smokers Only”, “Unmade Beds”; director of “Night”, “The Mad Half Hour” & “Wandering Heart”) as Marcos, a sister / brother double act who both compliment and contradict what we think we know. What is real and what is imagined is left to the audience to decide (which is always the braver choice in my opinion)…but no matter how the film is interpreted, there’s plenty to dig into here which I failed to notice the first time around. The line about snakes never dying unless you cut off their heads really resonated in a way that it didn’t before. And the suicide of one character that shocked and upset me the first time, still managed to do both the second time through, only now I’ve come away with a completely different interpretation of the character’s motivations, which changed the reasons I was upset and with who. And I honestly don’t know what to make of Sofia, but I found her mesmerizing every moment she was on screen.
Also, while I would normally avoid Sabàto Jr. like a biblical plague he’d likely wish upon me, I take comfort here as he likely regrets going fully frontal in the role of a gay man whore. ❤
