2024 Entry #52 07-09-24 “Birder” is a 2023 dramatic thriller which was written by Amnon Lourie and directed by Nate Dushku, both of whom served as producers on 2019’s “Maplethorpe”. The film stars Michael Emery (“The One”, “Petunia”, “Shameless”) as Kristian Brooks, a birdwatching serial killer who invades a nude queer campground in New Hampshire, ensnaring locals with his dark fetish, highlighting the dangers of consent.
The film sells itself as being in the same family as the superior 2013 French erotic thriller “Stranger by the Lake” and I loved that film so I gave this movie a chance. Unfortunately, the acting and directing in this are far lesser in this effort which means that it’s difficult to take any of this seriously and what could have been a very serious, very disturbing chiller becomes a comical demonstration in how not to make this type of film. There are glimmers here and there of what this movie could have been, however the poor acting and directing make the various kills wholly unbelievable (divesting them of any sense of danger or depth) and while there is nudity aplenty with several erections on display, the sex also fails to convince, which was just another reason why “Stranger by the Lake” blew this film out of the water.
2024 Entry #019 01-14-24 “Passages” is a 2023 French romantic drama film by openly gay director Ira Sachs (“The Delta”, “Keep the Lights On”, “Love Is Strange”, “Little Men”, “Frankie”) and starring Franz Rogowski (“Great Freedom”), openly gay actor Ben Whishaw (“Enduring Love”, “Perfume: The Story of a Murderer”, “Brideshead Revisited”, “Skyfall”, “Cloud Atlas”, “The Danish Girl”, “Spectre”, “No Time to Die”), and Adèle Exarchopoulos (“Blue Is the Warmest Colour”). The story follows a gay couple, Tomas (Franz Rogowski) & Martin (Ben Whishaw), whose marriage encounters a crisis when the emotionally manipulative Tomas begins a passionate affair with a young female school teacher named Agathe (Adèle Exarchopoulos).
This was quite good. All of the performances here were either good or great; not a weak link in the chain. I disliked Franz Rogowski’s character Tomas immediately, but he felt true to life; indeed, I’ve dated men like him. And in some ways, I’ve even been like him. The one time I cheated on a partner (many, many years ago), it was with a woman. And similarly to Tomas, I told my lover about it right after it happened, but for me I had so much guilt that I couldn’t enjoy it – which is why it has never happened again in any of my other relationships. But this may be part of why I hated him so much. But the film seems to hate him as well, or at least it shows the consequences for his repeated carelessness with the lives of those he claims to love. It’s just a game for him; he wants everything, so it is nice to see him end up with nothing. There were times when I was angry at Martin and Agathe as well, but their imperfect responses are measured and wholly believable. There’s a motif in the film, a side story about a book that an attractive author named Amad (Erwan Kepoa Falé) has written – he has connections to each of the main characters, and I believe his purpose here is in some ways thematic. Each of the main characters are a passage in the story of the lives of their fellow leads. Some of those books may have a happy ending – but this film just gives us these chapters to ponder. Nicely done.
2024 Entry #014 01-11-24 “The Trace of Your Lips” (aka “La huella de unos labios”) is a 2023 Mexican drama directed by gay cinema icon Julián Hernández, who co-wrote the film with Gustavo Hernández de Anda. The film centers on Aldo (Mauricio Rico) & Román (Hugo Catalán), gay men who live in the same apartment complex who have never been formally introduced. Aldo works in a store with some tricking on the side while Román is an actor in B-movies. The story takes a turn as the men are isolated in their apartments due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the lockdowns that ensued. They trade messages and phone calls, becoming emotionally entangled as well as increasingly sexually explicit in conversation and fantasy.
Watching this film today proved to be extremely ironic. Firstly, I started this LGBTQ+ viewing and reaction project in 2020, in part to keep myself sane during the Covid-19 NYC lockdown. Additionally, I’ve now been alerted by Facebook that three years ago today I watched and reviewed “Mexican Men”, a collection of short films which first exposed me to Julián Hernández’s work. I’ve always intended to view more and I have tried, but my copy of one film (“A Thousand Clouds of Peace”) was damaged and I started another which I never finished (because I couldn’t get back to it in a timely manner).
As for this film, it is far more tragic than I was expecting, but it was also visually stunning, with a great soundtrack and a subject matter I could clearly relate to. The film’s opening, during the making of one of Román’s B-movies, where he first crosses paths with Aldo, goes on a bit too long; it was clear what the gimmick was but it took a long time to get to the “reveal”. Beyond that, the film played like an AIDS film, but with Covid-19 instead. I don’t highly recommend it, but I wasn’t bored and I don’t regret watching it. And I still want to see more of this director’s work.
2024 Entry #003 01-03-24 “Aikāne” is a 14 minute 2023 animated short film based on a mythical love and adventure story rooted in the Hawaiian tradition of aikāne, or intimate partners of the same sex. Co-directors Hamer and Wilson, a married couple, were inspired to make the film by their belief that everybody, especially young people, deserve to see a queer love story with a happy ending. The film was produced by Hinaleimoana Kwai Kong Wong-Kalu, also known as Kumu Hina, who is a Native Hawaiian māhū – a traditional third gender person who occupies “a place in the middle” between male and female, as well as a modern transgender woman.
The story follows a valiant warrior, wounded in battle against foreign invaders, who falls deep into a mysterious underwater world. When the octopus who rescues him transforms into a handsome young man, they fall in love and an epic adventure begins.
This was charming, brief and unexpectedly lovely. I know nothing of Hawaiian mythology and was not expecting the sea creature love story – but it was cool nonetheless.
The film has been awarded at multiple children’s, indigenous, LGBTQ+ and other film festivals around the world, and has qualified for the 96th Academy Awards by winning top jury awards at the New Hampshire and Hawaii International Film Festivals.
“Aikāne” is currently streaming for free on YouTube.
“Nuovo Olimpo” is a 2023 semi-autobiographical Italian romantic drama film by openly gay director Ferzan Özpetek (“Hamam” / “Steam: The Turkish Bath”, “The Ignorant Fairies”, “Facing Windows”, “Saturn in Opposition”, “Loose Cannons”, “Magnificent Presence”, “Fasten Your Seatbelts”, “Red Istanbul”, “The Goddess of Fortune”) who co-wrote the film with Gianni Romoli. The story centers on Andrea Di Luigi as Pietro Gherardi & Damiano Gavino as Enea Monte, two men who meet and fall in love in late-1970s Rome, only to be separated unexpectedly. The film premiered at the Rome Film Festival on October 22, 2023 and was released on Netflix on November 1, 2023. Elements of the film’s story were taken from writer and director Ferzan Özpetek’s own life and career. He stated, “The starting point of the film is a true story that happened to me in the ’70s and that for a long time I wanted to use as an inspiration to make a film.” Nuovo Olimpo was shot entirely in Rome, specifically in Municipio III and Monte Sacro. Principal photography began in November 2022.
I’d previously seen and enjoyed both “Steam: The Turkish Bath” and “Facing Windows”, but until the release of this film in late 2023, I had no idea they shared the same creative team. But when I learned that Özpetek had directed both of those films and this one, I was immediately interested in seeing it.
I liked this though I’m not sure if I enjoyed it as much as his previous work. There are some wonderful sequences here and I adore the music he uses, and many elements of the story resonate for me in interesting ways. But I had a headache when I watched this which got progressively worse throughout, and this affected my experience and how I viewed it. I generally insist on subtitles vs. dubbing when I view foreign films because I love to hear the languages but because of the headache, after the film started and I found it was dubbed, I chose to keep watching because I wanted to see the movie so badly but I thought reading all the subtitles while I was impaired would be painful. I don’t think this choice ruined the movie, but I do feel like it added an extra level of camp, and if I ever view it again, I plan to view it with subtitles on.
The story features two bisexual men, Pietro & Enea, who fall in love with one another but are separated. Throughout their lives they consider one another and are haunted by their past relationship, despite moving on and finding happiness with other people. Their relationship pops up in all sorts of ways in the lives they choose to lead and eventually they are reunited, many years later, but to what end? This resonates with me. I’m demisexual; I form strong emotional bonds with nearly all the people I choose to have sex with, which is why I’m not good at one night stands and I’ve dated most of the people I’ve been with. These people, mostly men, who have been part of my life and drifted apart, I’ve often used their memory to create art (which is something the Enea does here) – and this has led to reunions, however brief, which feature old lovers speaking with some of the same results seen here. The film is a fiction based on real life, and that is exactly what it feels like. There are meta elements which are interesting and add something to the equation, pushing the life as fiction narrative…which border on gimmicky, but are really just another side of the truth. And the film features several supportive female roles that I found quite moving, if a bit underwritten; I liked all of these women but I’m not sure I truly knew them by the end of the film or that I fully understood them – and I wish we got more of that somehow. It’s not a perfect film but it’s a beautiful attempt.
