Regarde-moi dans les yeux

First I want to thank Director: Tim Kirkman for making a good film on a touchy subject, that being male companionship and how it's often based on a shallow foundation. In Lazy Eye the character Dean decides to look back and find a guy he had a brief relationship with 15 years past. What Dean fails to realize is that the entire affair with Alex was based on lust and not common interest or friendship. He finds Alex through the now all pervasive social media via the internet and discovers that Alex is open for a short visit to Dean's desert house.

We discover early on that Dean and Alex are more interested in one another physically than mentally because within five minutes of meeting again after 15 years they are both in the sack! From that point on their relationship and efforts to catch-up through talking is strained and often confrontational. In addition both seem to regress to the emotional level both were at 15 years earlier. Dean is only curious because he is not completely truthful with Alex about his life. And the past 15 years with Alex's life remains a mystery to Dean and the viewer.

This movie has nice production values and the actors try to bring the script to life. The story is a bit weak but it's brought together nicely.

'"Lazy Eye" is terse, polished, understated but deeply felt. "Gay" films usually ask viewers to cut them slack, to allow the makers expressive leeway we don't give other films. Lazy Eye stands up proudly and lays down its cards calmly. It compresses the emotional range of a novel as the very best short stories do: Annie Proulx's "Brokeback Mountain does that; so do stories by De Maupassant, Fitzgerald, Katherine Anne Porter, Philip Roth. It's a small film with big things tightly rolled inside it.

A lush California desert backdrop frames the story of two former lovers, out of touch for 15 years, who reconnect for a weekend idyll. Each has his own agenda. The script is sharp, biting, and perceptive. The two leads, Luca Near-Verbrugghe and Aaron Costa deliver spot on performances. A highly recommended addition to your 'watch next' list.

Much like LGBTI people, Queer cinema has struggled to find its place, often disadvantaged and dismissed by the mainstream. Making movies is expensive and generally queer cinema never has access to the same kind of budgets as its hetero-normative counterparts resulting in, at times, distractingly poor production standards which fans of the genre generally forgive, hungry for any kind of representation on screen. Actors can be afraid to be associated with 'gay roles' whether they are gay, straight, closet, etc in real life. And stories can be safe, not wanting to miss the chance of catching that stray, curious, 'straight' viewer. But lately, in my opinion, some of these concerns are disappearing. Though film-making is still an expensive endeavor, high-quality cameras, audio and editing equipment is cheaper than ever – resulting in higher production standards. Need an aerial shot of a car on a desert highway? No need to hire a chopper. Hire or even buy outright a drone for that spectacular opening, closing or establishing shot. The myriad of ways we can now watch 'cinema' also helps, as streaming services (and alike) are hungry for content, making them far more willing to take risks on 'niche' titles to fill their catalog. All this brings me to Lazy Eye, which has its fair share of striking drone shots (of the Mohave Desert) and that I saw via iTunes after reading about it in a festival program – the kind of instant access to queer cinema I never had only a few years ago. There's no need to give a synopsis here but Lazy Eye (ironically) looks great, uses its locations well and is, for the most part, well-acted in what is essentially a two-hand-er. Another positive is the story, one that deals with gay men who are completely at ease with their sexuality, the drama coming from their tumble towards middle age and the physical, mental and emotional changes that come with it. We've seen the coming out, first love story countless times – Lazy Eye is what happens 15 plus years down the track, when you've had a number of relationships, you're out to everyone around you and might even be in a same sex marriage. Lazy Eye also doesn't reply on overt, titillating or unrealistic sex scenes where some queer cinema makes the mistake of being more like a porno. That's not to say Lazy Eye doesn't have sex scenes, there are two, but both have a distinct storytelling purpose and are all the more emotionally arousing for it. While it's not a perfect film (the 'Lazy Eye' of the title ends up having little bearing on the story despite the opening scene) it is an example of a certain maturity Queer cinema has reached both in production technique and story content. Another recent film, 'Retake', is very similar. Well shot, well- acted, set partially in a desert and deals with characters who are not tormented by their sexuality but who are dealing with life issues common to everyone. Retake too is very much worth a look as is 'Those People'. Again, it's well shot, in this case beautifully with characters not dealing with the singular issue of 'being gay' but dealing with life issues from a gay perspective. Yet another example is 'Akron'. On the surface it has all the hallmarks of the coming-out, first love story but quickly and refreshingly our very young characters are revealed to be utterly at ease with being gay as are their family and friends. While probably the weaker of the films mentioned here, Akron is worth seeing for the absolute normalcy of the gay relationship, accentuated by amazingly natural and uninhibited performances from the two leads. If these films are any indication, the future of Queer cinema is indeed bright.

This movie is all about the dialogue and the acting, and both are excellent. Very little happens other than two characters talking honestly, intelligently, and naturally with each other, and so the success of the entire film rests on the audience being interested in the conversation, and liking the characters enough to stick with them. I did.

The film kept my attention throughout, and was nicely photographed and edited, without reinventing the wheel or distracting with needless artsy-fartsy imagery. A simple story, simply told.

A note on the Netflix certificate: Netflix displays an 18 certificate with the warning "strong sex". This is patently absurd, since the two or three sex scenes in the film are very tame, showing nothing more than bare male chests and legs, and maybe a brief glimpse of thigh. Clearly it's the fact that the sex scenes involve two men that makes it so "strong" - and in this day and age I find that double standard offensive. If the same scenes had featured a heterosexual couple, they would have been PG or at a push PG13 and described as "mild". Times and attitudes are changing, but clearly not fast enough.