Eden's Curve

The film has the merit of showing how coming out stories just recently became less problematic, even if in some environments they are still a problem not only for youths. The film is set on Virginia, US, not so long ago, 1972. Peter (Samuel A. Levine) is not properly the mostly shy young boy, being visited by the police right at the beginning of the film for sunbathing in the nude at the roof of his parents' home. Soon he'll be in college, engaging in a sex three-way story with is roommate Joe (Trevor Lissauer) and Joe's girlfriend Bess (Amber Taylor) But things will soon get bad, for the jealousy of Joe, who attacks Peter, rescued of a not very good reputed poetry professor Ian (Julio Perrilán), recovering at his place at the Eden's Curve of the title. The story's sad development can be an adviser that backlashes are always possible, for it happened only 40 years ago. True story, according to the writer. I myself was coming of age at those times, and can assure you things were not that different, even keeping out tragic endings. The film is not a must see for an already over exposed to bad ends gay community, but should remind us that things were not very good until very recently, and we must keep an eye open to have not a coming back of homophobia not so difficult at all.

Eden's Curve premiered at the London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival on 6 April 2003. I felt fortunate to be in the audience - also with director Anne Misawa, producer Jerry Meadors and four cast members present.

The story is principally that of Peter (Sam Levine), a 17 year old studying at an all male university in Virginia in the early 1970s. Peter embarks on a fraught relationship with his room-mate Joe (Trevor Lissauer) and Joe's girlfriend Bess (Amber Taylor); but as tender love turns to jealousy and rage, Peter is forced out of his fraternity (despite the protestations of Billy, played with a delightful amorality by Bryan Carroll) and eventually into the arms of Peter's poetry tutor, Ian (Julio Perillan in a stand out performance).

The film has an ethereal quality - I kept thinking of various 4AD album covers seemingly sprung to life on the big screen. A little gem and well worth a look.

Others have remarked that the video quality on the DVD is poor. No argument there. I thought at first maybe I'd been spoiled by a recent visit with a friend's HDTV, but I had to squint the whole time. The sound is sub-average too. Discounting that, the film itself is quite deep, quite surreal, and the sort that will keep you very quiet while watching.

The pace is slow, which I normally despise, but in this case it enhances the whole impression. Watch it when you're NOT in a hurry.

Bryan Carrol as Billy has a screen presence I can't begin to describe. I'll want to see anything else he does.

9/10.

I saw the world premiere of 'Eden's Curve' at the London L&G Film Festival on 6 April & was hooked. The film has a lush distinctive visual style all its own which stays in the memory long after you walk out of the movie theatre. Apparently based on real-life events in a backwoods Virginia University in the early 70s, it succeeds in conveying the spirit & look of the time with exactitude (think a grainier more sepia-tinted version of "The Ice Storm"), Ang Lee meets Jim Jarmusch.

Framed around a bisexual menage-a-trois & a young man's coming-of-age, the film is actually "about" much wider themes of identity, commitment & the limits of romanticism. Sam Levine is excellent as the lead character, a blank page waiting to be written on. Viewed from Europe though, the "real" subject of the film is the Virginia landscape, how the enormity & relative emptiness of America provoke a conflict between 'pioneer' independence & bourgeois conformity unimaginable on this side of the pond.

This is a film about mood & longing, more than about narrative or even characterisation. That means it deserves a wider audience & a good US distribution deal. It would be a tragedy if work of this quality doesn't get seen beyond the "gay film festival circuit", valuable though that is. Go See!

Ugh! If that camera shook anymore I would have had to stay in bed for a couple of days to recuperate. The sleek camera angles they tried to use turned out to be nothing more then a burden to my EYES!! To many, they used them to many times. My partner actually looked to check when it was made because the acting came right out of a bad 70's porn movie. Joe was supposed to be the tortured soul, he tortured me. Either the actors were way over the top-"Billy" or way under-"Ian and Peter". The end of the movie made me wonder why they even finished it in the first place. I'm sure the director was going somewhere deep with this movie but that person forgot their glasses during shooting.