Denied

It's a shame the production is somewhat student-y and that some of the dialogue is muffled and inaudible, because this is a film that rings true. Two straight-acting friends, a hunk and a dropout, move in together, and we slowly start to piece together just what kind of relationship they have - which is appropriate, since they don't appear to know either. This is what I liked best about this film - no neat resolutions, no flashes of insight, just a realistic and sometimes painful muddle of emotions and situations that have to be dealt with as best as can be, which usually isn't very well at all. That's certainly been my experience of dealing with sexuality, outside of the commercial gay ghetto anyway - real-life grappling with queer issues isn't neatly resolved in three acts and buying a Pride T-shirt doesn't make it all better. So this is definitely worth seeing, if you're not expecting Dolby stereo and answers to all your questions.

This movie wanted to be better than it is. College dropouts Troy and Merrick share an apartment in a dead-end town. They appear to sleep together sometimes, but their own mental issues plus a psychotic former girlfriend sabotage their chances at a relationship. Narrative question: do they end up together?

The plot is well done. The story is familiar (or at least believable) enough that the dramatic tension works. Character development was decent. Some of the dialog falls flat, mostly due to the poor lighting and over-aggressive Foley editing. The leads are quite attractive, but the sex scenes are only in the PG13 range.

Cinematography is weak. Consistently under-lit throughout. The voice track is nearly inaudible at several key points. A couple of awkward edits too. Overall, would have been an entirely competent movie in the hands of a more experienced director.

I pulled this one off the shelf at the video store without any idea what to expect out of it. The filming and particularly the sound seem amateur - don't look for special effects, or even for particularly revealing camera-work, and there are a few scenes where the dialogue is difficult to make out.

But what this movie is, is honest. Unlike in Hollywood, life doesn't have a script and doesn't always work out to "happily ever after", and the film has an uncertain, occasionally almost disjointed sense to it that reflects that. The lead actors, playing Troy and Merrick, acknowledge it as well; even Troy, who from the beginning seems to know more or less what he wants, doesn't know how to get it, and so is just as uncertain as his friend. The acting is understated and very believable, all the way to the end.

"Latter Days" has some similar themes, and would probably be enjoyed by those who like this movie, but like its setting in L.A. itself, "Latter Days" is at times a little bit larger than life. "Denied" has a down-to-earth, earnest feel to it that for the most part overcomes its technical shortcomings.

Denied is worth seeing for it's performances and an intelligent story. We don't often get 'intelligence' when the story deals with love between two young men. More often we get titillation instead of dialogue, and tragic endings where reality would have sufficed.

In Denied, we get both intelligence and reality. Unfortunately we also get a transfer to DVD that is sometimes too dark (but where blacks are not deep and solid black) and sound that is too often muffled. The dialogue in this movie deserves more respect. Canadians have built a reputation in the industry for natural lighting techniques,and location sound clarity - a reputation that suffers here.

The story, dialogue, and performances - particularly Lee Rumohr as Troy - all ring true. I knew a 'Troy'. I know what I'm talking about, and this film does, too.

This is a film with heart and soul. It is flawed, but it is far from unwatchable, and it is a worthy addition to the DVD library of anyone who has an interest in the travelogue of the young gay heart.

I was rooting for this movie, even as my every hope was smashed the whole way through: all the elements of a truly engaging, affecting, sophisticated picture are here, but they are botched beyond belief. Maybe somebody could give director David Scott a bigger budget and a staff and they could try it again from scratch.

The basic premise of the movie--requited but unacknowledged love--will ring true with a lot of queer folk: "You make love to me all the time. Why can't we just be boyfriends?" (That may have been one of the lines, actually, but the sound on this movie is so very dreadful I suspect I caught less than a third of the dialog.) There's no reason this film shouldn't resonate with anyone who's been in the position to rue their beloved's denial of acceptable, respectable, publicly avowed togetherness. And I suppose it does, with those more forgiving of its many distracting flaws. Am I unrealistic in expecting a certain basic level of competence from a movie?

The young actors are not without talent; or, at any rate, they are much better at what they do than the director, who frames extremely long static shots (such as that of Troy and Merrick discussing their issues in the living room) with no visual relief, no character movement, and no particular tension-building purpose. Not to mention the astonishing percentage of frames in the movie that feature Troy's obliquely downcast, unchanging stare-into-the-abyss! (Perhaps we should be thankful that Scott did not devote equal time to capturing the abyss staring back into Troy.) One is reminded of The Brown Bunny, which was built of 8 sentences, a blow job, and 80 minutes of Vincent Gallo alone and looking like he's just eaten a fistful of bear scat.

Our writer-director allows his protagonist the dignity of doing the only responsible thing by the end of the movie: growing up and getting over Merrick. He even permits a cloudy, ambiguous split between them, in which the lingering affection is just as obvious as the need for separation. All this could turn a film golden, win awards, and jerk tears like nobody's business--if only there were the tiniest shard of coherent film technique backing it up.