I Want Your Love

Pretentious!!! This beautifully shot bucket of animal muck screams pretentious from afar. I should have seen it from a mile. Shame on me.

Puh-leeeese - graphic sex scenes? Close ups, shots of happy endings, full on anal, interracial hook-ups? Come oh-n, gurl! Can we have some substance in a form different than body fluids?

Pseudo-philosophical ramblings, cool performance art kids, talking, talking, talking... On top of that the cast is purposefully unattractive, I'm going soft just at a sheer thought of their appearance. It's not even a mixed bag, they're all fugly hands down.

Plus the obligatory, early morning goodbye scene... and too-cool, hipster indie music. No, I'm not having it, nah, never. The director will most likely end up like the protagonist. Going back to his mum's basement flat or a cabin in the woods. To live with the deer.

I first caught sight of this film in Time Out magazine... where it got good reviews. I was intrigued that Peccadillo Pictures, famous for LGBT film, had teamed up with Naked Sword, a pornography company to produce it.

I'm always reluctant to buy gay film... the majority of the time they bore me and depend on sex and six packs to maintain the viewers interest. 'I Want Your Love' was a surprisingly perceptive take on gay life in San Fransisco. The sex was natural and the films part improvisation made it feel like a realistic view into the characters lives. The film made no apology for its approach to explicit gay sex, but interestingly its association with Naked Sword seemed to be kept fairly low key on the film's cover. It was obvious that the film wanted to be taken seriously.

However, despite the film trying to deliver it failed to maintain my interest. The characters aren't that interesting to watch and their lives are fairly mundane. It affirms my thoughts about films that contain explicit sex. Sex generally replaces more subtle, interesting and intelligent portrayals of emotion that help us to connect with a character. Therefore sex, unless used well, acts as more of a distraction from what the film is actually about.

If you're looking for serious gay cinema learn from some of the most successful gay films ever made and avoid explicit content.

Supposedly expanding a short film of the same title (although there isn't much to connect the two productions apart from the leading man), 'I Want Your Love' features lots of swearing, several scenes of unsimulated homosexual sex, and talk of 'being ploughed by six dudes'. As such it represents a stark departure for Disney (joke - it's actually a production of Naked Sword, a company which makes gentlemen's films - and not very discerning gentlemen, if its website is anything to go by!) The plot follows a man in his early 30s who due to money troubles is leaving San Francisco to return to his hometown in Ohio. While he wanders around being miserable, his much-tattooed friends experience their own domestic troubles (of the lightweight variety - someone cleans his boyfriend's room without telling him) and pair - and in one case, triple - off with each other.

It's not much of a plot, and there are far too many shots of San Francisco streets, presumably in an effort to pad out the running time. As for the sex - well, it is never necessary to show sex or nudity in a production, but it *is* nice to do so - providing, that is, those shedding their clothes look good without them, which isn't always the case here! Pleasingly, many of the actors are good enough at clothes-on acting as well; but as the friend who accompanied me to the screening said, did any of them invite their mothers to the premiere?

Young man needing to leave the city for home. 30-something/late 20-something life angst - where am I going, what am I doing? Old relationships resurfacing. All of that had great potential for some solid story-telling. This effort certainly had some decent actors. Decent production values as well.

So WHY did this story get told? It was very difficult to connect to any of the characters, with the possible exception of the older artist who is a friend of our departing lead character. Don't misunderstand me - I wanted very much to like everyone in the film - but it was hard to find any reason to relate with them, or even figure out what they were contributing to the story (again, with the exception of the older artist.) Baffled. That's what I'm left with at the end of this film. The sex in the film was for the most part equally disconnected - it was never clear WHY we needed to see these sex scenes, with the possible exception of the first.

Wanted to like this film. Watched it beginning to end. Don't know why it was made.

A contemporary view of gay men struggling to define what real is - for themselves, their love relationships and their career. This is a story about a protagonist who is having a hard time reconciling with his life choices that form a symmetrical pattern with his art and his relationships - both lead to his restlessness and dilemma of giving up what might actually be important.

I won't say much as I don't want to spoil but the fact there are gratuitous scenes of sex in this movie actually, in my opinion, reflects the boldness of the director to take on the subject head on. Of course there is easy sex available in the life of the character and that reflects the dilemma of the main character. Male genitalia and orgasm in a movie about a gay man in Sf - and what's wrong with that?

The supporting cast is amazing in their realistic performances. It's shot almost in a documentary style and that lends a credibility to the whole aspect of story telling.

Finally a movie that does not wrap up a story of gay humans in a neatly predictable package and serve it to us.

Of course there can be improvements and yada yada but in 2012 this is a movie about an artist searching for his meaning of life. And he is gay. And he is in Sf. So prudes you've been warned.

Oh and as far the story being meaningless, no plot etc is concerned, we could have had a more dramatic fleshing out of what the existential crisis is but I don't feel it needs further explanation. But that's only my opinion.

Whatever. Watch it.