Alger_P

This movie is the best-directed contemporary gay love story I've ever seen. It doesn't over- dramatize the stigma that all gay youth deal with when coming out to themselves and others, but it doesn't pretend such stigma isn't important. It presents attraction and love and friendship and family and desire as the complexly interwoven mess that it always is, but is so rarely seen in media. It shows love as not the solution to all your problems, but also that it doesn't have to be tragic. It portrays traditional families charitably, alongside gayness - they don't have to be natural enemies, but they have different dynamics which are usually either ignored or treated one-dimensionally. Most importantly, this film describes coming out as it really is: a profoundly individual act, and usually played out non- tendentiously and in a narrative completely unique to that individual. Most coming out films I've seen swerve into clichés and predictable outcomes. Although this film's plot resolution is fairly conventional, somehow the characters' authenticity, uniqueness and vulnerability fulfilled the story in a deeply touching, yet unsentimental way. Bravo.

If you're not gay, you might think this movie is nothing special, the way some straight people I know thought Brokeback Mountain was tripe, not paying any attention to the repression central to that story. The moving qualities in this film are mostly a coming-out thing, so perhaps straight people won't relate, but there are glimmers here (and in our times) of that narrative holding enough substance to speak to universal truths.

This movie has many flaws, but considering it was made for no budget (yet has incredible ambition - bravo for that) and never picked up by a studio, the photography and art direction alone are worth 8/10 stars. Uneven acting, but some brilliant moments; slow at times, but other times choreographed like the best rock-video-ballet; cheesy makeup on a main character, but completely genius visual construction on the evil incubi - completely original and incomparable, actually.

It's a crime it was never released in theaters, maybe due to its anti-corporate, anti-one- dimensional-man, quasi-Bohemian point of view. If it had been produced in Europe, it would have been an indie hit and won awards, but Hollywood obviously is uncomfortable with a movie in this genre that dares to probe the subconscious in a non-cartoonish way.

Yeah, it's not for everyone, but it's beyond me why people who don't go for this kind of film resort to accusing everyone else of being a shill for the filmmakers. Pretty low - typical of the grouch - you're in the minority so you have to accuse everyone else of being a fake. Sounds like Washington D.C. in here these days. For chrissakes, it's just a movie, don't get your panties in a wad just because somebody liked it and you didn't.

PS - If you don't make it past the first 20/25 minutes, you won't like it, and you're too impatient for this kind of movie anyway.