Director: Various
Running Time: 168 mins
Certificate: 18
Release Date: September 26th, 2011
Read our reviews of the other Boys On Film short film collections here.
With Boys On Film: Cruel Britannia out on Monday, we’ve been busy working our way through all eight of Peccadillo Picture’s great compilations of gay short films. You’d think we’d have had enough of them by now, but the series keeps coming up trumps, and this seventh outing, Bad Romance, is no exception (we’ll bring you our thoughts on Cruel Britannia tomorrow). With a loose theme of love gone wrong, these 10 films from around the world cover everything from horror to teen romance, and there’s even an Oscar winner thrown in for good measure.
Here’s what we thought of the shorts:
Curious Thing (10 mins)
Director: Alain Hain
Curious Thing is an interesting idea that works surprisingly well. A series of real audio interviews with gay men about their attraction to and problems with straight guys are cut together with images of a fictional story about just such a tale. It’s a great way to get you to constantly question what you’re seeing, so that the images question the audio and vice versa. Many gay men will have had issues over the years with a straight guy who’s insisted they’re into girls but there’s definitely been more to their relationship than that. This is an interesting and rather different way to look at that and works far better than you might expect.
7 out of 10
Cake And Sand (15 mins)
Director: Christoph Scheerman
What if everything seems good in a relationship but the sex is rubbish? Is that a deal breaker? Tim and Julian love one another and have a great time together, but between the sheets things have died, which starts to cause tension outside the bedroom. While that’s ostensibly what the film is about, Cake And Sand really deals with what’s symptom and what’s cause – does sex die because of other issues, or are issues caused by lack of decent sex? For this and other reasons it doesn’t go very deep, which becomes problematic towards the end when it starts to feel as if we’ve entered unrealistic filmmaker-land. It could have pulled it off if it had something profound to say, but sadly it doesn’t.
5 out of 10
Watch Over Me (14 mins)
Director: Mysh Rozanov
This Israeli short follows Eitan, who’s nearly completed training for a secret military unit. He’s taken out for drinks by some of his new comrades. Eitan seems to be hoping they won’t realise he gay, which becomes more problematic when a gay man shows up and makes fun of one of the men. This leads him to discover dark secrets about his new unit and the realisation that he’ll never be the same again. A dark, rather creepy horror short, Watch Over Me manages the impressive job of being at turns sweet, rather romantic, scary, disturbing, a little odd and exciting, all in the space of 14 minutes! If this had been made 40 years ago, it would have almost been an advert against being gay, but thankfully in the modern day it’s a bit more complex than that and is instead a disturbing look at internalised homophobia and fascist attitudes.
8 out of 10
The New Tenants (20 mins)
Director: Joachim Back
This relatively loosely gay film won the Oscar for Best Live Action Short, although I’m not sure why. Two gay men move to a new apartment hoping for a new start, but soon discover that not only did the previous tenant leave in a body bag, but the history of their flat is going to come back to haunt them. While it has some good performances and dialogue, The New Tenants feels rather tired and pleased with itself. Everything’s a bit obvious and while it tries to be gritty and at time shocking, it mainly feels over the top and slightly unbelievable. It is very strange it won an Oscar, as personally I’d class it as one of the weakest films in the entire Boys On Film series. Some have compared in to No Country For Old Men, but to me it lacks heart or a sense of purpose.
4 out of 10
Just Friends? (29 mins)
Director: Kim Jho Kwang-soo
From the director of Love 100°C, which features on Boys On Film 6, Seok heads off to meet his military boyfriend, hoping for a cosy night. However the pressures of having a closeted gay relationship soon raise their head, such as Min-soo’s reticent about being kissed in public, as well as the fact they’re only prepared to tell Seok’s mother he and his partner are ‘Just friends’. But what would happen if his mother discovers there’s something more? There’s a sweetness and sadness about Just Friends?, which compares the intimacy and passion the two men have when they’re alone with the almost forced formality while they’re around other people. While it covers familiar ground (although perhaps not so familiar in South Korea), it does it well, with a light touch and nice mix of the romantic and melancholic, even if it dips into the melodramatic at time. The musical sequences are an odd touch, but they’re quite fun.
7 out of 10
Mirrors (14 mins)
Director: Etienne Desrosiers
While Xavier Dolan (Martyrs) has divided critics with his slightly pretentious writer/directorial efforts, the first of which he completed before he was 20, he’s undoubtedly quite a good actor. He starred in this French-Canadian effort shortly before he directed his first movie, which sees him as a melancholic teenager called Julien who’s coming to terms with his sexuality one summer. As his friends and family gather by a lake, he realises his friends are now into girls and his family is seemingly too uninterested to do much with him. His only outlet becomes a neighbour and his young ‘friend’. Quiet and far from obvious, Mirror is a film about the moments of adolescence that mean little to the outside world but shape who we become. On the surface little happens, but the longer it stays in your head, the deeper it goes. As the title suggest, it is a mirror to our own experiences of youth, both what’s the same and what’s different.
8 out of 10
Communication (19 mins)
Director: Christopher Banks
Boys On Film 6 featured Christopher Banks’ Teddy. Communication is his follow-up, which follows Jacob, who during a time of sadness reminisces about time spent his much older teacher, Andrew. Trying to deal with difficulties surrounding his sexuality and the conflicts he has with his religion, Jacob remembers visiting Andrew and the awkwardness of discovering someone else at his house, which has been brought into focus by a present tragedy. A look at what could have been and the difficulties of learning to be yourself – as well as the moments and people who may be able to help you to do that – it’s all about the words not said and the road not taken. There are moments when it goes a little too far and doesn’t seem quite real (plus the soundtrack’s a little bit melodramatic), but Communication is still an interesting short and makes you consider what could have been.
6 out of 10
The Traitor (13 mins)
Director: Tomer Velkoff
The second Israeli entry onto the disc is another of Bad Romance’s best. Tomer and Schmulik have been together for a long time and have a domesticity together where things are settled into a routine. However the silence that initially seems to express that they know each other so well they no longer need to talk, hides the fact one of them is deeply unhappy and announces over dinner that he’s leaving and has rented an apartment. Although it could have done without the obvious metaphor of a storm raging outside, The Traitor does a great job of using very little dialogue to get over its point. It’s all about what we say without speaking and that often what comes out of our mouths is often only the tiniest part of communication. In only 13 minutes it show how our actions conceal and reveal things, and that even what seems like the greatest of intimacy can hide a lot of turmoil. Few films deal with the messy stupidity of break-ups like this, as well as the pain and virtual impossibility of quickly untangling from one another after years together. You can certainly question the characters’ actions and the ending is perhaps a tad extreme, but it’s powerful, provocative and complex.
8 out of 10
The Strange Ones (14 mins)
Director: Christopher Radcliff, Lauren Wolkstein
A great exercise in questioning what you see, a young man and a boy break down in the middle of nowhere and walk down the road until they find a motel swimming pool they can take a break at for a while. The motel owner (played by Nurse Jackie’s Meritt Wever) wonders what they’re doing there, but it all seems innocent enough, until the boy says that nothing is what it seems. The Strange Ones puts you in a fascinating position where it refuses to give you easy answers, leaving you in the same position as the motel owner – uncertain what’s going on or what you would do about it. Is the young man dangerous? Is the boy a disturbed fantasist? Even with no evidence that what the boy says is true, should you report it or do something? The Strange Ones wonderfully calls into questions the assumptions we make each day about the people around us. Of course we make those assumptions to allow us to function in normal life, but it brilliantly plays with that and shows that things may be far different to what they seem and asks us how we would deal with that.
9 out of 10
Cappuccino (16 mins)
Director: Tamer Ruggli
Jeremie is a shy boy who has enough to deal with due to a mother who’s rather loud and has boundary issues, but he hides another secret – he’s gay. He plucks up the courage to ask his hunky classmate Damien out for a bite to eat, but while Jeremie is hoping for romance, does Damien know this? As the night progresses and they get drunk and stoned, Jeremie may be able to have his first sexual experience, but perhaps not the intimacy he really wants. His frustration leads to a confrontation with his mother and a chance at understanding. Cappuccino is a good reminder that the stupidity and clumsiness of young love are far more difficult for gay youth, and that while all teens like to have too many emotions, it’s more valid for some than others. My only problem with Cappuccino is that it’s too short! It’s over just as you’re really getting into Jeremie’s story. I’d love to have found out what happened to him next, but sadly that’s beyond the bounds of this moving but hopeful short.
8 out of 10
Overall Verdict: A great selection of films, with the Boys On Film series coming up trumps once again. It’s also proof there’s a lot of good gay short coming out of Israel!
Reviewer: Tim Isaac
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