Big Gay Picture Show

Taking a look at the world of film through gay eyes - news, reviews, trailers, gay film, queer cinema and more

Taking a look at the world of film through gay eyes - news, reviews, trailers, gay film, queer cinema & more

Hidden Kisses (Baisers cachés) (US DVD Review) – A secret gay kiss leads to major problems for two teens

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At a party teenagers Nathan and Louis share a secret kiss. What they only realise later is that someone saw them, took a photo and put it on Facebook. Only new boy in school Nathan is recognisable in the picture, leading to plenty of speculation about who the other boy is. It also means that Nathan has now been outed, including to his unsuspecting father and his classmates, who soon start making life difficult for him.

With his teachers prevaricating over how – or even whether – to help him and the abuse getting worse, Nathan also has to deal with the fact his dad is struggling with the realisation he has a gay son. Louis isn’t helping either, as he says the kiss was just an experiment. However, he may only be saying that because he has deeply homophobic parents who he knows would reject him. [Read more…]

The Royal Road (US DVD Review)

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A cinematic essay by queer film historian Jenni Olson, The Royal Road is a mixture of 16mm footage of California, and Olson’s voiceover musings. Vaguely themed around the titular Royal Road – aka El Camino Real – a historic highway connecting California’s 21 religious missions, Olson’s narration takes in her thoughts about growing up a ‘gender dysphoric tomboy’ and her deep desires for a series of women, as well as her ideas about California’s history – most notably the collective US blind spot surrounding the Mexican-America War – and her need for nostalgia. There’s also thoughts about classic cinema – from Sunset Boulevard to Vertigo – as well as various other things.

The Royal Road is a film that some will find oddly mesmeric, while others will think the whole thing is dull and self-indulgent. Unfortunately, I came down more on the latter side. There’s a stream of consciousness quality to the piece, where it jumps from subject to subject in an often seemingly random fashion. There’s an attempt to bring it together thematically – how personal history and world history merge, and how the urban environment and individual emotion come together – but the overall sensation is one of random thoughts that are less coherent that the film might hope. [Read more…]