jlgdrd's film blog - Archive

Angel/Baby : Burnt Money

Was this review helpful? [Be the first to tell us!]

Under discussion:

Burnt Money (2000)

For many years, love on the lam has been the wet dream of filmmakers and audiences. Criminal fugitives, living on the fringes, rejecting the conventions of civilization; they take what they want, when they want. And if the whole world turns against them, all they need is each other. At once glamorous and tawdry, poetic and plain-spoken, jaundiced and fantastical, Marcelo Pineyro’s Burnt Money (aka: Plata Quemada) fulfills the promise of the genre as well as any heterosexual story. If not better. The boy couple that rocks Burnt Money: The Twins (Angel and El Nene) share everything. Needles, liquor, guns, danger and the same bed. Angel grapples with insanity and discontinues sex with Nene, terrified that he will follow down the same abyss. Strangely enough, we never see them consummate, but the sexual grace and tension is so palpable you can watch them share a cigarette and feel your trousers shrink. It takes incredible focus and conviction to touch another human being like this, with such unabashed tenderness and adoration, and Eduardo Noriega (Angel) and Leonardo Sbaraglia (Nene) are nothing short of remarkable. The frissons they generate are exquisite and agonizing.

Burnt Money might conceivably be the opposite of a cautionary tale. Though no one could accuse Pineyro of glorifying the life of a career criminal, he makes the case again and again that The Twins are living as well as anybody could, given the hand they were dealt. Even in the criminal world “faggots” are considered low on the food chain but not these guys. They’re reckless, hot-headed, remorseless and alienated. They and the third fugitive, Cuervo, wear sleek, sophisticated suits, ambling gamely, flirting, drinking, cavorting and speeding. They are also psychopaths. Angel and Nene are serious about their profession and their sexual identities and make no apologies for either. It is unclear whether they openly embrace their sexuality because they’re rebels or crooks and this may be exactly the point. They flourish on the outs because society has robbed them of anything to lose.

Though Cuervo (Pablo Echarri) begins with contempt towards the two, it gradually changes to affection. The question of virility and queer attraction diminishes as the relationship evolves. Or perhaps it increases. Cuervo resents Angel watching him change clothes, but feels the need to explain that cold air affects his dangle. These three share many traits, but Cuervo is without a doubt the live wire. Boisterous and extravagant, he has an undeniable charm, sometimes precipitating the boys’ buried impulses. He is a kindred spirit. There would seem to be a GIRLS KEEP OUT sign hanging on Burnt Money. More than once these raw, dishy guys invite each other to dance, and despite the hesitance (and Pineyro’s selective use of nudity) there seems to be more going on between the men than with their lady friends. Being Cuervo’s confidante only makes Vivi a weak-link and a target, and Giselle (Leticia Bredice) betrays Nene when he chooses Angel over her. Granted, she is the victim of Nene’s ambivalence, but it’s hard to feel a lot of sympathy when she ends it, screaming, "Puto! Puto! Puto!" (Fag! Fag! Fag!)

Based on a book by Ricardo Piglia and the true story of a Buenos Aires bank robbery in the 1960’s, Burnt Money has an intense visual diction that is disturbing and electrifying. Nene doing push-ups as if about to spring, Angel slipping his flask into Nene’s jacket, Nene submerged in the bathtub as we hear his soliloquy about incarceration. Pop and Rock from the period punctuates and deprecates sequence after sequence and Pineyro isn’t afraid to shake us till our teeth rattle (though never resorting to cruelty). Chapters like the one where he switch cuts between Angel kneeling before a life-sized crucifix and Nene doing the same to fellate a tearoom trick go far beyond audacity. Pineyro may be an iconoclast, but his strength of nerve comes from thematic acuity.

Burnt Money is a powerful if controversial paradigm for queer mens’ struggle for self-acceptance. Once The Twins dissolve vestigial ties to civilization and embrace their own path to manhood, the voices that have been tormenting Angel disappear. They strip down to their underwear, burn their clothes and whoop it up like Indians. Giselle’s flat becomes another hideout and before the credits roll, a war zone and arena for their homicidal defiance. Dismissed as pariahs, they construct a post-Apocalyptic paradise from the scraps that have been left behind, though no less valid for that.

Posted Saturday, June 30, 2007 2:47 AM by jlgdrd | with 1 comments

Spiv's Journal: AKA

Was this review helpful? [Be the first to tell us!]

Under discussion:

Carrie (1976)

The Pillow Book (1996)

The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)

Catch Me If You Can (2002)

AKA (2002)

"Spiv " is a word the British use for someone who gets by on their wits (Americans might say "hustler" or "con") and could describe Dean Page's struggles with upward mobility in Duncan Roy's AKA. From the true story of Page's intuitive rise to comfort and privilege Roy has spun an affecting fable on self-respect, wealth, aristocracy and true class. Think of merging Pygmalion, The Talented Mr. Ripley and Catch Me If You Can, but resulting in a film successful on its' own terms. AKA is foremost about the caste system that makes self-esteem difficult if you must earn your own livelihood. Compared to the didacticism of Brecht and Shaw it is subtle and surprisingly revelatory, without the usual depiction of the moneyed class as depraved and menacing. On the contrary, in AKA we find unlikely heroes, numerous villains, plenty of blame to go around and spivs at every plateau.

Early in the film, Dean's father kicks him out, ostensibly because he is gay, or perhaps because he piques his dad's sense of inadequacy, but as we suspect, crucial information is withheld and his mother is either too scared or subjugated to intervene. Spurred by desperation and a keen desire to move up in the world, he soon learns that his youth and fetching appearance are a currency that will carry him far. Finding legitimate attempts to better himself thwarted by those who only wish to degrade him, he learns the ropes of confidence and expediency, appropriating the identity of a nemesis in the bargain. When applying for a position at a Parisian Art Gallery, his chances look pretty bleak. He finds by changing his lineage that a job is secured, even if his qualifications haven't changed.

A masterstroke of plotting is the charming American hustler named Benjamin. He is a character foil, to be sure, to Dean and to David Glendenning, who employs him for diversion and recreation. Benjamin is a hustler, to be sure, and Peter Youngblood Hills plays him with great finesse and allure. Benjamin falls in love with Dean, and as he points out much later, they have more in common than Benjamin realizes. Though when Benjamin insists that Dean move into their upscale Island of the Lost Boys, he tells Dean it's because "You're one of us." And it's okay, it works when we don't know if he means, rich, queer or on the make. Probably all three.

Benjamin's character is essential because he begs the question of choosing between self-esteem and survival. When you're repeatedly told your worthless, you learn to subsist on jobs others are too proud to accept. When Dean has learned how to turn the trick, and pass himself off as Lord Gryffoyn, it's Benjamin who triggers his despicable conduct, who shows us the cost of Dean's transformation. Hills himself is exceptionally cute, but far more than a pretty face, he takes what could have been another excessive, pathetic stereotype and makes Benjamin unforgettable. His climactic scene with Matthew Leitch is positively wrenching.

I expect much will be made of AKA's triple image technique, and rightly so. (Ironically the multiple screen is only optional on The DVD) It is projected on a single screen, as usual, but with three centered, adjacent, horizontal images. You could compare Carrie, where DiPalma used double and triple images at the payoff sequence and completely blew it, or The Pillow Book, in which Peter Greenaway used inset images to tremendous exponential effect. Duncan Roy uses this device successfully, I believe. There were times when I thought some of the photography redundant, but others when it brought in parallel information that made the events more intriguing. Chiefly it serves to show us differing points-of-view at the same time, an effect presumably not possible with a traditional two-shot. Roy also uses the multiplicity to chart various distances between camera and subject, usually Dean. Could it have worked just as well with a sequential shuffle of single, persistent images? Possibly. After the first twenty minutes it no longer called attention to itself and that is reason enough for validation.

AKA transcends the underpinnings of its' predecessors. It is not funny, like Pygmalion, or jaunty, like Catch Me If You Can, or grim like The Talented Mr. Ripley. It surpasses melodrama with intense clarity and pathos. It does not seek to drag the sorrow from us, but picks its' instances of confrontation and trauma carefully, appealing to the audience's recognition of the deeper truths. And, strangely enough (considering that Mr. Roy is telling his own personal story) it doesn't deal in moral relativism. When he has his epiphany he returns home and pays his debt to society. The tagline could read, AKA: The last place you'd expect to find a moral compass.

Posted Friday, June 29, 2007 1:06 AM by jlgdrd | with 0 comments

A Thousand Clouds of Peace: Poetry of Loss

Was this review helpful? [Be the first to tell us!]

Under discussion:

The Last Picture Show (1971)

Querelle (1982)

Rumble Fish (1983)

Touch of Evil (1958)

O Fantasma (2000)

A Thousand Clouds of Peace (2003)

A Thousand Clouds of Peace is an ode to loss and yearning, an extended fever-dream or hallucination that we share with Gerardo (Juan Carlos Ortuño) as he carries Bruno's letter in his pocket, haunted by the words he used to explain why he can no longer see him. Sometimes he appears to be looking for Bruno (Juan Carlos Torres), for others he meanders and malingers, making contact with friends, clients, and strangers. There is something intuitive and almost preverbal about the way he connects, as if he knows them intimately and not at all, as if they can read each other's minds. It's a familiarity of attraction and repulsion that reminds you of Bergman. Like when you mingle drunk at a party where social conventions have been dropped and there's a kind of jovial, empty intimacy.

It doesn't seem adequate or appropriate to describe Gerardo as a prostitute. He accepts money from the men he engages only grudgingly, as if looking for something else. His urgency is not the kind plied by hustlers who hang out in alleys, abandoned playing fields, and other deserted parts of the city. Most likely he's trying to rekindle the one-time tryst, an affair that was cut short. It may be that Gerardo wanders in search of a lost lover, and while this may be dangerously close to a cliché, A Thousand Clouds of Peace makes it infinitely plausible. In no way does Gerardo seem mercenary or depraved, his compulsive behavior driven by hunger of memory and longing for the lost bliss of intense, exquisite, mythic, sexual love.

We are forever noting the distance between Gerardo and other men, the guarded steps they take before touching, whether affectionate or commercial. We see how men can pass from obfuscation in one another's eyes to clarity. Gerardo approaches women protectively, affably, but without the desire that informs his conquests. A Thousand Clouds of Peace is set in Mexico where we grasp in almost ballet-like body language and movement how queer identity and electricity fit into machismo culture. We see how much information can be transmitted without dialogue. Gerardo acts but doesn't seem audacious or daring; he is who he is. His abuse at the hands of an ambivalent john is almost treated as an occupational hazard, until we witness the effect. His mother is horrified, "You look like a wandering ghost," she remarks, and sure enough, he does.

Along with cinematographer Diego Arizmendi, director Julian Hernandez has crafted a subtle, remarkable liquid visual poem of a film. Shot in black and white and rivaling the visual style of Orson Welle's Touch of Evil, Peter Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show or Francis Ford Coppola's Rumble Fish, it is crisp and sharp, yet surreal. The lack of color softens the tawdry, squalid streets, the bedrooms, crumbling walls, stairwells, and dilapidated apartments where Gerardo struggles and agonizes through his recollection and loss of flawless ecstasy with Bruno. Arizmendi brings out the raw beauty, visual texture that might normally evade our radar - rocks and dust and steel and posters torn from the sides of buildings. The actors in A Thousand Clouds of Peace are not attractive in the conventional sense, but they are fetching. They might have jug ears or wide mouths or rubbery jowls. But their appeal, their unrefined tragic handsomeness gradually, ineffably soaks in.

Understated eroticism suffuses the film. Though beaten down by desolation and anguish, it's there in the gleam and shadow of Gerardo's recollection. The bodies sometimes glow like the Dada photos of Man Ray in the 20s. When Gerardo rolls his undershirt and drops his jeans and BVDs to masturbate, it's such a quiet, startling, reverent moment. Plain and accessible, powerful without the customary rashness or dirt. We shudder because Hernandez doesn't turn us into voyeurs. It's as if we're participating, sharing in a sacrament. In flashback, Bruno steps behind Gerardo to caress his torso and we only see his arms. It's as if Gerardo's exploring himself. Identities blur as they engage in mutual cherishing and epiphany. We want these scenes to last longer, but I think Hernandez was smart to pull back, to buzz our nerves with this symphony of torture and tantalization.

A Thousand Clouds of Peace compares favorably with Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Querelle and Joaão Pedro Rodrigues' O Fantasma. It has a semiotic confidence and sophistication unlike anything I've seen in a long time. It's strong but doesn't call attention to its shots, many of which are ravishing and eerie. The dialogue, internal, explicative, is mostly scaffolding for the camera, which does 90 percent of the work. It's not extravagant, like Querelle, or explicit, like O Fantasma. But Hernandez's skill at expressing coarse male idolatry, the empathy we feel for Gerardo's ache and disconsolation is a triumph of intuition and manifestation. It's what the best movie making is all about.

Posted Tuesday, June 26, 2007 2:42 AM by jlgdrd | with 0 comments

Beyond Reach: Son Frere

Was this review helpful? [Be the first to tell us!]

Under discussion:

Shoot the Moon (1982)

Leaving Las Vegas (1995)

Persona (1966)

Son Frère (2003)

The controlling idea behind Patrice Chereau's Son Frere is the painful, tragic lack of closeness between men. It is mostly Luc's story, how his brother Thomas's disease becomes a watershed for their troubled relationship. An incident that Thomas cannot remember, and we are never shown, has had far reaching consequences that the two might never have confronted, had it not been for Thomas's sickness.

The plot is alarmingly simple. Thomas (Bruno Todeschini) comes back into his brother Luc's life because he does not want to face illness and possible mortality by himself. Of all the people in his life, he has sought out his younger brother for solace and comfort. Luc (Eric Caravaca) makes it clear that he will take care of him because this is what brothers do for one another, but he cannot forgive Thomas for deserting him. He'll go through the motions, but his heart won't be in it.

It is never quite revealed if Thomas has done something unforgivable and Luc has been forced to close his heart to survive emotional trauma. We don't understand if he has shut down because he won't or can't return to the closeness they once shared into their teens. But there is no doubt as to his brother's motives - he's dying and has no one else. Thomas is emaciated, and is put through one degrading, diminishing procedure after another.

In one particular scene, Luc watches as he is prepped for surgery, his body shaved by cheerful, solicitous nurses. Like most of the film, it is agonizing to watch. Luc never jokes with him to ease his discomfort, or asks for male nurses, or holds his hand. At times he almost seems to be enjoying his brother's humiliation.

As the movie progresses (and regresses) he becomes Thomas's sole caregiver and we can see, we can feel him trying to open up. He shares a touching anecdote from their childhood and when he is finished, can't tell if Thomas is awake or asleep. Understand this is not treated as humor. When Thomas falls even deeper into despair, Luc rubs his back as a spontaneous act of affection and tenderness, but at a loss as to how to reach him, for some meaningful way of connecting.

The fact that Luc is gay only intensifies the irony and misery that permeates Son Frere. There is quite a bit of male nudity and none of it is bracing or erotic. It only emphasizes how raw and empty the characters feel. Son Frere raises questions about queer sex and male attachment. In a heart to heart with Thomas's girlfriend Claire (Nathalie Boutefeu), Luc remembers he and his brother jerking each other off as teenagers.

When we see him having sex we sense he is trying to resolve thwarted intimacy with Thomas. I don't mean incest. Luc intuitively makes contact with strangers; he confides to his boyfriend Vincent (Sylvain Jacques) the disappointment that Thomas was never the kind of brother he needed him to be. He longs to heal but never gives this vital information to Thomas.

We must infer a lot from Son Frere's backstory, but I believe it comes by its subtext honestly. More than a few relationships between men were sabotaged by homophobia and you have to wonder if Luc's orientation and his brother's mysterious, platelet-robbing disease (platelets enable us to heal wounds) are metaphors for their destructive, ruined relationship. Chereau may be suggesting that if men bonded with abandon and devotion there might be less use of sex as a passkey. Son Frere explores the sad failure of men to love each other, to reach each other, even when the desire for closeness is keen. In the case of Luc, perhaps it's his male pride that gets in the way.

It's hard to justify my misgivings about Son Frere, a brilliant, excruciating film that feeds us the ashes of profound male estrangement without evincing the radiance that precedes it. Late into the film, we're stunned when a Marianne Faithfull song cues us for another drop; it doesn't seem possible, but sure enough, it happens. Movies like Leaving Las Vegas, Persona, or Shoot the Moon can be devastating, but sometimes that's what the best movie-making is all about. Chereau has brought the same level of intensity to relationships between men as Bergman brought to connections between women. He is fearless and audacious in his exploration.

Imitative fallacy debunks the transmission of content by matching that experience in the hearts and minds of the audience. I'm not sure if that applies here or not. Son Frere makes us ache for a catharsis that never comes. We're desperate for Luc to break down and reconcile with Thomas. Even when they profess love, they cannot make eye contact. Each loves the other but cannot connect in the present moment. Son Frere is frank enough to acknowledge it doesn't always happen. Even when we want it to.

Posted Tuesday, June 26, 2007 2:15 AM by jlgdrd | with 0 comments

Jonathan Caouette’s Fever Dream: Tarnation

Was this review helpful? [Be the first to tell us!]

Under discussion:

Tarnation (2003)

Upon release, Jonathan Caouette’s autobiographical documentary Tarnation caused quite a stir, and deservedly so. Using software that just happened to come with his partner’s new computer, and plundering home movies, photographs, video and audiotapes going back to when he was 11, Caouette has sculpted a stunning, powerful, excruciating film, playing beat the clock (to get it to the Sundance Festival) and bringing it in for an amount that gives new meaning to the term “shoestring budget” ($218.32). Could we call it a “toothpick budget”?

To my mind, Tarnation breaks many rules. It may be the ultimate “Hail Mary” film, taking incredible risks, using them as a springboard to intensity and transcendence. The content is often extremely, impossibly personal. Wrenching. But none of it feels self-indulgent or remotely self-pitying. Caouette himself spends a lot of time in front of the camera, but manages to avoid self-consciousness. A great deal of crucial (and harrowing) information is divulged in on-screen text, which, when you think about it, seems outré. Yet it has just the right touch. It buffers the jolt, keeps the material from overwhelming you.

Tarnation (a euphemistic term for damnation) charts the overlapping lives of three generations: Jonathan Caouette himself, his mother Renée, and his grandparents, Adolph and Rosemary. We learn about the key events that have shaped them and sent them careening into oblivion or despair, the ill-advised choices and random, traumatic incidents that have forever changed the course of their momentum. Tarnation divulges painful, unnerving material without repulsing us. Without prompting us to turn away, Caouette makes it clear that tragedies can (and do) happen randomly, that well-meaning families can mistakenly make decisions that will have horrific, grotesque consequences. And if anyone can be “punished” for their fallibility then none of us are safe. Tarnation suggests that it’s not about deserving the life we get, but surviving it.

There is a tenderness in Tarnation that tempers the unblinking footage of Caouette, his mother, his grandparents. We partake of their everyday lives, their quips, their friction, their meltdowns. We see Caouette’s parents and grandparents when they were young, attractive and successful, but also after time, abuse, and neglect have diminished them. Curiously, Caouette seems hardly changed at the age of 32. The adult seems childlike and the boy precocious and jaded.

Pretty early in the film, we see Jonathan perform a bizarre monologue, dressed in spare but convincing drag. "Hilary Laura Lou" talks about her husband’s abuse: pregnant and kicked in the stomach. Tied to the bed and beaten. Despite the trashy, cartoony vibe, it also has a dark, satirical side. We know this kind of thing goes on, but it’s obvious he’s not playing it straight. And when it hits us an 11-year-old boy is doing a viable read on this acrimonious spoof, it’s appalling, heartbreaking. Fascinating.

This is one of the glorious aspects of Tarnation . It’s a mistake, I believe, to take any particular sequence in just one way. His mother’s “pumpkin dance,” for instance. At first it just seems playful and jokey. But as it continues way past the point of joviality, we start to gather something’s wrong. And it’s not just Renée’s eccentricities or failure to respond to certain questions. Often it’s what she divulges when she cracks out of turn. I think Caouette gives most of this an off-hand, casual feel that enhances the plausibility, that makes it less far removed from our own experience, and therefore harder to dismiss.

It’s difficult to find the words to describe the visual style of Tarnation. When you consider the distinct, disparate elements, and how seamlessly, intuitively they hang together, it’s what? Cinematic collage of the highest order? But it goes so far beyond that. Montage may be the technique, but it’s all about motion and vibrance. It’s all about illumination and epiphany. We see Caouette’s early experiments in filmmaking, monologues and trashy-satirical slasher movies. Some of it reminded me of Kenneth Anger and Christopher Rage. Into this was spliced photographs of his grandparents, his mother, himself, Desiderata in voiceover (!) videotapes from the present, television shows, and movies from the '70s and '80s; on and on it goes.

Filmmakers have been dabbling with this technique for years. In music videos, television, feature-length films we see the dazzling special effects, the jittery, frantic, hand-held camera that distracts and intrigues but only intermittently connects to content. But Jonathan Caouette makes it all coalesce, with astonishing results. His devices, his jumps from raw to slick to grainy to trippy, bolster and deepen the subject matter. Tarnation could have been just another pastiche. Instead, by diligence, dedication and flying by the seat of his pants, he’s taken a quantum leap into mastery. Into brilliance.

Posted Tuesday, June 26, 2007 1:59 AM by jlgdrd | with 0 comments

Down with his bad self: Testosterone

Was this review helpful? [Be the first to tell us!]

Under discussion:

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004)

Testosterone (2003)

I loved so many things about David Moreton's Testosterone that it's hard to know where to begin: I was thrilled to see a movie called Testosterone in which heterosexuality was marginalized and machismo was not claimed as the exclusive domain of male breeders; in which the hero — graphic novelist Dean Seagraves (David Sutcliffe) — was an angry, unapologetic, passionate, deranged queer boy going full steam ahead to get resolution (or at least answers) from his boyfriend, Pablo, who disappears one night after leaving to buy cigarettes.

I loved that Dean doesn't (pardon the expression) pussyfoot around, that when he unexpectedly spots Pablo's mother (Sonia Braga) at an art exhibition he doesn't hesitate to confront her. I loved that all the gay men in the film were assertive, ravishing and indiscreet. How often have we all seen movies built around straight men who would stop at nothing to reclaim their lost female loves?

Don't get me wrong on this next one, but Testosterone defends the right of queer men to be pricks as big as our straight brothers. It celebrates our raging male libido. In fact, it trivializes and lionizes it at the same time. Sofia (Celina Font) who helps Dean along the way in this film that is equal parts, mystery, melodrama and black satire, has the best line: "I try never to get between a man and his penis." Or words to that effect.

Let's see - what else? I loved the tone. Dean rages and rushes and stalks about on his quest while the retro-jazzy, musical score undercuts it, suggesting that poor Dean might be taking all this just a little too seriously. This of course is the epiphany that all of us, driven mad by love, must embrace, usually later than sooner. I loved the dialogue. Marcos, an exquisitely cute guy Dean meets along the way asks if he can share the bed with him. Dean replies: "No, see, I've got a full day of stalking ahead of me tomorrow..." The script is peppered with rough, wry, multi-layered exchanges that are intelligent and poignant.

I loved the imagery: Dean using a stray dog he's befriended as a pillow when he sleeps in a graveyard, Dean defiantly eating wedding cake as Pablo's new bride antagonizes him (never has a bride seemed more extraneous at her own wedding)Dean undressing Marcos while making out and talking suggestively about bad Catholic school boys, Pablo (Antonio Sabato, Jr.) baiting Dean in a way that call his motives into serious question.

I loved the women. None of the female characters — Pablo's mother, Sofia, or Dean's agent (played by Jennifer Coolidge) — are what you would call "nurturers." They are tough, sardonic, articulate and direct; they neither romanticize nor weaken women. In fact, they're often scary and vindictive. Sonia Braga is steely and merciless. Celina Font is kind but never naive. Jennifer Coolidge (most recently seen in A Cinderella Story, A Mighty Wind and television's Joey) has lost all trace of her ditsy, hare-brained shtick. She's still got that whiskey-voice, though, and when she bitches that she had to "lick that guy's ass for two hours" to cover for Dean, she's completely believable.

I loved the surprises too, many of which I hope I haven't revealed. Suffice it to say that our expectations and assumptions are often confounded. Our feelings about previous events change as the plot evolves and we consider them in retrospect.

I loved the ironies: Dean Seagraves is a graphic novelist, an art form many are unable to distinguish from comic books. In a way Testosterone is an homage to comic book romance and heroism, but not in the visual sense; say like in Spiderman 2 or Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. It's more about the bizarre (yet somehow valid) attempt on Dean's part to salvage his spirit using comic book ideology. He sees his personal romantic struggle in grotesquely disproportionate terms, as do many of us.

Throughout the film, the other characters tell him to wake up, to go home, he's wasting his time. And it's not just because he won't face the excruciating truth, but the added taboo that he's a man chasing another man. In Mike Nichols' recent film, Closer (adapted from the Patrick Marber play) he suggests that male/female sexuality is tactically motivated by men's contempt for each other.

Dean's queer obsession (unwise as it may be) is expressed as fulfillment of his manhood, rather than a subversion of it. And his insane, psychopathic behavior is ultimately vindicated. Testosterone shows us both sides of the coin, shows us the truth of leading with our dicks - the glory as well as the stupidity. It's smart, erotic, wrenching, and funny. Maybe unforgettable.

Posted Sunday, June 24, 2007 4:00 AM by jlgdrd | with 0 comments

Wicked Fun

Angel/Baby : Burnt Money

Spiv's Journal: AKA

A Thousand Clouds of Peace: Poetry of Loss

Beyond Reach: Son Frere

Jonathan Caouette’s Fever Dream: Tarnation

Down with his bad self: Testosterone

Like what you're reading?