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Under discussion:

Agnes of God  (1985)

The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things  (2006)

It is rare that I feel so utterly and completely mortified, frustrated and disgusted by a film, despite its brilliance. After watching Asia Argento’s The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things and discovering the source material came from a literary figure who was fabricated, my initial response was, “What next?” The film itself is problematic and flawed enough without this additional layer of confusion trying to fob itself off as intrigue.

After doing a bit of research I discovered that JT LeRoy’s novel : The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things , was actually written by Laura Albert, who cultivated the alias down to dressing her boyfriend’s half-sister, Savannah Knoop, as the teenage boy. Knoop then proceeded to make guest appearances at book releases and other promotional events. Albert claimed that the persona of JT was a “veil” that permitted her to write things she couldn’t as herself. Of course, novelists employ different narrators all the time without feeling the need to create non-existent human beings. We needn’t trouble ourselves by asking how many additional books she might have sold by writing from the viewpoint of the victim or suggesting the content was actual or true.

The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things is a devastating, harrowing descent into the story of a young boy, Jeremiah, who is legally appropriated from his foster parents by his 23-year-old, biological mother, Sarah. It is painfully clear that Sarah (Asia Argento) has fought tooth and nail for her second shot at motherhood, and also clear that it’s the worst thing she possibly could have done. There is so much about THIDAAT that’s inexplicable that it’s difficult to know where to begin. That said, it is beyond poignant, heart-breaking, grueling, unforgettable. The fact that it lives up to the expectations set by its title is reason enough to be impressed. The film is not just deeply affecting, it’s wounding. You can’t watch and you can’t turn away. The misery is almost without relief, which may the secret of its attraction . You keep thinking that somehow Jeremiah’s (Jimmy Bennett) rescue is imminent. You stick with the movie thinking that eventually some form of karmic justice will prevail.

The character of Sarah, played by the director, looks like a cross between Uma Thurman and Courtney Love. In the best and worst possible sense. I am not saying this to be snide or deprecating. I believe part of the key to THIDAAT is Sarah’s appearance and emotional turmoil. When you look at the cover art from the disc, or the poster, she is drawn with wings and horns. This isn’t the typical struggle we all cope with when making ethical choices in our lives. This is injecting Agnes of God with a live dose of rabies. At first we consider the possibility she gained custody out of devotion and maternal instinct. We take it in stride when she feeds him cold spaghetti-os from a paper plate or sleeps with her thumb in her mouth. Then the parade of atrocities begins.

As it becomes more and more apparent how deeply unhappy Jeremiah is with his new living arrangements, Sarah, just like an older, bigger, aggressive child starts finding ways to get even. She won’t let Jeremiah speak to his foster parents, she tells him they didn’t want him anymore, she tells him he’s the result of incestuous rape by his grandfather. But it doesn’t stop there. She feeds him speed, she leaves him in the car while she has loud, shrieking sex with a cowboy she just met named Luther, she helps Luther beat the shit out of Jeremiah for pissing himself without drawing attention from the neighbors. “I’m going to give you a beating you can be proud of,” he tells the terrified boy as Sarah stuffs a sock in his mouth. Her pleasure in witnessing this spectacle is unmistakable. And it’s just one more sickening display after another. You’ll have to take my word for it when I say I’m not a reactionary (at least, no more so than any other critic) but I can’t remember when I hated a character more.

During this road trip shared by mother and son, we see Sarah selling sex for money, abusing drugs, leaving Jeremiah for days by himself, cross-dressing him for her own amusement and repeatedly putting him in danger. It’s not necessarily that she resorts to prostitution or self-medication, it’s her complete lack of desire to protect him from situations no child should ever have to endure. Towards the end of the film she has the mind-numbing chutzpah to tell the son she’s repeatedly taken against his will that he has ruined her life. That she always landed on her feet when he wasn’t around to mess things up. If there were a God, the kid would have landed a haymaker to her jaw. But there the beautiful boy sits, believing every word that drips from the diseased mind of his solipsistic mother, suffering from what may very well be a form of Stockholm Syndrome.

There is a great deal of poisonous wisdom in the film. Argento uses an hallucinogenic, surreal approach that seems appropriate to the trauma that taints Jeremiah’s life on a daily basis. The fuzzy, documentary style is spot on and we come to recognize how sinister and complicated the world can be. How the boy grows to respond more to abuse than neglect like so many of us could and might. How the joy is beaten out of him and he’s forced to depend on his mother, a spiv from the word go. He doesn’t run away because his mother forges dependency based on isolation and terror. Jeremiah has learned to make himself invisible while his mother goes from one psychotic episode to the next, or her latest conquest waits to explode. When Jeremiah is temporarily adopted by his grandparents the harsh, deranged behavior towards him continues, but (and this is an example of where the film slips) in comparison to “Life with Mommy” it seems like paradise. When Sarah finds him preaching on the street and whisks him away, you just want to weep.

At the core of The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things is the dynamic between Jeremiah and Sarah. You can understand why Jeremiah comes to love his mother, she’s intensely unhappy, angry, damaged and pathetic. You don’t have to be a genius, a therapist or even remotely sensitive to surmise that Sarah is probably inflicting her son with same abominations that she herself was subjected to. There are particular moments that suggest we’re supposed to see her as some kind of desperate, junky princess version of Auntie Mame, which under the circumstances, is laughable and repugnant. Because this sweet kid hasn’t been reduced to a catatonic in-patient, I guess we’re supposed to dismiss much of her toxic behavior as antics. This is where The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things falls apart. It gambles on our capacity to appreciate or at least comprehend Sarah.

We can’t shake our heads and say that tragedy befalls everyone’s life. That’s true, but this isn’t fate, this is Sarah, refusing to relinquish a son she claims to love and wants nothing to do with. The only explanation that makes any sense is her need to rob Jeremiah of a the life she’s been denied, despite what she tells her heart. And while this is all too human, and understandable, it’s like asking us to forgive a flea, for vomiting the plague into our veins.

Under discussion:

Easy Rider  (1969)

Five Easy Pieces  (1970)

Nashville  (1975)

The Outsiders  (1983)

Rebel Without a Cause  (1955)

Rumble Fish  (1983)

Gypsy 83  (2001)

Better Luck Tomorrow  (2003)

Prey for Rock & Roll  (2003)

Often there comes a time when a bad (or inept, or failed) movie will unwittingly tip its hand. It could be a piece of dialogue that encapsulates a central flaw, or it might be a device that functions as damage control. In Gypsy 83, it’s a chapter when Gypsy and Clive, en route to a singing competition in New York, spend an evening with a more or less retired singer, Bambi LeBleau (Karen Black). She is congenial, down-to-earth, unperturbed and dishonest only in the sense that she is trying to put a brave face on adversity. Black has been acting for at least thirty years now (Five Easy Pieces, Nashville, Easy Rider) and her screen presence and skill are so effortless that they too often go unnoticed. Her performance appears to infect Sara Rue (Gypsy) and Kett Turton (Clive) who seem completely different in this sequence, and outshines them in the rest of the film. She’s invested in the role, but experienced enough to trust her intuitions. When they decide to leave Bambi behind as if she were some kind of albatross, the irony could bring down a skyscraper. And you have to wonder if even the director, Todd Stephens, was in on the joke.

Twenty minutes into Gypsy 83, watching Clive and Gypsy tape each other in a graveyard, chilling in Clive’s basement and shocking the bourgeoisie bumpkins in Sandusky, Ohio, I wanted to pull out my hair. It’s not that I couldn’t understand why they loved each other, spent all their time together, or sought refuge in Goth regalia. Living in a middle-class, Midwestern wasteland, I’m sure jet-black hair dye and purple eye shadow would provide a great sense of relief. But it all felt so contrived. So lame. When I compare it to other films where we’re asked to sympathize with outcasts and fringe dwellers or at least enjoy their anarchy, it rings hollow.

In movies like Rumble Fish , Prey For Rock and Roll , Better Luck Tomorrow, even Rebel Without a Cause, we care about the protagonists, we understand their struggles, but we never feel sorry for them. When the Greasers kicked ass at the end of The Outsiders, you’d better believe I was cheering for them. I was yelling at the screen. Gypsy and Clive don’t even play out as antiheroes, they’re just a little too waiflike. To an excessive degree, Stephens doesn’t trust us to recognize their frailties without having them spelled out in dialogue. To let the camera convey meaning.

Sara Rue’s best moments are when she’s singing, though I think making her a Stevie Nicks clone was a mistake. She’s confident and instinctive, and it’s truly pleasurable to listen to her gravelly, magnificent voice. The rest of the time her performance and Kett Turton’s feel just horribly forced. They look really good, but lack conviction. And frankly, I never thought a film of this sort could be so hokey. During their road trip to The Big Apple the two pick up an Amish hitchhiker (Anson Scoville) and he’s so stiff (not because he’s Amish but amateurish) that you get the impression Stephens chose him solely on pretty-boy appeal.

In an early scene where Gypsy tells off a dowager, clearly intended to represent Decent Society, the movie just comes to a halt. The old woman’s speech sounds so flat and didactic. This may be in a sense accurate, but it’s bad writing, bad acting. The two women aren’t connecting with each other or the audience. It’s pretty sad when a film can’t incite animosity for a character we’re predisposed to hate.

Gypsy 83 has all the earmarks of a project that looked good on paper. And it has the plot elements for good narrative: search for identity, the missing mother, coming clean, owning up, painful truths, escape to the shining Metropolis, the homoeroticism behind fraternities. Though, of course, the problem is less about content than execution. Stephens wastes numerous opportunities to dramatize what he pisses away on text. The film is 92 minutes long, but goes it on and on. There are plausible, impressive episodes like when Gypsy succumbs to fear at a karaoke contest, or Zechariah (Amish boy on the lam) spontaneously kisses Clive on the mouth, but unfortunately, these are rare.

It’s unusual, I think, to find a low-budget, Independent film that seems so facile, so self-congratulatory. There’s no tension, no enhancement between the interpretive attitude of the filmmaker and the attitude of the actors. Such as it is. There isn’t a lot of steam behind Rue and Turton’s work. They don’t seem to be tapping into genuine passion or seething with it underneath. In a way it’s inexplicable, we see Clive and Gypsy at times of emotional upheaval; traumatic, humiliating, life-changing moments when we want to empathize, but there’s nothing to engage us. To pull us in. When we care less about the characters than we would for a Smurf.

Under discussion:

The Ballad of the Sad Cafe  (1991)

The Embalmer  (2004)

The Embalmer is Matteo Garrone’s fable on love, desire, loneliness and despair. An achingly sad film about a love-triangle that culminates in tragedy. Peppino is a taxi-dermist who falls for Valerio ( Valerio Foglia Manzillo) from the moment their paths cross at the zoo. Peppino offers him a job as his assistant, with a considerable pay increase, and soon Valerio becomes his protege‘. Car trouble introduces the third principal, Deborah (Elisabetta Rocchetti) a receptionist for an auto mechanic. As she begins to take Valerio away from Peppino, the friction escalates. An awful feeling starts in the pit of your stomach that something terrible is going to happen, something ghastly and unavoidable. And, of course it does.

Peppino (Ernesto Mahieux) is skilled, cunning, intelligent and charismatic. He is also diminutive. He is not an actual dwarf, but in comparison to the tall, attractive Valerio, he seems small and clownish. Just like the dwarfs in Carson McCuller’s The Ballad of Sad Cafe and Edgar Allen Poe’s Hop-Frog, he has learned to ingratiate himself to people. This is what “freaks” must do to get by in society. And The Embalmer begs the issue: does Garrone consider Peppino a freak because he is a dwarf or because he is gay? Or is he the victim of a world that deals in such cruel, dumb, broad strokes? In this sense it becomes difficult to say whether Garrone likes Peppino or believes he gets what he deserves.

It is not enough that Peppino is too short and older and forced to play the buffoon just to avoid derision. He is also manipulative, calculating, underhanded and dishonest. He has learned to exploit a culture that trades in appearances. It is never suggested that he could get what he needs by leveling with Valerio, that he could succeed on the strength of his considerable personal charm. It’s never suggested he could get his sexual needs met by escorts, or that maybe he doesn’t need to get the object of his affection drunk, or trick him when sharing the same bed. This is pathetic behavior, and The Embalmer suggests that Peppino’s only realistic choices are dodgy.

And yet we can identify with Peppino’s predicament. When you are attracted someone who is godlike then anyone can feel inadequate or downright ugly. And how many men engaged in loving attachments (platonic and otherwise) have been sent packing because of an insecure girlfriend? Deborah is every bit as conniving as Peppino, and perfectly happy to steal whatever she feels is her due. In a confrontation with Valerio she asks him if he doesn’t make himself sick. His relationship is “depraved” because Peppino’s attractions make him criminal by cultural definition.

The appearance of Deborah sets calamity in motion because she forces Valerio to examine the nature of his connection to Peppino. Valerio drifts, Peppino gets more and more possessive, more enraged, and the camera looms closer to his face. Gradually, he looks more sinister. We see his warped, misshapen teeth, his desperate mugging and forced joviality. Does being gay mean we must get what little we can by chicanery? In a film that pivots on arguably false dichotomies The Embalmer creates a world where Valerio must choose between wife, child, “family” and a life of dissolution and ambition with mentor, Peppino. The bimbo or the dwarf. In some cultures this may be the practical reality, but the structure, the presumptions have to make us wonder about Garrone’s intentions.

Even when Valerio chooses Peppinio, it is not enough. It is unclear whether they have ever consummated, but there is no doubt the virile, gorgeous, Valerio is devoted to his mentor. In the end he is so overcome with self-loathing that Valerio’s love cannot penetrate. Despite the fact that everything he’s done for Valerio had a price tag, that he vacillates between genuine care and exploitation, Peppino ultimately comes off as sympathetic. Perhaps because Valerio can read between the lines and see Peppino’s strong points, his intelligence and wit and joie de vivre.

Perhaps because gay men are often punished in life for taking the high road. How many gay men, overcome by the magnificence of male beauty, have put themselves in harm’s way, by acting on their true feelings? Maybe this makes Peppino’s subterfuge understandable if not excusable. He suffers an chilling, ignominious burial (if you can call it that) that is all the more wrenching for its’ secrecy.

Director of Photography Marco Onorato suffuses The Embalmer with images of destitution, emptiness, barrenness, bleak, dismal washed-out colors, blurriness and fog, blackened venues with jagged eruptions of minimal lighting. He manages a curiously successful combination that would seem inspired by El Greco and Monet.

Under discussion:

Yves Saint Laurent - Le Temps Retrouve  (2002)

Yves Saint Laurent: 5, Avenue Marceau, 75116 Paris  (2002)

David Teboul’s two-part documentary on the legendary fashion designer, Yves St. Laurent, is a not entirely unsuccessful foray into the realm of cinematic biography. But to be entirely fair and accurate, the two films: Yves St. Laurent : His Life and Times and Yves St. Laurent: 5 Avenue Marceau are miles apart in competency and allure. I assumed they were intended to be viewed in tandem but will be shown individually, each sold on a different ticket.. Life and Times is an absorbing, frank account of Laurent’s adventurous, tempestuous life and career, and his seminal impact on fashion, culture and society. 5 Avenue Marceau, is a turgid chamber piece that could arguably stand as the prime example of imitative fallacy. It runs 85 minutes but seems to stretch endlessly. It is more than coincidence that the former is comprised chiefly of discovered footage and the latter, exclusively Teboul’s.5 Avenue Marceau opens with Catherine Deneuve trying on dresses and deciding what she wants. For a famous actress and world-class beauty she looks decidedly plain, a tactical approach reflected in both films. Considering the subject, the glamour quotient of the YSL films is pretty low, but it works well and keeps the result from being insipid. This sequence goes on for awhile, Deneuve discusses skirt length, color choices, fabric options, the need for pleats. She chats with the staff, sharing an anecdote about her pet hens, and when she finishes making her choices, cheerily departs. Eventually we get the idea (the point is made repeatedly throughout) that perfection requires time, perseverance and dedication. Deneuve’s outing serves as a prologue to the film: a prolonged, stultifying look behind the scenes in the townhouse where Laurent prepares his upcoming collection.

The camera remains at a considerable distance for most of 5 Avenue Marceau, composing shots that often have the look of classical paintings in their arrangement, capturing clusters of assistants hovering around models, often using mirrors to split the screen or deepen the depth of field. The problem though, is often as not, Teboul is not using the camera to tell the story. He knows how to make interesting and attractive pictures, but we don’t sense their connection to the content.

The other problem is the interminable, static shots. Some of them go on for so long, they appear to be tableaux, even though no one is standing still. Clearly Teboul is in love with his subject and I admire his intent to show the nuts and bolts of Laurent’s day to day travails. When one of his inner circle remarks on their “embarrassment of riches” it hits us that this is the fatal flaw. There are lots of fascinating, surprising details, too many, in fact, and Teboul just can’t bear to cut away from any of it.

He wants us to appreciate the long hours, the punchy, bleary-eyed consultations that go on into the night, the parade of models that anyone would lose track of, and that’s fine, but the way to do it is not by numbing us into submission. I love the way we see lots of different assistants, each making their own contribution to a finished gown, the chattering between three seamstresses as they bend over their irons, the quiet energy suffusing the moment when a model stands before Laurent and his cabinet as they debate organza over satin. But Teboul doesn’t seem to understand that you just can’t get it all in. That picking and omitting particular details is intrinsic to the creative process.

Life and Times, however, is a completely different matter. Laurent begins by talking about his childhood in Oran, Algeria, and we are immediately struck by family photographs and commentary by his mother, who confides that at the age of three, Laurent convinced his great aunt to change before attending a party. Teboul mixes stills, news clips, puff pieces, paintings by Andy Warhol, footage from fashion shows, period music and reminiscences with finesse and panache. The pacing is confident and steady. Key events from Laurent’s prodigious and tumultuous life are explained by friends, consorts, associates and his long-time lover (we gather) Pierre Berge’. The interviewees are surprisingly forthcoming, though none more so than Laurent himself, whose remarks begin and end the film. When asked about his notorious “dark side” Laurent and several others cop to it, but remain vague and philosophical.

Laurent’s homosexuality is openly discussed and possible “explanations” (for those who still need that red herring) considered. It’s suggested his orientation shaped his ground-breaking innovations in women’s fashion, cultivating stylish androgyny and dressing them in pants and suits that only served to intensify their femininity and bolster their confidence. Life and Times reveals a compelling composite of Yves St. Laurent, from shy schoolboy prodigy to pioneering fashion iconoclast.

Under discussion:

Pennies from Heaven  (1981)

Yossi & Jagger  (2002)

Roughly three quarters into Eytan Fox’s Yossi & Jagger, Jagger finally puts his foot down. When the impending ambush is over, he tells him, they will travel East, they will rent a hotel room, they will ask for a single bed. “I’m tired of pretending,” he tells Yossi, and from that moment on you don’t have to be a psychic (or an avid movie queen) to know Jagger won’t be returning from the ambush. Yossi responds with the traditional “You knew what you were getting into...” speech that he will undoubtedly recant as Jagger is brought to the brink of death. This is not to say Avner Bernheimer’s script is weak, in a sense he turns conventional melodrama on its head. And considering he telegraphs the climax it is surprisingly effective and yes, wrenching.

Based on a true story, Yossi and Jagger is a cinematic coupe de grace achieved by tactical strategy. Using documentary film technique (hand-held cameras, natural lighting, flat colors) Eytan Fox gives his narrative a much needed jolt. I was struck by the difference between Yehuda Levi’s publicity stills and his appearance in the film as Jagger. Though he is handsome by any standards, the efforts to de-glamorize him were almost startling. It is just one of numerous instances in which Fox begs comparison between the best of all worlds and the world as it is. He creates tension between characters who are cynical and idealistic. When Jagger makes his plea for openness, Yossi (Ohad Knoller) dismisses him, “This isn’t a fucking American movie.” Ironies and nudges abound in Yossi & Jagger. Fox gives us a dry, low-key depiction of life on a remote army base on the Israeli-Lebanese border. And yet the tension, the humanity, the texture comes through. Particular credit must be given to the cast for their extremely subtle yet faithful work in this film. The energy level is controlled, subdued, but the chemistry, the sparks, are there.Yossi & Jagger asks us to reconsider the nature of romance, the dichotomy we often presume between a dream of utopian life and the sum and substance of our behavior. The need for romance, or disappointment in it shapes each character’s point of view. They seem disaffected but in the end we see romance is not so much luxury or wish as a grace that makes the world bearable. Yaeli (Aya Koren) is in love with Jagger, wants him so badly she has trouble distinguishing between her heart’s desire and all evidence to the contrary. One of the great sadnesses of the film is that with Jagger, Yossi has stumbled upon the dream all others yearn for, and yet he takes it for granted. Keeps it hidden. The heterosexual ideal of romantic love prevails over the reality, even though it has failed him. Ultimately Yossi is the one who clings to fantasy and both of them suffer for it.

Yossi and Jagger is in some ways a dialectic on the need for romance despite the demands of daily life. The obsession with maintaining appearance as opposed to personal integrity. The two commanders sneak away on a false pretext and drive off a rabbit because of Yossi’s paranoia. He can’t even make love if a rabbit is “watching.“ Jagger does a goofy riff on the bunny’s facial expression and henceforth the rabbit becomes his totem. Jagger is gentle and sweet natured, spontaneous, happy to be silly and make others laugh. For all his insouciance he is wiser than Yossi, who lives in constant fear of persecution.

Yossi is comfortable in the closet because it has yet to cost him anything. He plays it so close to the vest, that in the 11th hour, he cannot bring himself to hold Jagger, or kiss him, until it’s too late. In the classic fashion of fairy tales and fables, he doesn’t realize how precious his comrade and lover is until he’s gone. If they’d been “only” buddies, Yossi would have probably expressed his feelings willingly and extravagantly. Yossi & Jagger is cinema verite’, in this case, melodrama masquerading as documentary. The commonplace style heightens the value of romance, just as we understand why characters broke into song during Pennies from Heaven. The corny music, the quirky script, the queer ingenue frolicking in the snow and waggling his butt. Taken as a whole, it suggests queer love is not restricted to the fanciful or forbidden or ideal world, sometimes it’s how the world is. In Yossi and Jagger Eytan Fox explores how the two can overlap. And how real love can trump the heterosexual paradigm, despite the religious right’s empty promises.

Under discussion:

El Mar  (2000)

El Mar is a mouse that becomes a tiger when your back is turned. There’s an undercurrent of urgency that erupts in quiet, gradually more devastating explosions until you’re confounded--devoured--used up? Set in a sanatorium for tuberculosis in the Mallorca of post civil-war Spain, El Mar tells the story of three friends: Ramallo, Tur and Francisca, all seeking expiation for a ghastly crime that happened when they were children. When Ramallo is sent to the hospital for treatment he finds his old friends staying there, Tur (Bruno Bergonzini) is a patient and Francisca (Antonia Torrens) in service as a nun.

There’s a deceptive air of tranquility and fastidiousness that pervades the film. It’s not that these themes aren't part of the mix, but they belie the layers of anguish and turmoil underneath. The characters are struggling to reconcile their need for spiritual transcendence with the perils of human connection, with all its potential for degradation and delight. Even supporting roles like Carmen (Angela Molina) demeaned and abused by her husband, and Galindo (Hernan Gonzalez) the beautiful teenage boy who longs for his first signs of manhood are heartbreaking in the depths of their frustration and longing.

Directed by Agustin Villaronga and adapted for the screen from his novel by Blai Bonet and co-writer Antonio Aloy, it submerges us in a realm more quiet than a museum or the ocean depths. Where the possibility of death is always imminent and the caretakers more obsequious than acolytes. The specter of Roman-Catholicism looms large, and for this (as well as many other aspects) I must give El Mar credit. In film, the Brides of Christ are often depicted as either zany, innocuous clowns, or strident, sexually frustrated harridans.

Francisca is by far the most well-adjusted participant in this Freudian, existential morality play. She loves non-judgmentally and (perhaps this is the glitch) doesn’t cleave to canonical edict when it departs from sanity. Her call to the convent is not a refuge from the harsh world, it facilitates her dealings in the midst of it. There is a lot of irony at work in El Mar. While Tur becomes a whipping boy for Catholicism, Francisca goes with the spirit of its broader intent. Though Ramallo can be impulsive and violent, he seems less self-absorbed than Tur.

While the plot seems to revolve on Ramallo’s obstacles and aims, Tur’s character is more intriguing. Paralyzed by guilt, his desire for the rambunctious, exquisite Ramallo (Roger Casamajor) is nonetheless keen and excruciating. Who among us queer boys wouldn’t love to return to their rooms to find his gorgeous buddy borrowing the shower, grinning under a stream of water, with the curtain pulled back? Ramallo figures it’s okay, since they are so close. And poor Tur is left to sort it all out, wondering if he must forfeit one sort of closeness for another, if he identifies with his beautiful friend or stands in opposition. Whether he can exhale or surrender or wrestle or partake.

Villaronga is cunning here, it takes a moment to gather that Tur hears Ramallo as if from very far away, marking the distance perceived between them. How Tur, frail and conflicted, sees Ramallo as unapproachable as God himself. What could be sadder than seeing him inhale the scent of Ramallo’s clothes, desperate for a trace experience of that glory? Villaronga shows the difference between Galindo’s comprehension of Ramallo and Tur’s. The discrepancy, I suppose between brotherly and homoerotic patina.

In the end, El Mar, like so many marvelous, deeply disturbing movies is about a number of issues, but at the center deals with the ugly feelings that men sometimes attach to sexual connection between men. Ramallo loves Tur in a deep, brotherly way, and is more tolerant of Tur’s profound longing than Tur himself. Pretty early on we realize that they must resolve the tension. We want so badly for them to kiss or masturbate together or just something. We understand Tur is too deeply invested and Ramallo too insouciant, and Christ, the piercing, demoralizing pain as we watch Tur aching with crisis of conscience.

The reason why this Stations of the Cross, this undersea world as interface between the secular and liturgical worlds of carnal impetus and realms of glory clicks is the shock of recognition we feel when Tur’s highest expression of care is denounced as depravity. When we’re told our love is hurting God. What’s a poor Christian Queer to do? We see Tur’s grotesque masochism, doubtful stigmata, betrayal of the man he loves but it’s difficult not to see him also as the victim of persecution. Like a virus, El Mar, will submerge you in a warped, fugue state before returning you to planet earth.

Under discussion:

Tokyo Godfathers  (2003)

Tokyo Godfathers begins on Christmas Eve in Shinjuku, Tokyo. The three homeless people who become “godfathers” to an abandoned baby (they name “Kiyoko” for purity) will scour the city for the girl’s rightful parents in an odyssey that will lead them to confront their personal demons. You might think comparing the transience of Mary, Joseph and the Three Magi to the plight of the indigent was pretty corny, but Keiko Nobumoto and Satoshi Kon pepper the screenplay with lots of jaundiced humor and deadpan payoffs. Impossibly and extravagantly upsetting moments are interspersed with lines like: “You can’t squeeze milk from an old queer’s tits.”

 Our heroes bitch, harass and care for each other more than they’d ever admit, but sentimental they are not. Their ill-tempered banter keeps this anime’ moving from slapstick to bathos to action to melodrama. The film was ill-served, at times, by its uneven pacing, undulating between stasis and chaos. One wonders if animators feel obliged to push the kinetic envelope, even in films such as this, that are plainly more character-driven, and where an excess of hi-jinks can be extremely distracting. I would not presume to suggest there is formula when devising the delicate balance of plot (who’s to say Bergman couldn’t have worked a car-chase into Cries and Whispers) but anytime an action pulls you out of the narrative, i.e., you become abruptly aware that you are watching a movie, this is a red flag to intrusion.

The milieu of Tokyo Godfathers, an urban jungle with its squalor, destitution and hordes of the disenfranchised is dense with color, detail and muted vibrance. I don’t think the art director, Nobutaka Ike, was aiming for photorealism or a painterly effect, but maybe a fusion of the two. The depth of each “shot” is startling, and the dreary, stony range of colors has a kind of sheen that’s hard to explain. The sadness of the world comes through but it doesn’t feel oppressive. At times it seems like there’s a twisted, visionary mind at work in the director, Satoski Kon, if not the entire creative team behind Tokyo Godfathers.

There are tableaux of hushed eloquence and eerie, trippy goofs on religious iconography. In one scene, Hana stops to sit down and rest, holding the baby in her lap as the snow starts to fall. She tells the others to go on, that her guardian angel will come to the rescue. She inclines her shawled head in a way that suggests a tawdry Madonna, and the movie takes this quantum leap into rapturous lunacy. As if Kon had hired seraphim to occasionally take control of the cameras. There are numerous instances like this, where you don’t know whether to gasp or laugh.

The godfathers of the title are Gin (Toru Emori) an alcoholic curmudgeon in his fifties, Hana, a transvestite of roughly the same age, and Miyukia (Aya Okamoto) a teen runaway full of piss and vinegar. Without giving away the particulars, none of them are paragons of virtue, but neither are they judged, which they are left to do for themselves. They have become a family to each other, and like many they spend a lot of time reading each other the riot act. Life has dealt them some harsh blows, but never are we asked to pity them. Nor does Tokyo Godfathers deal in quaint, broad strokes. We’re never tempted to use adjectives like gruff, spunky or campy.

I have mixed feelings about the character of Hana (Yoshiaki Umegaki). On the up side, she is arguably the most spiritually enlightened person in the film, perhaps even the moral compass. She has an ongoing relationship with God (that the film never questions or mocks) and an intuitive trust in the everyday miraculous. Caught up in momentary poignance, she composes haiku on the spot. For all her ranting, the results of her kooky behavior are generally to the good. On the down side, she may be as close as Tokyo Godfathers comes to caricature.

Thirty years ago, Hana might have been an eccentric bag lady and I suppose Nobumoto and Kon deserve points for giving a key role to a gay character. She is a mixture of scintillating attributes: haughty, weepy, giddy, pretentious, credulous, effusive. Her litany of self-effacing names: “faggot”, “homo”, “queer” is consistent with her mindset and surroundings. I wish she weren’t quite so shrill, though, so frantic. It’s hard to fight the notion she’s a clown of sorts.

Hana doesn’t just chew the scenery, she gobbles it. At times she seems grotesque, and others positively regal. But clearly she is one of the most intriguing and endearing characters, and we’ve all known guys just like her, however they gender-identify. I have never been one to sacrifice accuracy to political correctness. Just once though, couldn’t filmmakers with this kind of opportunity make the troglodyte gay, just to keep us on our toes?

Under discussion:

The Bulgarian Lovers  (2003)

Ah, the eternal allure of the troglodyte god. The straight-identified rough-trade waif. Those broad shoulders, tawdry tattoos, ass cheeks like warm, firm scoops of ice cream that never melt. Bulgarian Lovers is a new film that punctures and celebrates the practical and probably very old arrangement between older gay men and those earthy, uneducated, delectable bad boys. Kyril (Dritan Biba) embodies the kind of poisonous desire nearly impossible to resist, the sort of relationship we intuitively know is going be harmful, if not ultimately fatal. Daniel (Fernando Guillen Cuervo) glamorizes Kyril’s illegal activities (drug-dealing, car theft, uranium smuggling) perceiving him as an anarchist or gangster instead of a spiv. He even imagines himself as Kyril’s moll. He becomes Kyril’s “patron”. He’s not really a sugar-daddy, and Kyril isn’t exactly his kept boy or gigolo. Daniel’s longing for Kyril is ostensibly simple (you only need to see him to understand why) but also, somewhat complicated.

Kyril, the struggling, earnest Bulgarian immigrant is many things that Daniel is not. Younger, buff, intense, working-class, impulsive, not stupid but not intellectual, either. Daniel, however is also quite attractive, fit, gentle, charming and financially successful. One of the delights and tragedies of Bulgarian Lovers is the way Daniel distorts Kyril’s character, not only to mitigate the pain of disappointment, but to create the ideal romantic partner. His need to create a particular sort of man whose dangerous life and physical splendor he can partake of perhaps blinds him to a greater intimacy. Not that the two aren’t involved in a mutually caring relationship.

What separates this film from many others is the suggestion that people who truly love us can still exploit us, that perhaps an unspoken, even subconscious contract can exist between lover and beloved. A compromise between what we want most and what we are willing to settle for. Daniel is so plagued by a false sense of inadequacy that the privilege of loving Kyril is astonishing to him. Intoxicating. Like permission to dwell in the temple of Apollo or Dionysus. To know he can have limited access to such exquisite virility, even a small taste, is so deliriously tantalizing that no price, however ludicrous, is too high.

Daniel finds Kyril somewhat unexpectedly. After videotaping a number of juicy looking men at a bar, he happens upon Kyril, who asks for a cigarette. Daniel buys him a meal (he hasn’t eaten in 3 days) and eventually asks if he wants to go home with him. When Kyril shakes his head, Daniel goes on to explain in voice-over that in Bulgaria nodding means “no” and shaking the head means “yes“. You could call this a portent, an omen pointing to the ambivalent nature of Daniel’s attachment to Kyril. He knows he’s being used, gradually Kyril makes it impossible to ignore, and before the movie is over, Daniel will endanger himself and take all kinds of risks in the name of love.

What knocks me out about Bulgarian Lovers, what I think is startling and affecting, is how the director, Eloy de la Iglesia, never tries to convince us that Daniel is not a fool, only that sometimes foolishness is a reasonable trade for love. Whether we can buy into this or not, Iglesia makes an alarmingly compelling case. And it’s a heartbreaker, watching Daniel keeping his suave composure while we know he must be dying underneath. When he looks into the camera and tells us he’s a “stupid bitch.” Throughout the movie his friends warn him that Bulgarian immigrants are bad news, that Kyril will only cause him misery. And while that may not be exactly true, he certainly causes more than he should.

What makes much of Bulgarian Lovers bearable is Kyril’s earnest love for Daniel. He never pretends it’s something that it’s not, and cares for Daniel in the same way we love a parent, or someone who supports and looks out for us. Which may explain his friend Gildo’s observation that Daniel can be somewhat kinky. Even though it’s never said aloud, Kyril has become Daniel’s lover for pay, but we never get the impression he feels obliged. He loves Daniel like a buddy or protege who’s decided he’s okay with having sex. Like the kind of guys who figure that if it’s with another man, it doesn’t really count. The scene where he finds Daniel the evening after his wedding so they can dance together is one of the most touching and audacious I’ve ever witnessed. Iglesias has fashioned a sleek, sly parable on the nature of love and wanting, with the very odd conclusion that delusion, martyrdom and genuine care are not necessarily incompatible. Or maybe that we all just do the best we can with what we’ve got, and what comes our way.

Under discussion:

Deliverance  (1972)

Li'l Abner  (1959)

Paris Trout  (1991)

Chrystal  (2005)

Chrystal is informed by a delicate indelicacy. A balance between harshness and sweetness. Joe marries Chrystal after taking his turn with her in the backseat of a car. Chrystal sees the ghost of her son from the wreckage after she and Joe go over the side of an embankment. Joe foregoes concealment to present Chrystal with a baby boy he must have kidnapped. He shows up with a full mop of a beard, not as silly looking as ZZ Top, shorter than that, but still looking like some crazy hermit from the Ozark Mountains where Chrystal is set. The film is not Deliverance or Li'l Abner (sometimes it reminded me of Paris Trout without the venom) but it definitely dances somewhere between. On the one hand it is the fulfillment of hokey hillbilly folklore, with all its lurid melodrama, and on the other, it turns our worst, most ugly preconceived notions about mountain folk upside down. Inside out.

An African American professor from the University of Chicago comes to study the chilling, raucous, splendid music of the Ozarks, but he’s really there to validate their way of life. He’s blind, he’s intelligent, he’s noble and when Chrystal kisses him impulsively he handles it with grace and composure. When his assistant freaks because he sees Joe welding in the middle of the night, he says something like, “You can’t support diversity on one front and reject it on the other.” It would be pretty easy to dismiss the character of Kalid because his functionality almost trumps his autonomous existence. He treats everyone with respect, he befriends Chrystal and never once condescends, when they are attacked he counters by saying you can find violence in any city. I am not exactly sure how far past his existence as a device Kalid extends, the acting in Chrystal is whispery in comparison to a lot of movies, and his character feels authentic, even if it is something of a magic wand.

Chrystal is played by Lisa Blount and her mother, Gladys, by the wonderful Grace Zabriskie, a familiar performer amongst David Lynch’s troupe of cinematic actors. Chrystal is the promiscuous, crazy mountain lady, walking around as if in a daze,reclining in the branches of a tree, offering sex to Joe (Billy Bob Thornton) as if it were a sandwich. The first time they sexually engage after he’s returned from his stay in prison, she’s alarmingly detached, looking out the kitchen window and speaking as if to a stranger. She drives home the point that when you’re in constant emotional and physical agony, you seek out respite any place you can find it. Director Ray McKinnon (who also plays the comical, repugnant villain, Snake) neither glamorizes in a trashy way the lives of rural people nor does he condemn it. He merely explains. When Snake and Joe mix it up outside a kitchen restaurant, Joe hurls incest jibes as the fight begins to pick up heat. The film cuts back and forth between this event and Chrystal singing at a jam of mountain musicians. When Joe hears her poignant, yearning ballad, it distracts him long enough to give Snake the upper-hand. When Snake (who is partial to the crack pipe) tries to involve the others in a gang rape they want nothing to do with it.

The strengths of Chrystal lie in its casual surprises. Its understated verisimilitude. A trip to what we expect to be a brothel or speakeasy winds up being a restaurant everyone knows by “word of mouth”, a car chase that might have resolved like something out of Dukes of Hazard becomes an exercise in compassion. Mostly plot driven, I wish the visual style were a bit stronger, that the camera work might have risen above the merely competent, though these days competence is definitely worth noting. What made the movie memorable had more to do with the story than the imagery that came from it. When she saves Hog’s life or we hear the story of her grandmother and she gathering herbs and flowers as a child, McKinnon is gently, deeply moving, and it balances the moments when Chrystal’s rage and hysteria overcome her. Like the rest of us, her life is composed of anguish and transcendence, devastation and redemption. Like the rest of us, the characters might smoke dope, or they might be dedicated to sobriety. They might be college boys or blue collar. They might go fishing or hunting or fix cars or try on a dress for the first time at the age of 82. Like the rest of us they’re just struggling to work out their salvation or get as close as they can.

Under discussion:

Rashomon  (1951)

13 Conversations About One Thing  (2001)

The 24th Day  (2004)

Pretty early in The 24th Day, it becomes apparent it was taken from a play, a dodgy proposition at best. Adhering to a key location, as plays often do, can be a successful approach, or it can crash and burn. Very slowly. It depends on the nature of the piece. The 24th Day has, essentially, two characters and it can be difficult to transfer a prolonged confrontation to the big screen.

In a theater, we can see how they stand in relation to each other, our eyes instinctively find the face or physical dynamic that warrants our attention. In a film, the director chooses for us, deciding whether it's more important to see the expression of the man speaking or reacting. Tony Piccirillo, who wrote the play in question, and directed the film, has here carried it off. Scott Speedman (Tom) and James Marsden (Dan) hold our focus, without Piccirillo's shot manipulation feeling intrusive or neutral. Which, of course, is exactly the idea.

Like Rashomon or 13 Conversations About One Thing, The 24th Day pivots on the terrible, unknowable nature of "The Truth" when crucial details are compromised by personal agenda - as Tom explains, the difference between the truth and the "true truth." Tom has discovered he's HIV-positive and wants to hold Dan accountable, since Dan is the only man he's ever slept with.

Straight-identified and committed (in one way or another) to a female partner, Tom discovers he's infected under horrific circumstances, when his girlfriend's autopsy shows she had the virus. Twenty-four days after finding out he's positive, he lures Dan into his apartment, then holds him against his will until his blood test comes back. If Dan also has HIV, Tom informs him, he will kill him.

Needless to say, this doesn't exactly make Dan the most reliable source. He has every reason to lie and Tom feints and parries with him, trying to get him to level instead of saying what Tom needs to hear. As they wait three days for the test results, and inevitably reveal their disappointments, resentments, and frustrations, the less we realize we know.

Both Tom and Dan are blissfully attractive, and at first Dan is cajoling, using whatever line it takes to seduce Tom. He doesn't necessarily seem calculating at the onset. Even after he's tied up and begins to guy Tom with casual conversation, it takes a while before we grasp how far his charisma and credibility can take him. As adults most of us have resigned ourselves to the negotiability of truth, especially when dealing in the predatory realm of sex.

But when STDs have become incurable, chronic, fatal, when any guy you meet could be ejaculating poison, then equivocation doesn't seem quite as harmless. The proverbial "game of love" turns into Russian Roulette. Despite times when The 24th Day hovers dangerously close to being a tract on the hazards of careless, indiscriminate fucking, it raises valid questions by forcing Dan to consider the impact of his actions on his partners.

Though Dan and Tom both seem to lack integrity (Tom's profound denial verges on hubris, Dan is a conniving, manipulative dog) Piccirillo makes it hard to dismiss or condemn either of them. Tom clings to hetero-status because lack of education makes him feel inadequate. If Dan's conquests were women, his behavior would be acceptable to most men, even venerated. Straight men revel in acting out their virility, while the religious right seizes on AIDS as yet another example of how God is determined to punish us. Apparently hetero-sluts get special dispensation.

The 24th Day isn't about assigning blame or coming up with easy answers. I wanted information about Tom and Dan I never got, but in this case I don't think it matters. The film raises questions about Patient Zero, bare-backing, the gender caste system, bisexuals who exploit gay men, character, responsibility and numerous other topics. It is a debate in which the participants have a vested interest in disclosure but an imperative need to know what's really going on.

Piccirillo distracts us with the issue of Dan's test results, which has more to do with his attachment to Tom. Tom hates himself for giving in to his queer desires, blames himself for the death of his girlfriend. When Dan points out that women have more freedom to experiment with other women, we know he's tap-dancing, but he still has a point. It's the desperation of Dan and Tom that drives them to these epiphanies, to uncover truths that didn't matter before their mortality became part of the equation. It's their tragic, personal ordeal, and it's the way Piccirillo involves us in it that makes The 24th Day so unforgettable.

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.

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.