Adèle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux in Blue Is the Warmest Colour
There’s no doubt that the 2000s were a breakthrough decade for gay cinema, but the fact that directors and producers have very few high-profile, out gay actors to choose from is still concerning. This could be more to do with agents and executives telling their clients not to come out for fear of ‘disappointing’ fans, but it’s also down to the closeted actors who choose to go along with this advice. There are few if any A-list US movie stars who are openly gay for fear of compromising their careers as leading men and ladies. Who knows how long they’ll be locked in Hollywood’s closet? If they’re good-looking and credible as romantic leads or action heroes, probably a very long time. Despite the success of gay films like Brokeback Mountain and Capote in the previous decade, the film industry is still failing to allow gay actors to come out of the closet.
‘I don’t know what I want. How could I know what I want if I say yes to everything?’
Therese in Carol
Openly gay British actor Sir Ian McKellen claims: ‘There’s not one [leading A-list actor] in America. Not one. It’s odd, isn’t it? It’s the one area of American life where there are no openly gay people.’
Recently, the Lord of the Rings star told closeted actors that their craft would improve if they were open about their sexuality: ‘I became a better actor, and my film career took off in a way that I couldn’t have expected. You can’t lie about something so central to yourself without harming yourself. That’s why I can say to other actors: if you really want to be a good actor and a successful one, and you’re gay, let everybody know about it.’
McKellen also believes those actors who choose not to come out are sending a ‘dreadful message’ to their audiences: ‘It is extremely sad, but no major actors are happy to say they are gay. They are doing it and cannot be happy with themselves.’
For most of her career, former A-lister Jodie Foster frequently came under attack from gay rights groups for not talking openly about her sexuality, but in December 2007 she finally chose to ‘out’ herself as a lesbian by publicly thanking her ‘beautiful Cydney who sticks with me through all the rotten and the bliss’, during a Hollywood awards ceremony. The only surprising thing about it was all the fuss it created. Everyone had known for years that Ms Foster was gay and in a happy relationship.
We already have a few openly gay actors whose work hasn’t been affected by them being out, and it’s fair to say that most people really don’t seem to care if Sir Ian McKellen, Simon Callow or any of the other old knights of the theatre are gay. But they’re character actors, not sex symbols. Could any A-list star currently being marketed as a sex symbol come out today? Probably not. And that’s depressing.
DAI:
‘I’ve had a lot of new experiences during this strike. Speaking in public, standing on a picket line, And now I’m in a gay bar.’
JONATHAN:
‘Well, if you don’t like it, you can go home.’
DAI:
‘As a matter of fact, I do like it… Beer’s a bit expensive, mind.’
from Pride
Rupert Everett is one of the few out and proud gay men in Hollywood, but his career has recently been confined to playing homosexual roles or dressing up in drag. He claims to have lost major roles because of his sexuality.
Indeed, many out gay actors play camp roles as an aside to the main story, like the gay best friend, the camp comedy character and so on. But to actually have an openly gay actor playing James Bond? No chance.
In the pop world, after George Michael’s outing in America, his record sales plummeted. So it’s a real, legitimate fear for agents of actors and other pop stars, and they try to protect their clients by keeping them firmly in the closet.
Researching a Channel 4 documentary about gay Hollywood, the author Paul Burston stated: ‘I was overwhelmed at the amount of closeted gay people in the industry that work against the gay community. And it’s often gay casting agents that tell gay actors that there isn’t a job for them, because they don’t want to be seen as being associated with that person. There are a lot of people who have a vested interest in keeping the closet firmly locked and that includes gay people in the industry. The only way this can change is if people take a stand because otherwise it will be like this forever.’
Nevertheless, following the success of Brokeback Mountain and other studio-funded gay-themed films, mainstream filmmakers have undoubtedly been more at ease with working in the genre of gay cinema, despite the lack of real-life gay ‘stars’.
2012 saw the release of Keep the Lights On, a tender story that details a loving relationship between two very likeable guys in Manhattan through all its highs and lows over a decade, starting in 1998. James Franco dipped his toe into the S&M scene in Interior. Leather Bar (2013), a gay sex film inspired by the 1980s classic Cruising – which paired him up with porn director Travis Mathews. Franco had previously portrayed real-life gay men Scott Smith and Allen Ginsberg in the movies Milk and Howl respectively.
James Franco’s Interior. Leather Bar (2013)
2013 saw a handful of high-profile quality pictures – Steven Soderbergh’s Liberace biopic, Behind the Candelabra, and Jean-Marc Vallée’s Oscar-winning Dallas Buyers Club perhaps being the most prominent. The Liberace movie featured outstanding performances from Michael Douglas as the man himself and Matt Damon as his (much younger) lover. Financed by the HBO TV network, it was given a limited theatrical release but had rave reviews. Meanwhile, Dallas Buyers Club won two acting Oscars, for lead Matthew McConaughey, and Jared Leto for his portrayal of a trans woman with HIV. While his sassy character, Rayon, adds humour to a potentially dark film, his performance attracted heavy criticism, with many demanding to know why a straight man, rather than a trans woman, was cast in the role.
2013 also saw the release of John Krokidas’s striking debut, Kill Your Darlings, following a young Allen Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliffe) and his burgeoning friendships with William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, and his increasingly toxic relationship with the volatile Lucien Carr. Radcliffe delivered a fine performance as the poet desperate to escape his academic prison and figure out the man he wants to be.
John Krokidas’s Kill Your Darlings (2013)
Meanwhile, the award of the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2013 went to Blue Is the Warmest Colour, which focused on a passionate lesbian relationship in modern-day Lille. Many saw the award as validating France's recent battle to legalise gay marriage. The jury president, Steven Spielberg, was unequivocal in his praise: ‘The film is a great love story… We were absolutely spellbound by the two brilliant young actresses, and the way the director observed his young players.’
‘Existence precedes essence.’
Emma in Blue is the Warmest Colour
More recently, Pride (2014) – an emotional, crowd-pleasing, culture-clash comedy about gay activists who joined the 1984 miners’ strike – was a big hit with audiences and critics alike. In fact, it was one of the biggest success stories of the year. Oscar-nominated The Imitation Game was another hit of 2014, with Benedict Cumberbatch as Enigma code-breaker Alan Turing, whose subsequent hounding by the British courts for his homosexuality is one of Britain’s most shameful legal incidents of the twentieth century.
Morten Tyldum’s The Imitation Game(2014)
Gay films have undergone a major shift, from the fringe to the mainstream, and the rise of gay imagery in TV and cinema has undoubtedly loosened the stays of straight society. Many gay films were so mired in issues of coming out, discrimination and AIDS that they left little room for fun, but times have changed and gay politics evolved. Four decades on from the legalisation of homosexuality, there’s certainly cause for celebration over what’s been achieved in the representation of gay life on screen. And the argument was never just about ‘positive images’ but images of all kinds. The gay community had been sorely underrepresented in Hollywood, decade after decade, but the taboo has slowly faded and films now more accurately portray our diverse society.
It’s a few years since the late-1990s pink explosion that brought us all those loud-and-proud, Will & Grace-style gay movie characters, and now that the glitter has settled, it’s good to see films such as Brokeback Mountain, Milk, and The Imitation Game achieving well-deserved, worldwide success and acclaim. With so many gay-interest movies being released by mainstream studios, a Saturday night out at the movies is almost beginning to feel like an evening at a gay film festival. Anyone looking for a gay movie only need check the film listings in their daily newspaper.
LIBERACE:
‘I have an eye for new and refreshing talent.’
SCOTT:
‘You have an eye for new and refreshing dick.’
From Behind the Candelabra
However, it’s worth remembering that it’s only relatively recently that filmmakers and studios have begun to represent the diversity of gay life. There’s still a way to go before total industry and audience acceptance of gay-themed cinema, and the early chapters in this book should provide a timely reminder that not so very long ago we really didn’t have it this good.
US, 106 mins
Director: Lisa Cholodenko
Cast: Annette Bening, Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo
Genre: Comedy-drama
Winner of a 2011 Golden Globe, Lisa Cholodenko’s comedy The Kids Are All Right stars Julianne Moore and Annette Bening (who also won a Golden Globe for her performance) as a middle-aged lesbian couple bringing up their two teenage children, Joni and Laser, in suburban Los Angeles. Both conceived by artificial insemination, the children decide they want to know who their common biological father is and go about tracking him down without informing their parents.
When their father, restaurant owner and lovable rogue Paul (Mark Ruffalo), lands in their lives, he infiltrates himself into the family unit and all of them struggle to come to terms with the far-reaching effects of his arrival.
The Kids Are All Right gives the audience a fresh and funny representation of an unconventional family. Cholodenko (who also directed High Art) delivers a witty and warm depiction of a loving relationship, and coaxes brilliant performances from her cast.
UK, 97 mins
Director: Andrew Haigh
Cast: Tom Cullen, Chris New, Jonathan Race
Genre: Romance
Shot in Nottingham in little more than two weeks, Andrew Haigh’s low-fi, same-sex romance tracks a one-night stand that develops into something deeper over the course of a weekend.
It’s a simple premise: after a drunken nightclub encounter, awkward pool attendant Russell (Tom Cullen) wakes up in a high-rise council flat with gregarious art student Glen (Chris New) in what appears to be yet another one-night stand. But on waking, Glen asks if he can get Russell on tape narrating their night together for an art project he’s working on. The frank conversation that follows exposes the differences between the two men: the out-and-proud Glen is boundary-pushing and playfully raunchy, while Russell is bashful and a bit prudish, still closeted to his work colleagues and some of his family.
Over the next drug-fuelled 36 hours an intense love affair develops between the couple. They spend the rest of the weekend talking, drinking, having sex, laughing and sleeping together.
But there’s a catch. Glen is set to relocate to the US on Monday, and the two must now decide if their liaison will endure. ‘Is this our Notting Hill moment?, the pair joke, before admitting they've never seen the film.
According to Cullen, much of the action and dialogue was improvised: ‘Andrew, Chris and I really tore the script to pieces... I could literally throw anything at [Chris New] and he would respond accordingly. When we started each scene, we were never entirely sure where it would go.’
Dubbed on more than one occasion as ‘a gay Brief Encounter’, it’s a deftly played and beautifully paced romance, shot in long takes, which is surprising considering Haigh’s background in big-bang blockbuster editing (he worked on Gladiator and Hannibal Rising). Weekend is a film about the universal struggle for an authentic life in all its forms. It is about the search for identity and the importance of making a passionate commitment to your life. Haigh’s film succeeds in being both a revelatory insight into the complexities of gay life in modern Britain and a tense, moving, honest and unapologetic love story in the tradition of Sex, Lies and Videotape (1989) and Before Sunrise (1995).
US, 118 mins
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Cast: Michael Douglas, Scott Bakula, Eric Zuckerman
Genre: Biopic
Before Elvis and Elton John … there was Liberace – infamous pianist, outrageous entertainer, and flamboyant star of stage and (TV) screen. A name synonymous with showmanship, his flair and extravagance gained him millions of fans across the globe.
In the summer of 1977, handsome young stranger Scott Thorson walked into Liberace’s dressing room and, despite their age difference and coming from seemingly different worlds, the two embarked on a secretive five-year love affair. To the outside world Scott was an employee, at most a friend, but behind closed doors his life with Liberace was an intense rollercoaster of hedonistic fun, flamboyance and excess.
With Michael Douglas as Liberace and Matt Damon as Scott Thorson, Behind the Candelabra tells the true story of their glamorous life together and their tempestuous relationship – from the glitz and glamour of the early days in Las Vegas to their very bitter and public break-up.
Steven Soderbergh’s recounting of the closeted romance is, however, surprisingly restrained. Rather than descending into schmaltzy TV-movie worthiness (Soderbergh’s backers were the cable channel HBO) or overdoing the campness, the film is in fact rooted in character, with a serious appreciation of Liberace’s musical talents. The film remains surprisingly unironic right from the opening sequence – a boogie-woogie routine that the blue-rinse-brigade crowd adore.
The film is more about Liberace’s desperate desire for image-control, displays of human weakness, and the showbiz lawyers circulating to get a piece of the showman’s fortune.
Credit most go to production designer, Howard Cummings, and set designer, Barbara Munch Cameron, who obviously went to great pains to ensure the movie looked authentic. Many of the props, the pianos and the cars are actually ones that Liberace himself owned, found on extensive trips to various antique dealers and props buyers, with some on loan from the Liberace museum. Costumes, by Ellen Mirojnick, are detailed reproductions of ones worn by Liberace and Scott Thorson.
There are also some wonderful cameos from Dan Ackroyd, Scott Bakula and Debbie Reynolds, but the movie succeeds because of the faultless performances by Michael Douglas and Matt Damon. Damon is completely believable as the starstruck young toyboy who gradually descends into drug addiction, and Michael Douglas gives one of the finest performances of his career.
France, 179 mins
Director: Abdellatif Kechiche
Cast: Léa Seydoux, Adèle Exarchopoulos, Salim Kechiouche
Genre: Romance
Directed by Abdellatif Kechiche (Couscous) and based on Julie Maroh’s graphic novel, Blue Is the Warmest Colour was the sensation of the 2013 Cannes Film Festival even before it was awarded the Palme d’Or. Notorious for its explicit sex scenes, this lesbian love story is a perceptive and engaging piece of cinema.
Adèle Exarchopoulos stars as the young woman whose longings and ecstasies and losses are charted across a span of several years. Léa Seydoux is the blue-haired woman who excites her desire and becomes the love of her life. Completely in love, they move in together, but passions cool and mistakes are made.
The relationship is obviously at the heart of the film and, yes, it’s a highly charged, erotic tale – but it’s one of the few films where explicit sex isn’t simply defensible, but arguably essential to the story. As a result, we never doubt that the love and intoxicating passion between them is real.
However, since its Cannes premiere most of the attention seems to have been focused on these explicit sex scenes, with the story’s original author, Julie Maroh, herself likening the ‘brutal and surgical display of so-called lesbian sex’ to heterosexual porn that a gay audience would find ‘ridiculous’, and concluding: ‘As a feminist and a lesbian spectator, I cannot endorse the direction Kechiche took on these matters.’
Equally troubling are the cast and crew’s accounts of mistreatment on set, with both lead actresses telling reporters they would never work with Kechiche again. As Seydoux says: ‘In France, the director has all the power… and in a way you’re trapped. Thank God we won the Palme d ‘Or, because it was horrible.’
Kechiche responded, calling Seydoux an ‘arrogant, spoilt child’.
Later, Seydoux’s co-star appeared to overcome her various qualms about Blue Is the Warmest Colour and helped promote it in the UK press.
Away from all the threats of legal action and spats between stars and creatives, most critics still celebrated the intense and emotionally draining performances of the two leads.
US, 117 mins
Director: Jean-Marc Vallée
Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Jennifer Garner, Jared Leto
Genre: Biopic
In an Oscar-winning turn, Matthew McConaughey plays cowboy homophobe turned HIV activist ‘Rocket’ Ron Woodroof, a womanising rodeo rider who was diagnosed with HIV at the height of the mid-1980s AIDS epidemic.
In Jean-Marc Vallée’s film, we see Woodroof – a moustachioed, macho homophobe who refers to AIDS as ‘that Rock-cocksucking-Hudson business’ – totally taken by surprise by his diagnosis. Told he only has 30 days to live, he starts treating himself, first by stealing the new, experimental drug AZT – downing his first dose with a beer chaser and a snort of cocaine. When that makes him ill, he seeks out alternative medicines, smuggling unapproved treatments over the border from Mexico and selling them to fellow sufferers.
But he soon finds himself battling a callous medical establishment that is unable to cope in the face of the 1980s AIDS epidemic.
This is a kind of ‘alternate AIDS movie’, devoid of the sanctimony and self-importance one might expect of an Oscar-nominated AIDS movie such as the Tom Hanks vehicle Philadelphia.
Vallée keeps the focus tight and intimate – and while recognising Woodroof’s good work in providing for gay men who found themselves isolated by the authorities, Dallas Buyers Club also paints him as something of an opportunist.
The film features terrific performances from McConaughey and Jared Leto (also an Oscar winner) as Rayon, a sleek, streetwise, but troubled drag queen, with whom Woodroof forms an unlikely alliance.
USA, 94 mins
Director: Ira Sachs
Cast: John Lithgow, Alfred Molina, Marisa Tomei
Genre: Drama
Filmmaker Ira Sachs and co-writer Mauricio Zacharias choose the bustling backdrop of modern-day Manhattan for this love story – an elegant character study following two gay men in a long-term relationship
John Lithgow and Alfred Molina play the middle-aged soulmates with tenderness and heartbreaking intimacy – a married couple reliant on the kindness of family and friends because ‘sometimes, when you live with people, you know them better than you care to’. Familiarity breeds not just contempt, but also disillusionment, suspicion and, ultimately, loneliness.
Ben (Lithgow) and his partner, George (Molina), have spent almost four decades together. They finally legalise their union in front of family and friends, including Ben’s nephew, Elliot (Darren Burrows), and his wife, Kate (Marisa Tomei), plus police officer neighbours Ted (Cheyenne Jackson) and Roberto (Manny Perez).
Shortly after the happy day, George loses his job as a music teacher at St Grace’s Church and Catholic School in Manhattan because Facebook pictures of the honeymoon in Petra have been brought to the attention of the archdiocese. ‘The Bishop wasn’t happy,’ explains Father Raymond (John Cullum) sympathetically.
Without George’s steady income, the couple face the prospect of having to sell their swanky apartment. George then moves in with Ted and Roberto, while Ben seeks shelter with Elliot, Kate and their truculent teenage son, Joey (Charlie Tahan), who is not happy about sharing his bunk bed with an elderly gay uncle.
The separation causes friction between family and friends. ‘All I know is that, after 39 years, it’s hard to fall asleep without you,’ says Ben to George.
Lithgow and Molina perform as if they have been sharing the same space for decades, desperately trying to cope as their world falls apart and their vows are tested.
Love Is Strange is a film about life, love and long-term commitment. It’s beautiful, charming and incredibly moving and explores the intimate nature of ALL human relationships.
UK, 86 mins
Director: Hong Khaou
Cast: Cheng Pei Pei, Ben Whishaw, Andrew Leung
Genre: Romance
Staggering from loss after the recent death of his lover, Kai, Richard (Ben Whishaw) reaches out to Kai’s mother, Junn (Crouching Tiger’s Cheng Pei Pei), a Chinese-Cambodian woman who has never assimilated or learned English in her 20-something years in London. Kai has been Junn’s lifeline to the world, and she has relied on him for everything. However, despite this enforced intimacy, he never came out to her and Junn remains fiercely critical of Richard.
We observe their difficulties in trying to connect with one another without a common language. Through a translator they piece together memories of a man they both loved dearly, and realise that, while they may not share a language, they are connected in their grief.
British director Hong Khaou’s film uses a cinematic idiom all of its own, weaving narrative strands from past and present, real and imagined, between mother and son and also between Richard and Kai (Andrew Leung). Lingering, tender scenes of the lovers are dreamily captured by Weekend cinematographer Ula Pontikos (who deservedly won a Sundance award). While serious and moving as a study of loss, Lilting also gracefully incorporates humour and warmth through a subplot in which Junn is wordlessly courted by an elderly Englishman (Peter Bowles), aided by a translator supplied by Richard.
A lyrical exploration of the pleasures and pains of communication, produced under the auspices of Film London’s hugely successful ‘Microwave’ scheme, this is a warm-hearted British film to celebrate. With great performances from Ben Whishaw and Cheng Pei Pei and an inventive structure, the film has an authentic and unclichéd approach. It’s a sophisticated portrait of a gay male relationship that goes beyond the first flushes of love to the heights and bittersweet depths of sharing a life, albeit briefly, with someone you love.
The film received its European premiere at the BFI London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival in 2014.
UK, 119 mins
Director: Matthew Warchus
Cast: Bill Nighy, Imelda Staunton, Dominic West
Genre: Comedy
Matthew Warchus’s film Pride – about a group of London-based lesbian and gay activists who raised money for Welsh miners during a major 1984–5 strike – is one of the most uplifting for some time.
When Mark Ashton (Ben Schnetzer) notices that the police are spending less time harassing gays, in part because they’re busy on the miners’ picket lines, he spends the 1984 London gay pride march soliciting donations for the strikers and their families. After a post-march party he persuades a handful of pals to help form LGSM: Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners. In his view, the miners are being bullied just as much as he and his friends are being routinely pushed around. And, as someone explains later in the film, without coal to make electricity, how else will they be able to dance to Bananarama till 3 am?
But Mark encounters a surprising impediment to his plan: most mining communities refuse to take money from gay and lesbian groups. Nevertheless, one Welsh village, Dulais, seems grateful for the support, so Mark and his friends hire a minibus and visit the villagers to consolidate the relationship.
Though the villagers don't completely accept their visitors straight away, the community, which includes Hefina (Imelda Staunton), Dai (Paddy Considine) and Cliff (Bill Nighy), gradually warms to Mark and his friends as they realise the common causes that bind them.
Miners and gay men were both at the end of an era in 1984. Pit closures and AIDS/HIV would soon change both groups’ way of life. Pride acknowledges those looming transformations, but still manages to end on an uplifting note.
A sweet crowd-pleaser, Pride is one of those movies to watch with friends on a Saturday night with a takeaway and the wine flowing. By 3 am, you’ll all be dancing to Bananarama.
US, 98 mins
Director: Justin Kelly
Cast: Emma Roberts, James Franco, Zachary Quinto
Genre: Drama
Executive-produced by Gus Van Sant and adapted from Benoit Denizet Lewis’s New York Times Magazine article ‘My Ex-Gay Friend’, I Am Michael tells the real-life story of Michael Glatze, formerly a leading US journalist for prominent gay magazine XY, and also an activist working for LGBT rights. After a profound and life-changing epiphany, Glatze gradually renounced his homosexuality and turned to Christian ministry, becoming outspokenly opposed to queer lifestyles.
What could have led to such an extreme change of belief?
Justin Kelly’s piercing exploration is as compelling and complex as Michael’s transformation. The film depicts the years when an idealistic Michael, with his long-term partner, empowered a new generation of gay youth through their writing and films. When a terrifying brush with death triggers his need to reconcile faith and sexuality, Michael embarks on a zealous search for answers that eventually leads him to Christianity and the absolute conviction that 'homosexuality is death'.
With an acute sense of storytelling, Kelly raises much more complex questions about one man’s startling capacity to create, destroy and reclaim his truth.
Kelly insists that I Am Michael wasn’t made to vilify its subject. Glatze himself came to Sundance with his wife, Rebecca, for the film’s premiere and was enthusiastic about it, describing it as 'a healing process’ for him. He suggested it had changed him for the better and made him less dogmatic in his anti-gay views.
Kelly claims 'this isn't just a story about an "ex-gay"; it's actually a very relatable story about the power of belief and the desire to belong'.
USA, 118 mins
Director: Todd Haynes
Cast:Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, Sarah Paulson
Genre:Romance
Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara play Carol and Therese, two women in 1950s New York who fall for each other across a department store floor with life-changing consequences. Carol is an adaptation of crime writer Patricia Highsmith’s 1952 novel of lesbian love, The Price of Salt, which Haynes says he was drawn to in part for the analogy drawn by the author between criminals and would-be lovers: ‘In Carol the falling in love is not that different from the furtive distortion of the criminal mind which is usually the subject of Patricia Highsmith’s novels,’ he says. ‘I thought that was brilliant, the invisible line drawing the two together.’
The innocence of their first department store encounter fades and their connection deepens. Carol takes Therese on a road trip to Chicago, and it is during this tour of motels and diners that their love blossoms. But when Carol breaks free from the confines of marriage, her husband (Kyle Chandler) begins to question her competence as a mother as her involvement with Therese and close relationship with best friend, Abby (Sarah Paulson), comes to light.
Haynes directs with beautiful precision – he’s the perfect filmmaker for this story about suppressed desires, often placing the characters in the edges of the frame, surrounded by empty space. It’s an incredibly powerful account of love and Haynes told one feature writer recently: ‘It’s a universal story beyond the sexual orientation of the characters. It was really about that fragile, paranoid, fraught early love that’s rooted in the subjective experience of the lover – usually the one who’s more liable to be hurt if things don’t go well.’
