n ana»
FILM
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his British ensemble drama by Neil
Hunter and Tom Hunsinger, makers of
the charming 1996 queer indie Boyfriends,
has been variously called a “gem,” a
“jewel” and “heartfelt.”
But gems can be cloudy, jewels can be paste,
and heartfelt might mean its time for a trip to
the cardiologist. Lawless Heart, which opens
May 16 at Cinema 21, is a well-intentioned,
well-acted drama that slips too often into
cliché and bathos.
The film reverses the old trend of killing off
the homo at the end by doing it at the begin
ning. Much-loved gay restaurateur Stuart
(David Coffey) has kicked, and a disparate
group of friends, relatives and lovers show up at
his funeral, in the process trying to figure out
the messes in their own lives.
His lover Nick (Tom Hollander) is under
standably distraught. His brother-in-law Dan
(Bill Nighy) is understandably bored with his
hetero life and family. His ne’er-do-well child
hood pal Tim (Douglas Henshall) is under
standably— well, you get it.
They’re all in quiet crisis mode but terribly
civilized. Even the homophobe, Dan, isn’t
exactly virulent on the issue, contenting him
self with making sotto voce catty remarks
about queer promiscuity and flightiness— traits
he seems poised to embrace himself. (1 know, I
know— that’s the point.)
Complicating matters is a calm struggle
over Stuart’s money, with Dan convincing his
Say cheese
Lawless Heart
should Indeed he illegal
by
G ary M orris
homo-simpatico wife to keep it for them rather
than giving it to Nick.
The three men’s stories intersect and
refract off each other in the film’s ambitious
parallel structuring. Dan meets a zany French
woman who tries to convince him to get more
joie out of his vivre by forsaking convention.
Tim moves in on Nick, turning his house of
mourning into a raucous party palace, com
plete with thieving guests and strangers fuck
ing in the bedroom. And in a trope that will
annoy some viewers while reassuring others,
Nick becomes a heterosexual— sort of.
The film has quiet (what else?) moments of
humor and charm, as these characters falter
toward and away from each other, trying to
Poor deceased Stuart's best friend Tim (left) and lover N ick are pretty pathetic mourners in
make that crucial human connection. But
Law less H eart
these moments are fatally undercut by the
in 2003 to see a gay man so passive and dis somebody, he apologizes for it later.
film’s cheesy impulses. There are endless Kodak
engaged, hovering around the action,
Nick is the apotheosis of the silent-suffering
moments, montages of brave, stoic, teary faces
framed against dramatic beach backdrops or, in
accepting any kick in the head— whether
homo of pop mythology, more comforting to
Tim ’s takeover o f his house or the attem pt
heterosexuals than he will be credible, or even
a scene that screams for the scissors, adults
interesting, to homos. J H
romping giddily through a playground. Wheeee!
ed theft o f his money or a rude worker at
his restaurant who he’s too much o f a door
Q ueer viewers may find N ick the most
G a r y M o r r i s is a writer and reviewer m Portland.
mat to fire. Even when he stands up to
unsettling character here. It’s a little much
Plastic-fantastic!
Down with Love tweaks
those square movies of yesteryear
by
C hristopher M c Q uain
cocktail-pouring, indulgently ironic
replication of the Rock Hudson/Doris
Day sex comedies, Down with Love is
to Far from Heaven, but with
a difference: Where irony would’ve missed
the point in Todd H aynes’ 1950s Technicol
or revisitation, this film is virtually obliged to
laugh at itself; when it comes to this stuff,
there was never really much o f a point to
begin with.
The Day/Hudson movies— like 1959’s Pil
low Talk and 1961’s Lover Come Back — were
nostalgic fluff, and they probably felt nostalgic
even when they were new. They make perfect
daytime T V reruns— comfort viewing for
when you’ve stayed home sick.
Day and Hudson were always verbally sug
gestive yet physically quite chaste, forever
embroiled in contrived plots and
ensconced in plastic-fantastic
Manhattan apartments. Here, the
dashing Ewan McGregor (as
chauvinistic men’s magazine
writer and swinging bachelor
Catcher Block) and perky Renée
Zellweger (as best-selling author
Barbara Novak, whose women’s
Ewan McGregor and Renée Zellweger are Down with Love,
lib tome, Down with Love, discour opening May 16
ages gals from falling in love with
have been snappily choreographed, and the
men and favors careers and self-sufficiency)
design, cinematography and editing— those
play out the same sort of scenario, circa 1962.
split-screen telephone conversations!— are for
Before Novak and Block can arrive at their
the most part such expert re-creations that the
inevitable sexy coupledom, there’s conflict,
couple’s romantic/sexual pursuits play like
tension and denial enough to cause a zillion
Warholian pop-art cartoons, making the film a
double-entendres, deceptions and misunder
laughing-gas success on its own frivolous, fuss-
standings. Every line and movement seems to
QUEER NIGHT MONDAYS 9PM
free terms. It’s insular fun, like a Coen brothers
genre-warp minus the bite and obscurity.
David Hyde Pierce co-stars as a fastidious
neurotic who is therefore mistaken for gay
(ha ha), but the real gay subtext runs deeper.
In a cruel irony, Hudson was gay but closeted,
while McGregor is straight but often unabashed
about having on-screen sex with men.
The actual queemess, though, lies in the
film’s viewpoint. Its conventional, ritualized
heterosexuality— “masculinity” and “feminini
ty,” quotation marks well intact— in a time
capsule and under glass, can be viewed as
highly artificial, constructed and humorous.
Watching McGregor and Zellweger floating
around like two bubbles in a pink glass of fizzy
champagne feels simultaneously familiar and
rather strange. Down with Love, which was pro
duced by the American Beauty people, affection
ately tweaks a square movie genre and its prefab
notions of sex and gender on the nose, but in
both form and content it also performs a swoon
ing, hi-fi feat of cultural anthropology. J H
C
h r is t o p h e r
M
c
Q
u a in
is a Seattle free-lance
writer.
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