Friday, September 23, 2011

What A Lovely Weekend

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It's really hard to watch gay movies. (Labeling Weekend as just a "gay movie" does box the film in more than it deserves, but it also doesn't, ya know? And we'll get to that eventually anyway so let me have my "gay movie" for a moment.) It's hard because I find it nearly impossible to disassociate myself from that little voice in my head that's screaming, "But how is this making us look?" For me it's not the usual moral roadblocks I need them to dodge to feel satisfied - they needn't avoid drug-use or promiscuity and make their characters into little PC vacuums or anything. No I've got a stick up my ass over other things - we've all got sticks up our collective asses, you see; it's what we've written on our individual sticks that makes us unique butterflies - like can they please have some normal bodies and not know how to dance at all and you know maybe prefer sweatpants sometimes?

The precise specifics of my specific ass-stick aren't my point - it's just that it's been so drilled into me (hardy har), it's become such an active state of being, being aware of queer representation and what this stance or that stance means that is, that... well that it's tough to just watch a gay movie.



Which is what's so refreshing about Weekend - it's about that experience. It's about this point in time where we're being yanked like rag dolls between normal-living (just wanting to get to the part where we can just live our lives already and not have the act of "coming out" even be an act, have it just be a state of being) and the fact that we've still got a lot of pushing left to do before we can get to that place, and how hopefully we can rearrange that place on the way a little bit, make it a bit better. It foregrounds that struggle by having our leads stand if not at far ends of the spectrum then at least each of them stretching one foot out towards it while they try to make out a bunch there in the middle.

And all of this goes on alongside a decidedly sweet little romance. Indeed if you just wanna focus on the sweet little romance and not get to worked up about the words that are coming out of their mouths, then there's more than enough to savor there. Tom Cullen and Chris New paint their characters in believably, so much that it seems crazy the film was mostly a scripted affair as the director says in this terrific interview by Nat at Towelroad... not to mention that Cullen is apparently straight, which is crazy talk. The chemistry between them is pretty palpable, is what I really mean. (I thought they might've gone the art-house real sex route for a minute, is what I really really mean.) But it's so specific, about these two guys, and makes them real enough even as they debate these abstractions, that it grounds us. It grounds the abstractions too since they're not really abstractions but really very real palpable forces in their lives, but it's specificity chugs straight on into the universal. We all just wanna be loved.
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2 comments:

shaun said...

Well said, and I completely agree about the whole body-type issue...in fact, given the body image and insecurity issues so many gay kids and young adults have, I would say it's down right irresponsible to constantly bombard viewers with only perfect bodies. It's a bit cruel -- yay, these are people like me...oh wait, no they're not...

Anonymous said...

I just remembered where I've seen Cullen before. He played Yoram, a hash smuggler in the Tokyo episode of Locked Up Abroad.


Mrs. Bale