Happy Hookers

Happy Hookers was my last selection for this year's Seattle Lesbian & Gay Film Festival.  This documentary explored the all too familiar queer cinema topic of male prostitution, but this time in India.  The story is much the same as it has been told before, but the subjects are somewhat more sympathetic in that they are trying to support families and not just themselves.

This documentary, like the others in this genre, showcased young men in need of making money to survive by moving from their small town to the big city.  However, many of the young men in this documentary are not gay, have a wife and kids at home, and have far more to lose than just their dignity in this work.  They live in a society in which homosexuality is a social taboo.

I have seen many documentaries and fictional accounts on this topic and none before have ever had such a lasting effect on me.  Is is that I am getting older and more sensitive the topic of exploitation of youth?  Or that I can now understand how one wrong turn can lead to a long series of events that are not only beyond your control, but make you feel like you will never make your life your own again.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

A modern adaptation of the 1891 Oscar Wilde's only published novel.  It tells the story of a young man obsessed with his youthful beauty and in exchange for eternal youth, sells his soul.  In the original and many of the earlier adaptations the picture was a painting that aged and became distorted due to Dorian's indulgent life.  However, in this 2006 adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray the portrait is a video installation and the actor playing Dorian is better known as the son of a minister on 7th Heaven.

David Gallagher plays the title role of Dorian Gray with a determination and force that is beyond his 22 years.  Gallagher portrays a character torn between reconciling the abuse he suffered as a child to the abusive man he has become.  Over the film's 20 year span, the video installation shows Dorian's inner soul becoming more and more ugly and less and less resembling the beautiful youth he is on the outside.  Eventually all things come to an end and Dorian's journey is no exception.

I left this movie thinking I need to see it many many more times in order to understand the multiple layers involved.  The film is so powerful that I would not recommend having anything major to do after seeing it.  You will need a day or two to recover.

Naked Boys Singing!

I had heard of this show years ago and missed it when it toured Portland, Oregon.  So when I saw it on the schedule for the Seattle Lesbian & Gay Film Festival I was so up for it.  Not only since I love naked men, but because I love innovative musical theater.

Naked Boys Singing! is a sort of musical revue, since there is no central story, but instead a loose collection of interrelated songs that do not shy away from the fact that the cast is at times full nude on stage.  In fact, in the song Gratuitous Nudity tackles the issue head on. 

However, at no point is the nudity gratuitous in my mind.  The nudity is integrated in such a way that it is part of the song and does not take away from the beautiful and lyrical ballads.  This is most evident in the song Window to Window in which two of the cast are singing to each other akin to the balcony seen in Romeo & Juliet.

This is one of those movies that just needs to be seen in order to understand why it deserves to be among your favorites of all time.

Erotic Films of Peter de Rome

My first selection of this year's Seattle Lesbian & Gay Film Festival was the Erotic Films of Peter de Rome.  Peter de Rome was a filmmaker who made short and full length erotic films in the 1970's.  This screening was a retrospective on his short works.  For a midnight show I thought I would give it a shot.

The shorts were nudity filled and most did not have actual hardcore sexual action in them.  The shorts were a combination of erotic and artsy and very much a sign of the times.  It reminded me of what I would have watched in my college film classes had their been a queer cinema class.

What I really left from this screening was that there is a fine line between pornography and erotica.  A line that I always knew existed, but never realized was so blurred in the hands of an art house filmmaker.  Makes me wonder what Shortbus would be like if Peter de Rome had directed instead of John Cameron Mitchell...

The Masseur (Masahista)

I had been losing faith in Filipino cinema in recent years, mostly due to the work of Crisaldo Pablo.  He has given the cinematic world such gems as Doubt (Duda), Bathhouse and Circles (Bilog).  These films remind me of a Filipino versions of Richard Anthony Films projects Traveling to Olympia, Revenge in Olympia and Slice of Terror.  All of these films are pseudo soft-core porn/erotica with very weak stories and very uneven acting.  But The Masseur is different.

The story is of a young man who works in a massage parlor to earn money for his family who live in a suburb.  The day before his father dies, he has a client who crosses his professional boundaries and make him re-examine his entire life.

  

This film was both sensual and engaging.  The physical intimacy between the characters was not gratuitous, but instead realistic.  It provided a framework of strangers in the night looking for a moment of human connection.  This connection is in sharp contrast the the distance that exists between the protagonist and his father.  A distance that is ironically shortened since death.

I want to thank director Brillante Mendoza for restoring my faith in modern Filipino queer cinema.  I am looking forward to his future projects to serve as a counter balance to the works of Crisaldo Pablo.

The Aviator

This film is the semi-autobiographical story of Howard Hughes, a precursor to Richard Branson.  Hughes was an aviation giant, movie mogul and one of the most successful people to suffer from OCD.  The film depicts how an early and seemingly innocuous childhood event triggered in Hughes a lifetime obsession with cleanliness.

Overall, The Aviator only covers a short span of the life of Howard Hughes in which the viewer is witness to a glimpse of the final breakdown that caused Hughes to barricade himself away on the top floor of a Las Vegas hotel for the last 1o years of his life. 

The main reason I have always been fascinated with Howard Hughes was that I could relate to a man tortured with so much passion and not enough power or control to execute it.  I often feel a similar powerlessness, minus the OCD issue of course.

However, since I have become a probate paralegal, the drama that surrounded Hughes estate after his death has become an intellectual curiosity for me.  A very good reason why you should keep your friends closer, your enemies closer, and your estate planning up to date.  Even if you have nothing to leave behind.

White Noise

I had avoided White Noise for ages since I was terrified to watch it alone. I finally grew a pair and watched it -- granted first thing in the morning. So the true test will come tonight if I can sleep or not...but that is a different entry for a different blog.

This movie dealt with electronic voice phenomenon (EVP)
which is a way those in the great beyond try to communicate with this world through the white noise of TV and radio. I frankly get freaked out easily on such things but this movie was not so much creepy and just using EVP as an smaller element of a serial killer mystery. This is refreshing since it makes the the movie more than another supernatural cheap trick.

For me this movie does raise the whole question over are people ghost magnets or are the places they live. It seemed Michael Keaton was a magnet of some sort since the malevolent spirits followed him from his own house, to his loft, to the warehouse. I can relate to this, since no matter where we live, Casey (my cat) finds crap to scream and yell at that I cannot see.

Anyway, overall, I give this movie a definite recommendation, since it is if nothing else a beautiful love story with a bit of crime drama thrown in.