Overall 0.5 / 5.0 (don’t bother)
Gay Inclusve? Very – mostly gay, some hetero secondary characters
Gay Positive? No – I don’t think they meant to be homophobic, but jeez…

Wow. I actually watched the whole thing, and in hindsight, how did I manage that? I feel like Superman now, able to watch awful movies in their entirety.

Here is the most positive thing I can say about this movie: the performances seem very earnest and enthusiastic, so kudos to the cast for bringing that energy to the show.

Unfortunately, it is far, far… far… from enough to save the film from its choppy editing, godawful camera shots, and aimless plot.

In theory, the movie is supposed to be a satire of a gay man (Jaime, played by Brian Campbell) looking for love and self-understanding via a search for a “straight lover who will be gay just for me.” The movie’s own blurb states, “In the end, Jaime is amazed to discover the one person he never thought he would – himself!”

That’s a stretch. Jaime comes from a background of casual, anonymous sexual encounters in the back of an adult bookstore. One gets the sense he’s never had a real relationship based on commitment and intimacy.

Meanwhile, at his job at an auto shop, he’s closeted. He develops a “bromance” with a (straight) fellow employee (Ray, played by Matt Edwards) who turns out to be a homophobe who tries to get Jaime into deep trouble in a completely contrived plot twist.

Somewhere along the course of the movie, the self-loathing Jaime tries to convince a peer from his backroom sexcapades to move to the suburbs with him and a pair of lesbians to pose as straight couples, so they can try to seduce married straight men. They detour on the way, however, with a series of bathroom encounters with gas station attendants. The film also includes an odd subplot involving a young man (Monty, Michael Gonring) with a self-professed fetish for “trolls” (older gay men). Monty is engaged to be married, and he leaves at the end of the movie for his bride.

I think I’m so disappointed in the movie because its foundational ideas are actually interesting to me. The fetish for straight men (and certainly for straight-acting) is prevalent throughout the gay community, so a satire about a gay man looking for a straight man who will be gay only for him suggests the possibility of both a lot of comedy and a lot of insight. Similarly, youth is highly fetishized in the gay community, so Monty’s subplot could have been woven into the story to enhance and reflect the main story’s theme. Alas. The script is a mishmash of barely coherent scenes and nonstarter plot threads.

My recommendation: Skip it.

Overall Quality 2.0 / 5.0 (some potential, but misses the goal)
Gay Inclusive? Very – the story focuses on a gay character putting together a gay soccer team
Gay Positive? Moderately – the gays prevail, but only in the midst of rampant homophobia

The gay pathos in this movie got old fast. Maybe I’m just over it in my own life, so I don’t have much patience for it in my entertainment. I wearied of both the difficulty the main character had in coming out, and the over-the-top homophobia thrown in his face. If it had been handled better, maybe I would have been moved. I wasn’t.

The film starts with Ecki (Maximilian Brückner), a soccer (i.e., European football) player on a local team, beginning to realize he might be gay. Neither his teammates nor his father (Dietmar Bär) react well. In fact, his teammates go into homophobe-overdrive. They say all kinds of hateful and nasty things, and then they kick him off the team. Ecki says he’s going to put together a gay team, and that his gay team will kick his former team’s collective ass in four weeks.

Yeah. The whole story is completely contrived. It’s sad too – I like all of the characters, and they imbue the movie with a kind of happy charm that kept me watching. But turn after turn, the story is just forced.

As one example (out of many): the leather daddy Rudi (Jochen Stern) who suddenly turns out to have an estranged son (Marcel Nievelstein) in the 3rd grade; after the obligatory and dramatic break-up of the gay team (”oh no! what will they do now!”), the son mysteriously shows up at his father’s house and helps rally some of the team members; and then the young son shows up at the actual game, all by himself, in a completely different city. That boys gets around! His mother, almost violently antagonistic toward Rudi when we first meet her, miraculously shows up 5 minutes later, and at the end of the movie she’s cheering Rudi’s soccer success. What?

The characters (well, the gay ones, anyway) are the highlight of the film. There’s the closeted guy. The alternative gender identity person. The three leather daddies in a 3-way relationship. A hunky and effeminate gay Turk. A couple of black players (who unfortunately turn out just to be set dressing). Ecki and his down-to-earth boyfriend, a nurse.

At first, I was a bit put off, especially by the crude leather daddies, but then I thought, why not? First, all of them turn out to be more nuanced than you’d expect. Second, they’re representative of a segment of the gay community. Finally, the thing the gay community really wants – equal respect – shouldn’t just apply to the “normal” gays. If we do that, we’re missing the point of the rainbow.

Check it out if you’re a fan of gay-oriented sports films (because, let’s face it, there aren’t a whole lot out there). Otherwise, give this one a pass.

Overall Quality 3.5 / 5.0 (recommended)
Gay Content 4.0 / 5.0
Gay Positivity 3.5 / 5.0

The Curiosity of Chance is an 80’s flashback movie. The titular character Chance, played by Tad Hilgenbrink, has transferred to a new international school in Europe (his father, Chris Mulkey, is apparently stationed overseas). Chance must defend himself against the bully jock (Brad, played by Maxim Maes).

Yeah, the film suffers from several weaknesses that prevent it from truly shining. Most of the characters are completely one-note, and the plot is both contrived and meandering. “Edge of Seventeen” (1998) did this genre with a deeper, more moving script. (As a side note, Hilgenbrink bears a striking resemblance to Chris Stafford in “Edge of Seventeen“).

A couple of minor twists help: Chance is already out, and his father’s reaction is repeatedly unexpected. I kept expecting his military dad to fall into stereotypical “No son of mine is going to be a fairy,” but he never does. Refreshing.

On the whole, I like this movie, though. It’s entertaining and pleasantly positive. Tad Hilgenbrink is fantastic: he carries this film. He breathes life into a cardboard character, and he has the absolute best sense of comic timing of anyone in this film.

I also like Brett Chukerman as good-guy jock Levi … or maybe I mean I like looking at Brett Chukerman … He ably imbues his character with crucial likability, but he did stronger work as Marc in “Eating Out 2″ (2006).

Having said that, Chukerman’s character represents a great and innovative twist in the movie. The viewer spends most of the movie wondering if he’s gay, and if he’s going to get together with Chance. For myself, I was torn.

On the one hand, I like the idea of a really cool straight jock who’s totally gay-friendly. On the other hand, I wanted Chance to get together with the hot jock. I don’t want to give anything away, but the movie tries to have it both ways – and largely succeeds! Some viewers might feel the ending was a cop-out, but I found the ambiguity well-handled.

The Curiosity of Chance is an entertaining and amusing diversion with some really great, and gay-positive, twists. Don’t expect great cinema, but it’s good fun.

This movie can’t decide what it wants to be. The script tackles serious, heavy topics like abortion, divorce, children dying, and infidelity as though they’re sources of humor. In fact, the movie bills itself as a comedy, and while it elicits a few chuckles here and there, it’s largely unfunny. Meanwhile, Everyone fails to probe the dramatic issues enough to yield any meaning or purpose.

Ryan (Matt Fentiman) and Grant (Mark Hildreth) are having a commitment ceremony, attended by family members, all of whom bring their current relationship foibles to the event. The title seems to suggest that “everyone” suffers relationship woes, including the couple tying the knot. In one scene of pre-wedding jitters, Grant asks Ryan if he knows any happy couples. Ryan retorts, do you know any happy single people? And that seems to be the central message of the movie: everyone is miserable!

Here’s an interesting juxtaposition: After Everyone, I watched Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001). In that, the protagonist Frodo (Elijah Wood) wishes that the terrible circumstances of that fantasy tale had not come to pass. The wise wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellen) replies, “So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”

This powerful message easily applies to the misdirected couples of Everyone. In great movies, the stories place their characters into terrible or challenging situations and then depict what they do with what is given to them. But this movie ends where it begins, without any sense of growth, evolution, or insight. Only one couple seems to find any healing: Grant’s brother (Andrew Moxham) and his wife (Anna Williams). Even that felt forced.

The movie enjoys high production values and passable performances, but I felt disengaged from all the characters, and plot-wise and thematically the movie just doesn’t take the viewer anywhere new.

Overall: Tepid. At first engaging but ultimately unsatisfactory.

Positivity-wise, the movie started off strong. Grant and Ryan seem at first to have the strongest relationship of any of their siblings. Unfortunately, the movie heads in the direction of several negative stereotypes, and those incidents fail to contribute any value to the story. Very disappointing.

I am much impressed with the script by Mr. Andreas (who played the protagonist Marcus, as well as directed the film). It’s an engaging cross-section of young, contemporary gay culture. There are “sluts” (Luke and Tyler, played by Jesse Archer and Jamie Hatchett respectively), romantics (Peter, played by Jeffrey Christopher Todd, and more neurotically Marilyn, played by Virginia Bryan), and in-between (such as our hero Marcus).

But rather than being two-dimensional cardboard cutouts, I found each character to be cleverly nuanced, and I thought the script did a very good job of presenting different perspectives. I know I completely saw myself in one of the characters. Ahem.

The script also managed to trick me into expecting one kind of ending, and then believably delivering another. The actors also portrayed their characters with impressive realism, although the documentary included on the DVD says the characters in the story were based on the actors who played them (mostly friends and acquaintances of Mr. Andreas), so apparently they didn’t have to stretch too much.

Story-wise, after Marcus catches his (very handsome) boyfriend Julian cheating on him, he spends the summer rediscovering the joys of single life. He starts tricking around a bit, but the film is clearly not stereotyping gay men as promiscuous, so this didn’t affect the Gay Positivity score.

The characters exist on a continuum from Luke, who sleeps around constantly, to Marcus, who has an occasional fling over the summer, to Peter, who doesn’t want meaningless sex at all. In fact, I find it refreshing that none of the characters are bemoaning their sexuality, nor suffer any homophobic attacks (verbal or otherwise). The drama in the movie arises naturally out of their relationships with each other.

The quality of the camera work is inconsistent. One frame looks like it was shot with a professional camera, the next looks like they used a camera phone. My only other complaint was one moment when Marcus acts out of character – during his final conversation with his ex-boyfriend, he is uncharacteristically mean-spirited.

Many modern gay-themed films seem to feel the need to disparage the gay film canon as portraying gay life in stereotypical and derogatory ways. They’re right. Then they succumb to the exact same problem.

The script of “AOTG” slams “In and Out” (the Kevin Kline vehicle) for presenting a stereotypical, self-hating gay man, and then proceeds to present a stereotypically self-destructive, promiscuous drunk (a hard-to-like Tom, played by the likable Richard Ruccolo). Tom meets Eli because their respective best friends are getting married. In theory, romance and hilarity ensue.

But the movie failed to make me believe in the romance between the two leads. Why did Eli (Dan Bucatinsky) keep trying after Tom was such an ass to him? Why would Tom keep pursuing someone who was so self-righteous and critical of him? Why would either character care about the other when the actors portraying them had so little chemistry?

The entire film is predicated on their on-again, off-again relationship, but I never understood why they kept trying. It doesn’t help that Tom is more caricature than character. I applaud Ruccolo for actually giving Tom some humanity (which helped the Gay Positivity score), because the script just presents him as Drunk-and-Unable-to-Commit Gay Guy.

Tom comes from an emotionally abusive background, raised by alcoholic parents, and now he himself is an alcoholic. The movie suggests his problems make him incapable of serious commitment. His best friend Jackie (Sasha Alexander, one of the highlights of the film) points out that he’s so self-hating he falls out of love with anyone who falls in love with him.

Meanwhile, the other problems that plague true alcoholics are absent or glossed over. Tom drinks throughout the film, but not only does the rest of his life seem unaffected, he still tends not to emote. He’s not an angry drunk, not a loving drunk, not a sweet drunk, not a quiet drunk. Wait! How do we even know he’s drunk? Oh, right, he’s in Alcoholics Anonymous, and he has a drink in his hand. Ergo, he’s a drunk.

In other words, his drinking is a plot device without the goods backing it up to make the drama believable or emotionally moving.

While I compliment Ruccolo for making an irritating character into an engaging role, the flip side is the character becomes less credible. I wanted to see some rage, which is hinted at, but the film never delves too deeply – being a comedy and all.

I wanted to see his life falling apart around him so that he would pull himself together, and then I could cheer for this basically good guy overcoming some serious personal problems. But at the end of the movie, the characters are more or less where they were at the beginning.

On the positive side, the movie does have its funny moments (mostly provided by Sasha Alexander and Adam Goldberg) and features some great acting talent. And yeah, it’s better than a lot of the trash that’s out there. It’s a good watch if you’ve exhausted the slim library of other gay romantic comedies. And while I won’t say this is a gay-positive movie, neither is it overtly gay-negative. Fortunately, there’s no “I’m gay, woe is me” subplot, no homophobia.

In the end, this movie irritates me because it could have been so much better. It’s a potentially credible drama posing as a romantic comedy. But the script’s uneven attempt to make light of something so serious bleaches the story of realism and impact. The result is a tepid and mediocre film.

On the whole, I like this movie. Despite its many flaws.

The film benefits from some great acting. Certainly, it enjoys a caliber of talent unusual for an independent feature. Jacqueline Bisset as Lila, despite the schlocky role, gives a performance that provides an emotional heart to the movie. Steve Sandvoss is pitch perfect as the sweet, conflicted, not-quite-naive Mormon (Aaron). Rebekah Johnson brings a feistiness that brings the stock fag-hag character (Julie) to life. Wes Ramsey as protagonist Christian does a good job as well, with the exception of a couple of overwrought monologues. But the monologues were written that way, so it’s hard to blame Ramsey too much. (Wait until he tells the story of getting left behind in the woods. You’ve got to be kidding me.)

The character of Christian irritates me. It’s like the writer (C. Jay Cox) said to himself, I want this person to be Gay Everyman. But his version of Gay Everyman happens to encompass a whole lot of stereotypical behavior. Meanwhile, the character of Aaron was very engaging: sweet, kind, and sincere. I really wanted Aaron to find happiness. Probably the filmmakers intended the central conflict to hinge on whether Aaron and Christian got together. But in watching the movie, I cared about that only insofar as it meant Aaron was able to exorcise his personal demons. Although I did appreciate Christian’s rather dramatic personal growth over the course of the film.

I have mixed emotions about the character of Keith (Erik Palladino), the gay man suffering from advanced AIDS. I always have mixed emotions about HIV/AIDS in gay-themed films: I tire of the association of disease, HIV/AIDS in particular, with the gay community, so I get frustrated easily when it seems like every other film throws in an HIV+ character for some kind of street cred.

On the other hand, HIV/AIDS is an important part of the history of the gay community, and remains a continuing concern. Especially since many young gay people nowadays don’t seem to take HIV/AIDS seriously.

But Keith’s role in the film is just over-the-top in a film already brimming with negative gay clichés. Christian finds meaning and depth by getting to know this gay man, who used to be like Christian, until AIDS enlightened him to the true meaning of Christmas.

That character is indicative of what’s fundamentally wrong with the movie. I can value having a guy in the movie who has AIDS, who has actually stopped and looked at the events of his life (including but not limited to the disease) and actually managed to squeeze out insight and wisdom. Consider the HIV+ character of Ben (Robert Gant) in “Queer as Folk.” But that’s not exactly how Keith’s character is portrayed; he’s too one-note, with too many one-liners, to have the depth needed for his role.

The movie is simply too heavy-handed without having the depth of character or thematic goods to back it up. One scene portrays an argument Christian has with some random trick that sleeping together is much more intimate than sex, and how the preference for the latter over the former is an unhealthy reversal of priorities in the gay community. That experience apparently helps Christian to appreciate the value of the depth and moral center that Aaron offers. It could have worked, had it been written and directed with any subtlety or nuance.

And then there’s the treatment of the Mormon Church.

In a lot of ways, “Latter Days” is an uncomfortable film. It benefits from an underlying sweetness, which mostly originates in the performances (especially Lila and Aaron). And the lead characters, unoriginal though they may be, are basically likeable – that helps a whole lot.

But the charm is undercut by a hateful edge: at the same time it’s trying to be a gay love story, the film is also attacking the Mormon Church (and, by extension, any organized religion which considers homosexuality sinful). The filmmakers have the right to make whatever kind of movie they want; and if they want to attack the Mormon Church, so be it. I’m not a fan of Mormonism, based upon what I know if it, so I have no argument with that. But using the medium of film to attack something lends a certain ugliness to the feel of the work. Trying to be a sweet love story and an assault on a particular group of people at the same time makes for a strange viewing experience. Even being unfamiliar with Mormon missionary work, I had the sense that certain facts were distorted or dramatized in order to highlight the condemnation of Mormonism. Ryder (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is too much a caricature of intolerant evangelism to really take seriously.

Consider the thoughts of reviewer and commentator Eric Snyder on this subject:

“Cox is allowed some poetic license, of course; he never claimed he was making a documentary. But I have to question his motives. As a former church member, Cox knows how missionaries really talk and act, and he knows how the church really operates. He is skewing the facts either A) because doing so helps his story progress, or B) because he wants viewers to dislike the church as much as he does. I hope it is option A, as that only makes him a bad filmmaker — good filmmakers use the facts of the world as they actually are to tell their stories, and don’t resort to making stuff up — while option B would make him something worse. Intentionally distorting the facts so your opponent looks more evil than he is smells like propaganda — which, again, is Cox’s right as a filmmaker, but which makes him seem like a guy with an ax to grind, not a guy with a story to tell” (1).

I did wonder myself about whether the filmmakers had an ax to grind, but I was equally confused by the mixed messages in the movie, because there’s just so much gay negativity.  And not just around the conflicted Mormon boy. Of course, Aaron is the most tortured of all the characters. Sometimes literally: wait until the scenes from the prison, er, hospital trying to “fix” him following Aaron’s attempt to “fix” himself, in a manner of speaking.

The film portrays a society which persecutes and literally tortures gay people because of unyielding, unthinking homophobia. Aaron persecutes and tortures himself because he has internalized that perspective. But what is the alternative presented, the other side of the story?

Is it someone like Gene Robinson or Mel White, well-known gay men committed to spiritual work in the world? No.

Or even someone like the aforementioned Ben from “Queer As Folk,” who certainly suffers from his own inner demons but is still a person of impressive depth and learning? No.

It’s a promiscuous (even when he’s pining for Aaron, he still brings tricks home!), theatrical, superficial flake who is held up in the film to represent openly gay life. What does that say? It’s an odd juxtaposition, at the least. Take the worst of the anti-gay world and the most clichéd of gay life, and throw them together!

As stated, I like this film. It benefits from a basic sweetness and an engaging exploration of the universal human longing for affection and understanding and the peeling away of the protective emotional layers we wrap around ourselves. Some of the scenes are fantastic. I especially enjoyed the penultimate scene, the emotional climax of the movie. Even if the plot that led us to that moment was contrived and forced, it’s still a great moment.

But keep your expectations low – the film suffers from a heavy-handed approach to theme and a cookie-cutter approach to characterization and plot that prevent the film from truly shining.

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(1) Snyder, Eric. “Latter Days,” EricDSnider.com, March 2004, http://www.ericdsnider.com/movies/latter-days (17 August 2007)

“Prom Queen” is a Powerful, Meaningful Melodrama with a Message. I capitalize those words because that’s obviously how the filmmakers intended the movie. Well, I don’t suppose that they intended it to be so melodramatic.

Quality-wise, “Prom Queen” is merely competent in every respect, except in the sub-par script. Even though it’s based on a true story, the writers (Michael MacLennan and Kent Staines) manufactured much of the drama. At the end, the film even treats the viewer to the disclaimer that entire characters and situations have been fictionalized to make the story more humorous. And yet, didn’t.

Marc Hall (Aaron Ashmore) was a student at a private Catholic school in Ontario. He wanted to take his boyfriend Jason (Mac Fyfe) to the prom, which the school would not allow, so he took his case to the courts.

The script, in its attempt to be cute and sweet, does the story a disservice. In fact, I don’t find the question raised by this situation to be automatically clear cut. When basic, equal human rights contrast with religious orthodoxy, which trumps the other? Certainly, I believe in equal rights, and I disagree with the Church’s stance on homosexuality. But this is a private Catholic school. Is there a mutually satisfactory way to solve the impasse, or is it a zero-sum game where one side must necessarily lose to the other?

The film presents the basic premise as a foregone conclusion: the Church is wrong, and Marc is right. Certainly a justifiable conclusion, but I wish we had seen more exploration of the theme before having the verdict pronounced to us.

But it’s a thin script all the way around. Most of the characters are caricatures or stereotypes, and only a handful of the actors are offered roles with the slightest juice. Marc’s parents Emily (Marie Tifo) and Audy (Jean Pierre Bergeron) seem more like set decoration than active participants. In fact, in an effort to keep things light, the movie skips some scenes that would have been most dramatic, such as a confrontation between Marc’s mother and the school’s principal (Dave Foley), as well as several scenes between Marc and his father.

The film also shies away from any true intimacy or physicality between Marc and his boyfriend. Which is just as well: the actors had no on-screen chemistry. On the plus side, Ashmore’s performance was competent and even charming, in his better moments, and I think stories like this are supremely important to tell.

As for the gay positivity, the story is unreservedly sympathetic to the gay participants, and the film has a happy ending in that good wins over evil…er, well, something like that. On the downside, the basic premise is gay-negative: being gay is such a struggle that we face hate and discrimination for such little things. May be true, but that doesn’t make it gay-positive.

And the title. Before I watched the movie, I thought it was a cute play on words. In the film, one gay man used the phrase with another, but instead of friendly and sassy the usage had an uncomfortable edge. And consider how difficult and emotional this event must have been for Marc, and how important his victory. I thus find the title to be vaguely insulting, as well as exemplary of the filmmakers’ attempt to lighten up a serious story but instead bleaching it of impact and meaning.

Overall, instead of portraying a real-life, important human drama, the movie covers a valid thesis statement (gays should be treated equally) with a heavy-handed, moralizing script presented unsuccessfully as a drama-lite pseudo-afterschool special. I do appreciate the positive, progressive message conveyed (I assume) to an adolescent audience, but it’s not enough to make up for the other deficiencies.

Rachel (Piper Perabo) marries Hec (a very sweet Matthew Goode) at the beginning of the movie. At their wedding, she meets Luce (Lena Headey), a lesbian who arouses powerful feelings in her. The film follows her struggle to be true to herself. Does she leave her husband for Luce, or does she stay with Hec?

I didn’t know how I wanted this movie to end. Hollywood has a rich tradition of movies where an encoupled woman flirts with a lesbian relationship, only to be “saved” by returning to a heterosexual romance. Indeed, most mainstream movies clearly prioritize straight relationships, while demeaning or minimizing gay (and especially lesbian) romances.

So I didn’t really want the main character, Rachel, to stay with her husband. But at the same time, I liked Hec. He was a genuinely nice guy from start to finish, and I didn’t want him hurt.

I won’t spoil the ending, but you can probably guess that it is bittersweet.

On the whole, it’s a very gay positive film, without any homophobia. Rachel resists her homoerotic desires more because she’s already in a relationship and doesn’t want to hurt her partner, than that she doesn’t want to go lesbo. And when she tells her family about the situation, they are all very accepting and supportive, as is Luce’s mother.

Even her husband, who’s the one in danger of being left behind, just wants her to be happy. In the fantasy world of film, that delusional myth that lesbians just haven’t found the right man yet has historically held sway. Not so in this movie.

I did mark down slightly for Gay Positivity because the only gay men in the film are cruising for sex in a park (although, I admit, it’s a comedic scene).

I also scored down in Quality. It was a cute movie, the acting was good, and I thought the editing and cinematography were all proficient. But the film lacked sparkle. Each of the disparate elements held their own, but they didn’t come together. The movie is a mostly competent effort by the filmmakers.

Mostly. The film suffers from a serious flaw which undermines the entire premise: it failed to make me believe that Luce offered something in the way of romance, passion, or love that Rachel could not have with her husband. Without that, the ultimate premise of the movie doesn’t stand up.

Before I watched this movie, my dad told me it was cute, but it’s one of those movies where someone’s going to get hurt in the end, and he didn’t like that. While he didn’t want to say what the two women did was wrong, it was selfish. He felt the one truly good person in the film, Hec, was the one who got hurt. That opinion startled me.

But then, I am watching this movie as a gay man. I am keenly aware that it can be difficult, painful, or even dangerous to act on same-sex desires. So I suppose my dad sees a selfish woman pursuing some flight of fancy in her heart, husband be damned. What I see is a woman trapped by hetero-sexist convention in a marriage that is more convenient and sensible than spiritual or passionate. This woman must risk hurting and alienating the people in her life by being true to herself. That’s the risk every gay person must take when they come out.

But neither story nor performance ever convinces me that Rachel was a lesbian (or bisexual) forced into a loveless (or at least passionless) relationship.

I am reminded of “Brokeback Mountain” (2005), which I viewed at a special screening for a couple of gay organizations. During the scene when Michelle Williams saw the two male leads kiss, a lot of the audience chuckled. My female friend leaned over and asked me, “Why are they laughing? Can’t they see she’s in pain?”

I agree with my friend that it wasn’t a funny moment in the film. It was tragic for all three characters. But I also understand where the laughter comes from. It’s just taken for granted that hetero relationships will trump gay ones, and a lot of gay people have been “forced” (for various reasons) into marriages or romances they didn’t really want. It was thus enjoyable to see the gay relationship trump the straight one.

“Brokeback Mountain” is laden with homophobia; that’s the world they live in. “Imagine Me and You,” however, is not. Everyone in the film is accepting and supportive, even the person most hurt by the lesbian relationship. That makes it even more tragic for Hec.

The character Brian from “Queer As Folk” says it’s not lying if they make you lie. So there’s a certain level of justification for how the characters in “Brokeback Mountain” act. But no one is making Rachel lie, and indeed she doesn’t. I would be even more critical of the film if that were the case. She’s just confused.

I wish that the filmmakers had given her some history that would make this sudden lesbianism make more sense. Has she always had these feelings that she’s hidden away? Is it just for Luce? Is she “switching teams,” in Hec’s friend Coop’s words? The film does not explore this at all, which is unfortunate, but on the other hand it allows the film to focus less on sexual orientation and more on love.