The Screengrab : law of desire

The Gay Pride Top Twenty (Part Three)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 20:45:00 GMT

THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW (1975)

By the time I first encountered the film version of Richard O’Brien’s bizarre musical paean to ‘50s horror movies and polymorphous perversity, it was already a well-established cult classic, regularly attended by freaks and frat boys, geeks and fad-of-the-week trendies. But underneath the audience-participation spectacle was a gleefully subversive last gasp celebration of gender-blind free love (before pop culture sexuality became more repressive yet somehow simultaneously more commodified, fetishized and pervasive in the neo-con '80s and '90s). The invocation of Tim Curry’s infamous sweet transvestite Dr. Frank-n-Furter to “Give yourself over to absolute pleasure” became highly questionable advice in the AIDS era; even in the no-holes-barred world of the film's Transsexual Transylvanians, Frank’s lifestyle’s too extreme (and the character, like many overreaching sensualists before him, meets a tragic demise). Yet, the Rocky cult continues to flourish, years after its early ‘80s heyday, with screenings often serving as safe havens for GLBT (and straight!) misfits seeking community, acceptance and glamour in the midst of a “Science Fiction Double Feature” lost in time, lost in space and meaning. (Mee-eeaaaaa-nnniiinnnggg!!!!)

BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN (2005)

According to the official Oscar narrative, 2005 was the Year of Gay Cinema, and Brokeback Mountain, which won three Academy Awards that year, was its purest expression. And that’s true, to a point; in a year that seemed to feature more mainstream movies than usual with gay themes, Brokeback Mountain, with its gorgeous scenic cinematography, its elegiac tone, and its powerhouse lead performances by the late Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal as doomed, love-struck cowboys, stood out. But more than a simple movie, Brokeback Mountain was that rare thing, a cultural phenomenon: a work of art that transcends its nature as merely a good or bad, popular or unpopular, example of its type and becomes something that permeates the culture and becomes a sort of intellectual shorthand for something greater than itself. Not only did the movie provide us with a genuine catchphrase in “I wish I knew how to quit you”, but it became such a phenomenon that pundits on the left and the right used its box office numbers to defend or denigrate the mainstreaming of homosexuality. One’s very reaction to it seemed to become a referendum on gay rights. And while there’s no denying that a lot of the attention it got was of the negative sort, tinged with a base and hysterical juvenile homophobia, from the first internet wag who dubbed it Bareback Mountin’ to the last sports radio talk-show guest who used its title as a cheap butt-fuck joke, it saturated the very cultural discourse of its time. And in that way, it advanced the cause of gay cinema – and maybe of gay rights in general – more than its makers could have ever dreamed.

BOUND (1996)

Because its action unfolds mostly in a couple of apartments on what appears to be the planet Earth, it's tempting to think that Bound is the only Wachowski Brothers movie to take place in the real world, when actually it's as much a fantasy as The Matrix or Speed Racer. Gina Gershon's Corky may hang out in the sort of bars where the women are built like Brian Dennehy…but she's still built like Gina Gershon. When she hooks up with breathy femme fatale Violet (Jennifer Tilly), it's the sort of lesbian romance that two dudes from Chicago would dream up. (That is, they were two dudes at the time, Larry Wachowski's later gender bending adventures notwithstanding.) Still, their love affair isn't just Skin-emax-style titillation; it's actually handled rather matter-of-factly in what might otherwise be a pretty standard neo-noir flick. Joe Pantoliano's greasy hood Caesar may disapprove, but who cares what he thinks? Violet and Corky aren't just partners in crime, plotting to swipe two million dollars out from under the noses of Caesar and his gangster pals. They have genuine love and respect for each other, a rarity in a genre where everyone is usually out to screw everybody else.

THE COCKETTES (2002)

This tremendously entertaining documentary, directed by Billy Weber and David Weissman, records through vintage footage and new interviews the rise and fall of San Francisco's pre-eminent drug-addled co-ed transvestite hippie song and dance trip. Led by the charismatic Hibiscus, footage of whom provides grounds for a convincing argument that the Second Coming occurred sometime in the late sixties and that Jesus had to leave again but wants everyone to know that he really enjoyed the acid, the Cockettes went from improvisational dancing to the accompaniment of old records before the midnight movie at the Palace Theater to elaborate, high-camp stage musicals. Their story doubles as a parable of the bust-up of the counterculture; the troupe eventually split up over the question of whether they were in it to make money or for love of performance with quasi-religious ambitions. Hibiscus and his devotees broke apart to form the Angels of Light, while the other Cockettes stormed New York for a disastrous run on Broadway before sneering crowds of jaded, black-hearted sophisticates. They crawled back home and had a few more local triumphs (including the sci-fi extravagaza Journey to the Center of Uranus, starring special guest Divine), but time and medical bills began to tear them apart. Some of the survivors interviewed in the movie look as if they're still trying to catch their breath since having stormed the Bastille, but between their stories and the clips of the troupe in action, few movies have made a misspent youth look like such a noble and enviable calling.

LAW OF DESIRE (1987)

In 1987, American audiences shell-shocked from AIDS and the sexual revolution made a blockbuster out of Fatal Attraction, the movie that created the modern stereotype of the spurned one-night-stand turned stalker as the ultimate embodiment of the fear of the loss of control that can come with romantic obsession and sexual freedom. That same year, Pedro Almodovar, a Spaniard liberated by the death twelve years earlier of the dictator Franco, served up Antonio Banderas as a young, straight stud who experiences one night of bliss with the celebrity director Pablo (Eusebio Poncela) and is so determined to make just one more trip to the well that lays siege to his reluctant love object's life, killing the boy-man of Pablo's dreams (who's such a dullard that the audience couldn't care less) and holding his sister (Carmen Maura), who used to be his brother, hostage until his steamy demands are met. With Banderas in the role and with Almodovar nudging him on, it is very hard to watch this without thinking, "Sure wish somebody loved me enough to put a gun on my family and pitch my significant other off the nearest cliff." Some sniff at early Almodovar as a frivolous artist, but for all his camp humor and extravangance, he was deadly serious in his insistence that respect be paid to those willing to go all the way for love.

Click here for Part One, Part Two and Part Four

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Leonard Pierce, Scott Von Doviak, Phil Nugent

Our 11 Favorite Romantic Moments in the Movies, Part 2

Phil Nugent — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 15:00:00 GMT

JACKIE BROWN (1997)

Max Cherry (Robert Forster) knows damn well he's not going to get the girl. He's not one of those idiots you meet in film noirs who feel some flicker of lust and start thinking that they can pull off some big score and get away and have it all; Max knows that whatever happens, he's going to end up back where he started, riding the deak at his bail bonds office, but in the meantime, he's prepared to do whatever he can to help Jackie (Pam Grier), because he figures he owes it to her, just for the way she made him feel the first time he laid eyes on her. He knows that she's out of his league, and he's okay with that; knowing that he could still feel that way is more than he expected to get out of one more trip to the jailhouse. What's amazing is that none of the other characters seem to see what Max sees when they look at Jackie: to them, she's just a middle-aged black woman, someone to be used and screwed over and forgotten. That's why they deserve the worst that can happen to them, and why Max deserves more than it would ever occur to him to ask for.

THE MORE THE MERRIER (1943)

Supernaturally avuncular matchmaker Benjamin Dingle (Charles Coburn, naturally) finally sees his plans come to fruition in this classic scene from George Stevens' comedy, More the Merrier. By trapping her dreary fiancé, Charles J. Pendergast, in a pointlessly prolonged meeting, genially uptight Constance Milligan (Jean Arthur) is forced to rely upon her inadvertent roommate and true love, hunky propeller designer Joe Stevens (Joel McCrea), to escort her back to her apartment on a warm summer night. As they make their way down the dark street, feeling the steam rising from other couples canoodling in the shadows, their conversation is all banal pleasantries on the surface, but McCrae's hands are in constant motion, laying Arthur's tiny jacket over her bare shoulders, kneading her hand in his (watch how gently he holds onto one of her fingers before letting her hand drop), guiding her forward with his hand pressed against the small of her back. Finally he dips her gently onto her front steps, draws her in close, kisses her hand, and, as she prattles on helplessly about the evaporating qualities of her former chosen one, he closes in for a deep, fatal neck nuzzle. She lifts her head, begins to stammer and is lost.

THEREMIN: AN ELECTRONIC ODYSSEY (1993)

This documentary tells the story of the Russian interventer Leon Theremin and his creation, in 1919, of the electronic musical instrument that bears his name. Although the theremin is best known in popular culture as the maker of spooky sounds in sci-fi movies (The Thing from Another World, The Day the Earth Stood Still) and freaky ones in pop songs such as the Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations", Theremin intended it to revolutionize classical music, and he worked closely with Clara Rockmore (seen here playing "Romance"), the acknowledged supreme master of the instrument, to tinker and perfect his device according to her suggestions and specifications. In 1938, Theremin was scooped up by the KGB and disappeared from the public eye. For most of the movie, the viewer who doesn't know better is likely to assume that he was dead. But it turns out that Theremin was alive and kept busy by the Soviet government until the end of the Cold War — working, he says, on "different kinds of bad things" — and the filmmakers brought him to the States and arranged a reunion between the maestro and his favorite pupil, when both of them were in their nineties. For a minute, they just stand framed in the doorway, smiling at each other. Then Rockmore ushers him inside, and as she prepares to shut the door, she says to the camera crew, "You go now." Yes ma'am!

LAW OF DESIRE (1987)

In this ripe specimen of early Pedro Almodovar, twenty-six-year-old Antonio Banderas plays a fellow called, for convenience's sake, Antonio, who is attracted to the film and stage director Pablo (Eusebio Poncela), but isn't sure that he can have sex with another man. Pablo offers to take him home so they can figure it out together. Things go swimmingly, but the next morning, Antonio is totally, obsessively in love, but Pablo considers him a one-night stand. So, to get Pablo's attention, Antonio tracks down the guy that Pablo is in love with, throws him off a cliff, then finds Pablo's sister Tina, who used to be Pablo's brother, and Tina's niece (who was actually fathered, or mothered, or something, by her transexual ex-lover) and takes them hostage, yelling to the police who are soon surrounding the house that he'll give himself up if Pablo will consent to one more hour between the sheets. Pablo does consent, and after their hour together is up, Antonio, have known the touch of his love object once more, can walk into the police bullets feeling that his life has been fulfilled. In real life, this would be an unhappy situation for everybody involved and would require the combined services of Dr. Phil and S.W.A.T. In a movie, it is the Technicolor apotheosis of everyone's fantasy of doing whatever the hell it takes to convince the reluctant prospective partner that the two of you have to be together, and ultimately succeeding. In Almodovar's world, it probably counts as a slow news day.

BEFORE SUNSET (2004)

It's a safe bet that few people who watched backpacking Gen X-ers Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) spend a memorable night together in Vienna in 1995's Before Sunrise ever expected to see a sequel, much less wait nine years for one. When that follow-up finally did arrive in 2004, it could hardly have been confused with a traditional movie romance. As befitting a Richard Linklater film, their belated reunion in Paris is all talk — talk about missed connections, the impermanence of youth and the mysteries of love. Jesse has a flight to catch, so we're always aware of the ticking clock — that is, until the sublime final moments, when the urgency melts away to the appropriate tones of Nina Simone singing "Just in Time." Delpy does a shuffling little dance. Hawke sinks into the couch with a silly grin on his face. And we all learn that the most romantic words of all are not "I love you" — they're "Baby, you are gonna miss that plane."

— Phil Nugent, Robert Gomez, Scott Von Doviak

Click here for Part 1.