Fucking gay cinema. It's just... one of those things that sounds incredibly straightforward on the surface of it, and it SHOULD be really, super easy but FUCK does everyone manage to just screw it in the kidney any time they take a step towards that whole fucking genre. And what a genre! Yeesh.
Anyway, almost 3 years to the day since I abandoned this blogging project, this "film" made me think about it. It's pretty much everything that I hate in a film (critical acclaim, but nothing really to it), but with the added twist of being an attempt to mainstream the gay cinema concept. Which is basically, make a heteronormative love story but make the main characters woofters, have some plinky plonky earth indie in the background, maybe by Sigur Ros or The Shins, then have a gritty shock that "could happen to anyone" occur to the characters in order to humanise them in a way that even the most drooling, rabid hetero could relate to. So far, so Helen Hunt. It's just so fucking tedious if it isn't done well.
By contrast, Andrew Haigh's Weekend was a delight. You had cruising, you had random toilet cubicle blow jobs, being "the token gay friend, who's not really gay in that way, are you", all that shit that was a bit more... relevant? I hated Weekend when I first saw it, but when I watched it again, I think it's because it resonated a little bit too close to home for my comfort, and the story itself was so utterly heartbreaking it felt like a cheap shot. Reflection made it's flaws seem more like wear and tear that we've all had to put up with.
Keep The Lights On had basically none of that. You're meant to relate to the characters, a crack addicted but, somehow, highly successful lawyer and a fucking award winning documentary maker. I mean, don't get me wrong, I accept that award-winning documentary makers actually exist in the world, but COME ON. Fucking hell. If you want to make a story people can put themselves into (which it is so, so very clear Ira Sachs wants you (well, us, unless you're also a gay)) at least make the characters real. An unemployed crackhead and some guy who works at Blockbuster, or a crackhead who just about holds down a job working in a sex shop going out with a city banker who's working too much to notice his boyfriend going off the deep end, yadda yadda. I can get on board with these people, these are people I can imagine I walk past their houses on the way to work. Ira Sachs may as well have made them a unicorn herder and a fucking Latvian prince, for all the bearing these jobs had on the story in the first place. Or how about Hollywood film star and crack addicted neurosurgeon. Male twink burlesque dancer and Antarctic research specialist. Magician and jewel thief. Who fucking cares? Where was I...
Oh, yeah, right. PACING. So, at just over 90min, this film was meant to chronicle the 9 year relationship of the main characters, or at least that's what one of the last conversations in the film would have you believe, but in most respects the guys barely seemed to know each other. I think the problem was that they hardly had any scenes together, so it's difficult to get a grip on how deep their feelings were for each other, but I'm pretty sure I've had a closer bond with people on the first tube home after a night out, and this is with people who couldn't form vowel sounds or quite pinpoint where my face is located. Plus both characters' behaviour verges on sociopathy in several places, and because the acting is so patchy it's hard to tell if this is them just not knowing how to deal with a situation, or if it's because they just don't understand how feelings work.
Anyway, yeah. A fairly ham-fisted attempt to try and point out how gay people are just like everyone else that just ends up falling flat, for me. 4/10
