Tuesday, October 25, 2011

first comes love, then comes marriage

The one where Kyle and Neil leave their bubble and go downtown.

I've known about this little movie for a while, as it zigged and zagged its way from gay movie festival to gay movie festival, finally making it to the art house here in ROCHESTER, The Little Theater. Our much closer more mainstream  dollar popcorn Wednesday theater is pretty good about getting your art house movie, but I did not want to risk missing this one.

They have home made treats as well as popcorn, and little tiny 1940's butt sized seats. Small stage in front of the screen.. ATL folks think Garden Hills.

Andrew Haigh's 
WEEKEND

Love in the time of .....post gay England. This movie is digging into my brain... I can't shake it. It is totally "My one night, coked out dinner with Andre'" , nothing really happens. Boy meets boy, boy has drunken sex with boy.... spends the rest of the weekend together. In one of the most realistic honest looks into modern life that you will find. These are not cartoon gays... not Modern Family or Rupaul, not  some kinky ass Mapplethorpe photos. Real messy lived men... trying to define what is is to be where we are. This is, I am sure a way to Kyle and Beth moment, and I am just thinking about this WAY too much, but it IS a different universe than the one I grew up in.

I have written about this before, When I was young was no a,b,c to my life. The vast majority of you reading this had that.. Life was laid out for you, no matter what path you took to it, cradle to grave, for the most part A,B,C,D. First crush, first love, first kiss, high school, college, life... marriage, baby, 3.2 babies,  golden retriever named Brandy, high school all over and grand babies...Or the Army and a trailer park, what ever- it was mapped. Gay men my age and older did not have this , at all. Blank slate or brick wall.... for ever they ran to big cities and lived in ghettos, that had changed at least for me.
It is not like that now, your average horny gay teenager gets it all,with a big dose of FUCK YOU to anyone in their way. NOT all, there is still a ton of work to be done and horror stories abound... But Glee is Glee.

Gay folk my age + or - a few have this debate constantly. You have no idea this is going on , its fine.. you have a life. Do we take the brass ring and the labels that come with it, go for the WPF in smiling suburbia that has culture, but not GAY culture, or do we buck the trend screw the hetronormists and live life as the libertines that we are lucky to be. You have to understand that my ,at the time ,INTENSE fear of Aids is not a part of the 20 something brain now. It is a pill... they are close to wrong, but that is the mindset. The gay high school senior today takes his boyfriend to the prom in his parents Volvo and dreams of a white wedding...

That is the underbelly of this movie.What is our path... what is gay identity, loud or quite. Happy is what ever you make for yourself.... No questions are answered, at all.. and part of it is just ( to me ) a very sweet love story. It is a brave new world out there , as gay men and lesbians get to define themselves for the very first time in history. It is a good " film " as well, odd, arty brush up on your DEEP English accents, but well worth seeing.


NYT REVIEW
Metroweekly Review

1 comment:

b said...

Kyle and Beth moment because YOU are thinking about something too much for once?

It looks heartrending. I'll have to find it and see it.

Your post leads me to wonder about the importance of that A>B>C. It's a good thing, I suppose, if it suits your own desires. Once I hit my 40s and saw how limiting the fairytale wedding is for so many women, I realized how lucky I have been to have an entirely different set of examples: women all around me who never marry and don't seem to miss the bicycle at all.

which has nothing to do, really, with the point you are trying to make. I'm just thinking too much, I suppose.