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FILMS TO KNOW ABOUT by Malcolm Epstein<br />
If you think your life is full of troubles you won't think<br />
they are that important after watching a transexual<br />
facing her sex change operation in TRANSAMERICA<br />
(15) at the end of March. Eighteen years before, a<br />
night of attempted heterosexuality resulted in a son,<br />
but she has had no contact with him and her psychiatrist<br />
now insists she confronts her past life before<br />
the operation. She finds the mother has died and her<br />
17 year old son is in a police cell for vagrancy and<br />
drug taking.<br />
Pretending to be a social worker she bails him out<br />
and, without telling him her secret, begins driving<br />
him to California where he wants a movie career.<br />
Their adventures are engrossing as the son is the<br />
best looking 17 year old you've ever seen onscreen.<br />
One of the most impressive movies of the year.<br />
The French COCKLES & MUSCLES (tbc) is worth<br />
seeking out in April about a married couple with a<br />
teenage son and daughter on holiday in the south of<br />
France where the husband spent many summers in<br />
his youth. The son is welcoming an old schoolfriend<br />
to join them who is openly gay and the parents keep<br />
wondering if their son is gay. The mother is happy to<br />
have a holiday romance when her husband is not<br />
around. The husband encounters a local electrician<br />
whom he had a gay relationship with in his youth. All<br />
93 minutes had me captivated with each plot twist.<br />
A treat in March is THESE FOOLISH THINGS (tbc) set<br />
in London before the war about an actress and playwright<br />
struggling to get somewhere in the theatre.<br />
When a wealthy American lady, Angelica Huston,<br />
decides to produce his play the only writer's problem<br />
is the leading man fancies him. The only scene that<br />
didn't ring true is when he pushes the straight young<br />
man on a bed and jumps on him amid very loud<br />
protests.<br />
Even in this day and age someone would test out first<br />
conversationally if their interest in someone straight<br />
had any hope. The thirties were a much more sexually<br />
subdued period when just a kiss meant far more<br />
than it does today.<br />
However it is made by a marvellous new writer and<br />
director, Julia Taylor Stanley, and the rest of it is a<br />
perfect movie you must see. Character parts are cleverly<br />
cast with Lauren Bacall and Terence Stamp as a<br />
wisecracking butler. The music of the time adds great<br />
atmosphere. I loved it.<br />
The actor John Turturro has written and directed his<br />
first film and you will enjoy ROMANCE & CIGA-<br />
RETTES (l5) that has his cast singing popular standards<br />
of the past 50 years woven into the plotline. Its<br />
only flaw is casting James Gandolfini as the leading<br />
man for, although he is effective in the TV series "The<br />
Sopranos", he is not ideal here displaying his surplus<br />
pounds. He bounces between his wife, Susan<br />
Sarandon, and his mistress breaking into great songs<br />
of the past like "Prisoner Of Love", "The Girl That I<br />
Marry" and "I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now". Well<br />
rehearsed dancers are part of many of these. It is a<br />
brilliant attempt at offbeat film making if you can cope<br />
with Mr Gandolfini's bulbous shape.<br />
RENT (12a) is a musical for the under 25s that began<br />
as a stage show that has been running in New York<br />
for years. The plotline has much talk of AIDS, but the<br />
attractive cast keep it bubbling.<br />
Bizet's music for the opera "Carmen" has such<br />
delightful melodies that there hav1 been several film<br />
versions of it. Now from South Africa we have U-<br />
CARMEN eKhayelitsha (l5) in which a black cast in a<br />
shantytown do justice to those familiar songs. The<br />
two well upholstered leads cannot be faulted vocally.<br />
CURRENT RELEASES<br />
CAPOTE (15) is the true story of a<br />
section of the life of the gay author<br />
Trueman Capote played with a brilliance<br />
by Phillip Seymour Hoffman<br />
that is winning him awards. His success<br />
with the book Breakfast At<br />
Tiffanys that was filmed brings him<br />
commissions from the New Yorker<br />
magazine to cover any subject he<br />
wishes to. He becomes intrigued by<br />
the terrible murders of a family of<br />
four in a small American town and<br />
when the two killers are caught visits<br />
them constantly in prison. His infatuation<br />
with one of them makes him<br />
employ a lawyer to campaign on<br />
their behalf when they are sentenced<br />
to death. Trueman produced a best<br />
selling book about the case, "In Cold<br />
Blood", but watching his visits to a<br />
sadistic killer won't please every<br />
audience.<br />
Hollywood leading men sometimes want to prove<br />
they are not just actors and George Clooney has done<br />
it with GOOD NIGHT & GOOD LUCK (PG). In the fifties<br />
a top TV journalist , Edward Murrow, became furious<br />
about senator Joseph McCarthy hounding anyone<br />
who had any contact with the Communist party and<br />
careers were ruined by him. George co-wrote, directed<br />
and appears in this film of the period with archive<br />
shots of McCarthy in action. It has a grip to impress<br />
Academy Award voters.<br />
Gwynth Paltrow is memorable in PROOF (12a) as the<br />
daughter of a genius mathmatician teacher, Anthony<br />
Hopkins, whose mental illness puts him in a shell for<br />
years. His best looking student, Jake Gyllenhaal,<br />
fresh from his success as a bisexual cowboy in<br />
"Brokeback Mountain", tries to calm her<br />
nerves when her father dies. It has<br />
power and punch.<br />
People were amazed when they heard Shirley<br />
Bassey's 21 year old daughter took her life jumping<br />
off the Clifton suspension bridge in Bristol.<br />
The most entertaining DVD of the year is SLUTTY<br />
SUMMER written by and starring a blond young man<br />
who knows exactly what he is doing: Casper Andreas.<br />
It has gay men and a straight woman on the waiting<br />
staff at a restaurant advising each other on their love<br />
lives. Whether it is long term relationships or one<br />
night stands you'll be constantly enrapt in their<br />
humorous and dramatic lives.<br />
YOU I LOVE surprised me as, set in Moscow, it is not<br />
set in the poverty stricken and overcrowded homes<br />
most Russians live in, but a luxury apartment of an<br />
advertising executive who has a lovely girlfriend but<br />
Jake's other bisexual cowboy in that<br />
film, Heath Ledger, is now very<br />
straight in CASANOVA (12a) set in<br />
Venice in the l700's. Seducing<br />
women who mostly cannot resist<br />
him, he finally meets one who insists<br />
on marriage first. It has magnificent<br />
views of the city and is a pleasant<br />
romp.<br />
DVD WORLD<br />
TLA releasing is a company we must<br />
become aware of as they are making<br />
gay romance movies to see in the<br />
privacy of your home and sometimes<br />
cover controversial subjects. One in<br />
March is ETHAN MAO about a<br />
Chinese boy growing up with parents<br />
having no understanding of homosexuality as they<br />
refuse to educate themselves. The father asks his son<br />
to leave the house when a gay magazine is discovered.<br />
The teenager turns to prostitution and eventually<br />
returns to the family house with a gun.<br />
Gay teenagers have been ill treated across the world<br />
and it is common knowledge if they are Jewish they<br />
know their parents maintain it is against their religion.<br />
I have known Jewish millionaires whose lives have<br />
been ruined by their teenage years. Brian Epstein, the<br />
Beatles' manager, who dependence on whisky and<br />
drugs ended his life at 37. Lionel Bart, the "Oliver"<br />
composer, had a tougher constitution, but his life was<br />
ruined by a bottle of brandy a day and endless drugs.<br />
Teenagers who don't get on with their parents for<br />
many reasons can lead to tragic circumstances.<br />
becomes infatuated with a young man who has got<br />
himself a job at the local zoo but is homeless.<br />
Bisexuality happens when the young man stays several<br />
nights. The girlfriend, who lives elsewhere, is not<br />
pleased as it interferes with her nights of passion.<br />
How they resolve this is worth seeing.<br />
The fascination many women have for gay men is<br />
explored in EATING OUT, a comedy worth your time.<br />
A straight guy has a problem finding the right woman<br />
and his gay flatmate , who knows endless straight<br />
women who love gay clubs and bars, starts taking<br />
him around introducing him as gay. He has difficulties<br />
keeping up the charade when these women fancy<br />
him. But of course they are flattered believing this is<br />
his first nervous experience with a woman.
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