My Night of Gay Romance: I Find Myself in the "Steamy Romantic Drama" Section of Netflix

As the summer draws to a close, I find myself desperate for peace, quiet, and solitude. A couple of times lately I have simply given in to it, and not even pretended I was going to go to bed when the rest of the family did. Instead, I have sat up late—even all night—crocheting and watching movies. As I told Raider, “I need a day to myself, and the only way to get it right now is to do it at night.”

Last night, I found myself exploring the byways of gay romance on Netflix. I have returned from this journey to report on what I found.

These are the six movies I watched, in the order I watched them.  If that seems like a lot, keep in mind that many independent films run short. 

Longhorns
US, 2011; 74 minutes

A college student who thinks he’s straight has to deal with his feelings for another boy.

Production values: I think they made this movie with $40 and an expired coupon for pizza rolls. For much of the film, I thought it had only two sets: a cheap-looking dorm room, and a cheap-looking dorm lounge. Later, however, it added a porch, a cabin, and a field, so maybe they found some change in the couch or were able to borrow 20 bucks from somebody’s mom. The sound is intelligible but cheap-sounding, and sounds noticeably different in different locations.

Romance cliches: “Take your clothes off so I can draw you for my art class.”

Swish factor: Turned up to 11. Derek Efrain Villaneuva plays the campus gay activist who has a weakness for boys in denial. He is petite, fey, flaming, and so beautiful and charming I would watch two hours of him doing…well, anything really.

The Sex: Not explicit. Because the movie is exploring the boundaries of gay/not gay, it features a heck of a lot of scenes of boys jerking off while watching porn together; the action is entirely under-the-blanket.  

Why I Didn't Like It: The opening scene is so tasteless and excruciating my eyes bled. If it had lasted another 40 seconds, I'd never have watched the rest of the movie. I am embarrassed to have you know I watched that scene and didn't immediately take myself to the mikveh. Much of the humor is crude. For some inexplicable reason, we get full frontal nudity from just about every member of the cast; I don't object to this, exactly, but I wasn't sure what the point was. On the other hand,  my very limited knowledge of what penises look like has been significantly advanced.

Why I Liked It: Villaneuva, primarily. The acting ranges from wooden to serviceable for the most part, but some of the scenes between the two leads are well-done. There's a break-up scene where they're on the phone, both crying while trying not to let on to the other that they're crying, and it's quite good. This movie wins my Night of Gay Romance award for Sweetest Post-Coital Cuddle. Also, I have an inexplicable affection for the parts of the country where people wear boots and cowboy hats unselfconsciously and unironically, so I liked that. The protagonist's denial about his sexuality is both funny and familiar—after having sex with a boy for the first time, he lies there and thinks, "There is a homosexual in my bed!" And he can't figure out why it keeps happening.

You Will Like It If: You have nostalgic memories of your own coming out in college, are a big supporter of independent cinema, carry a soft spot the size of Texas for young flamers,  or will watch anything if it includes two boys kissing.

Happy Ending: For everybody.

Derek Villaneuva. See what I mean?

Free Fall

German, 2013; 1 hr 40 mins

A police officer who is in a happy relationship with his pregnant girlfriend has an affair with another officer.

Production Values: High.

Swish factor: There is no swishing at the police academy.

The Sex: Excellent. Director Stephen Lacant has a talent for directing sex. Both an early scene between the protagonist and his girlfriend, and a later scene between the two men, are beautifully done, capturing the emotional as well as the physical intimacy. The sex is realistic, though generally not explicit. I was impressed by Hanno Koffle's sex noises; "totally into this but distressed to be totally into this" seems like a tough mood to play and he did it well.

Gay Story Cliches: Cartoon homophobes. Somebody gets beat up. Somebody gets beat up again. Somebody else gets beat up. They go dancing at a club where the other patrons are much more flamboyant than them. People have sex in the bathroom of a gay bar.

Other Observations: Both leads smoke constantly throughout the whole movie. They roll their own cigarettes, which often left me confused about whether they were smoking tobacco, pot, both, or something else I have never heard of.

Why I Didn't Like It: Surely there are other stories to be told than "guy who thinks he's straight comes out, and it sucks." I could have done with less of watching some guy's poor family reeling in shock, and with much more of watching the two leads enjoy sex their relationship. Watching an experienced gay man pursue an adulterous relationship with a man who is, if not straight, at least not out even to himself is much like watching the doomed teenagers go into the dank and cobwebby basement of the haunted house. I wanted to take him aside and say, "Dude, you know better ways to meet men.  Let somebody else get shredded in Closet Case's Big Bloody Buzzsaw of Denial."

Why I Liked It: The leads are beautiful and have great chemistry. The acting is very good. If you like romances for the long slow build-up of attraction, you will very much like the first half of this movie. German men, when filming a dance scene in a gay bar, can actually dance.

You Will Like It If: You miss the days when movie stars could smoke like chimneys; you love men in police uniforms; you like being reminded that Germans are not all evil blondes; you like watching as smoldering glances ignite into fiery passion; you love it when the second half of a movie is all about emotional pain; you are a big supporter of movies in which gay men suffer.

Notes: You can see Max Riemelt, who plays the boyfriend, in the Wachowskis' series Sense8, on Netflix.

Happy Ending: For whom? And for what values of "happy"?  This is not Hollywood! You insult us with these questions!

Boys
German, 2014; 1 hr 17 mins

Two boys on the track team fall in love.

Production Values: High.

Swish Factor: Low. Sometimes it's hard to tell if somebody is gaying or just European.

The Sex: No sex; this is a movie about teenagers. But the kisses are nicely done.

Gay Story Cliches: Not so many.

What I Learned From This Movie and Free Fall: When casting for a German film about gay men, the ability to smolder and look yearning is much more important than the ability to deliver dialog, of which there will be very little. German men and boys flirt by running on paths through picturesque woods; I'm not sure what they do if they live in a city. 

Other Observations: I only recently learned that eating sprinkles on buttered bread is a thing people do in some parts of Europe, so I was delighted to see a character do it in this movie. The teenagers are played by actual teenagers. They are, therefore, almost unbearably beautiful, but also gangly and kind of awkward. They look like men in one shot, and like children in another. It adds a lot to the film to have teenagers in these roles instead of people in their 20s pretending to be teenagers.

Why I Liked It: The boys are very sweet. The angst is minor; one of the boys isn't previously out to himself, and there are some hurt feelings as he gets himself sorted out, but nobody has to cry in an alley. The growing attraction is well-done.

You Will Like It If: You like beautiful boys and German scenery, are fond of sweet coming-of-age stories, enjoy romance, and would like a break from boy/girl stuff.

Happy Ending? Yes.

Tiger Orange

US, 2014; 75 minutes

A man whose life has fallen apart in some way returns to his childhood home, where his sibling still lives, and they spend a bunch of time dealing with their family shit, lurching through a couple of epiphanies without really solving anything. You might have seen this movie when it starred Mark Ruffalo and Laura Linney and was called You Can Count on Me, and they were both straight; you might have seen it when starred Bill Hader and Kristin Wiig, and was called The Skeleton Twins, and he was gay; and now you can see it with two actors you've probably never heard of, and they're both gay.

Production Values: Fair-to-middling. Nothing fancy happens in the camera work, editing, or sound, and the film uses limited sets, but it looks good and sounds good; you won't be distracted by cheapness.

Swish Factor: Varied from character to character, and, because of code-switching, from scene to scene. Nicely done.

The Sex: Since I accidentally watched a movie that is not a romance but actually about brothers, it is certainly for the best that there was no sex.

Gay Story Cliches: Somebody gets bashed. A park is cruised for anonymous sex, but only because the character is too self-hating to be out and have a real relationship. Dad hates sissy boys.

Why I Didn't Like It: I have already seen this movie too many times, and making both the Responsible One and the Reckless One gay was not quite enough to render the story fresh.

Why I Liked It: Gay men I recognized as gay men. Including multiple men allows for a Variety Pack approach, so if you like them flaming and dressed like hipsters, there's a guy for you; if you like them right on the line of trying, and failing, to contain their swish, there's a guy for you; if you like them in business casual with just a touch of inflection and wrist, there's a guy for you.

You Would Like It If: You haven't seen You Can Count on Me, The Skeleton Twins, or any other iteration of the prodigal son lately, you're in the mood for it, and you think it would make for a nice change if everybody was gay; you support independent cinema; you think one or both of the leads is hot; you think it's refreshing when the tattoo'd and pierced Bad Boy is played by an actual Bad Boy with actual tattoos and piercings; you've always wanted to see a porn star make his Legitimate Cinema debut; you've always wanted to see a porn star but are the only person in the world who doesn't know how to find porn on the internet.

The porn star. via 

Is It Just Me?
US, 2010; 89 mins

Painfully unfunny romantic comedy about a gay writer who finds love online.

Production Values: Medium-to-poor. Sound is noticeably lower quality than you're used to; has a cheap look.

Swish Factor: Low, mostly met by the aging queen one of the characters rents a room from. Protagonist's roommate surprisingly non-swishy despite his work as a go-go boy.

Romance Cliches: Protagonist wants love but all available men interested only in sex; misunderstanding that could be cleared up easily in 20 seconds is instead dealt with via unsustainable deception.

Why I Didn't Like It: Painfully unfunny, supra.

Why I Liked It: I didn't. I mercy-killed it about ten minutes in. Its only redeeming quality was the online boyfriend, who couldn't act but whose single note—a crinkly-eyed smiling good humor—was adorable.

You Will Like It If: You will not like it.

It hurts just looking at the poster.

Weekend
British, 2011; 1 hr 37 mins

Two men hook up two nights before one of them is leaving the country, and spend the weekend together.

Production Values: Just fine. Limited sets, straightforward camerawork, but nothing that will pull you out of the story.

Swish Factor: Nobody swishes, per se, but both leads read gay in a very satisfying way. As you know, I like gay-presenting men, and this is another movie that knows "queeny" and "straight-acting" are not the only two settings.

The Sex: Excellent and realistic. I figure the top four ways that men get each other off are handjobs, blowjobs, frottage, and anal sex. This movie featured all four (Free Fall also had realistic sexual variety). I liked that they communicated during sex; there's a bit of "this OK?" and a bit of "go ahead," and one awkward position change that doesn't detract from the overall hotness of the interaction. I have never seen a movie in which one guy hands his partner a jizz rag in so matter-of-fact a manner; in fact, I'm not sure I've ever seen post-coital cleanup in any movie ever.  I think things like that, and the awkward position change, are important from an educational perspective. I'm not even kidding.

Miscellaneous Notes: Both this movie and Boys feature the two leads riding double on a bike. This is another one where people rolled leaves in cigarette papers and smoked them; sometimes these guys had a tobacco cigarette and a joint going at the same time. They don't have packs of cigarettes in the European Union?

Why I Didn't Like It: These two used so many drugs that I got uncomfortable watching it. There is a lengthy and tedious coke-fueled conversation about assimilation v. radicalism in the context of marriage equality; it's nice to have characters who know and care about this kind of thing, but boy howdy listening to them go on about it was dull. I wanted both of them to please, please, please clean up their scruffy beards.

Why I Liked It: Recognizable gay men. Both leads out and experienced; no coming-out angst (though there's some difference of opinion about PDAs). A nice acknowledgement that attractive people come in more than one flavor, in that one of the leads likes "little" men, and the other lead is a slender little guy.

Awww, baby.

You Would Like it If: You like realistic sex in a romantic context; English accents rev your motor; you like gay men who remind you of actual gay men; you like the pace and tone of independent films; you don't mind bittersweet.

Happy Ending? Take a look at this poster and tell me what you think.

If You Were Going to Watch One, and Only One, of These Movies

Boys, for sure, though I am sad you won't get to see the beautiful flaming miracle that is Derek Villaneuva; if you want the sex, go for Free Fall, but feel free to fast forward or quit in the second half. 

90 Minute Film Class

Why am I up writing at 1:30 a.m.? Because last week I had a crown prep on Tooth 14, and it never stopped hurting but just kept getting worse and worse, so this morning I saw my dentist and he adjusted my temporary crown and then prescribed me a one-day course of steroids to reduce inflammation and help my nerve chill out. Steroids! Sleep not!

I have used the time wisely. I did some dishes, and then I watched a thing I've been meaning to watch for a few weeks, and now I'm going to write about it, and then I'm going to go lie down and stare, wide-eyed, into the darkness for awhile (steroids always make me feel like my eyelids are propped open with toothpicks), and then I'm going to get up again and make myself a cup of tea and watch an episode of Dollhouse via streaming Netflix, and then I'm going to lie down and stare wide-eyed into the dark again and just as I doze off Yehva is going to say, "Mama?" and I'm going to jerk awake and tuck her in again because she has kicked the covers off. And then I'm going to lie staring into the dark for awhile, and eventually I'll doze off but Yehva will need to be tucked in again, and I will repeat this two or three times and then just as the sky is beginning to get gray in the east, I will finally fall into a real sleep that will last until David pops his head in the door and says, "Su? Sweetie? It's 8:45. Don't you have an eye doctor appointment at 9?"

I've taken steroids before.

So, what did I watch?

Well, some guy named Plinkett makes video film reviews that are as long as movies themselves; his reviews of the Star Wars prequels run about 90 minutes each, in 3 30-minutes sections. There are actually two Plinketts: the real Plinkett, about whom we know very little except that he knows a lot about film and can talk about it in a very articulate and listen-able way; and the Plinkett Persona of the reviews, who speaks in a grating monotone that some people find off-putting, and lives in a filthy, dingy little house, where he seems to live on pizza rolls, Twinkies,  and beer. Persona Plinkett is extremely profane; he has carnal relations with the aforementioned Twinkies, and with his cat; and he is a serial killer. Once or twice in each review, the camera accidentally reveals bones, or his latest victim tied up in the background. You can imagine that this is also very off-putting to some people; it's a kind of humor that offends, and some folks won't watch his reviews because of it. You can see people having a conversation about it over at MetaFilter earlier this month, when his review of Revenge of the Sith was released. You'll see the whole range of reactions there, from folks who won't watch him, to folks who think he's brilliant and those other folks are killjoys, to folks like me who'd prefer not to have the jarring little serial-killer moments but are willing to fast-forward through them because they're uncommon and brief and what he has to say about movies is knowledgeable, insightful, and educational.

If you were to watch his review of Sith, you would learn so much about why and how a film can be bad. He teaches you to recognize bad dialogue, and how it can ruin even a good actor. He explains why green screen work can take a viewer out of the world of the film even if it's technically very good, by dissecting the making of the scene where Obi-Wan Kenobi confronts General Grievous. He does a wicked comparison of Sith with Citizen Kane, which even he admits is unfair, but as he lays out similar scenes from the two movies side-by-side, in about five minutes he teaches you some ways that a film can be great, and some ways that a film can fail. The first half of the third section of the review, where he describes Lucas's habit of filming all dialogue scenes in the same two ways over and over, is brilliant and devastating. Characters either walk, slowly, no matter how urgent things are, because if they walk fast or run they'll get to the end of the studio's green screen space too quickly, or they walk to a couch and sit on it for the rest of the scene, except at the moments when one character stands, walks three steps away, and then turns back.

Perhaps you do not have children who love all things Star Wars, and have not been forced to watch these movies over and over. In that case, these reviews may not mean as much to you. Yet, truly, I say to you that it is worth suffering through the prequels in order to better appreciate Plinkett's reviews; he knows his stuff. Things you've sort of vaguely noticed, a sense of confusion you maybe had, or a feeling that you were watching a bad movie but couldn't quite put your finger on why it was bad: Plinkett will bring those things into sharp relief, give you a vocabulary for them, and show you things that, once seen, you will never un-see again. Really: I took a film course in college, and I swear I learned more from Plinkett's 90 minutes on Sith than I did earning 3 semester credits.

You have to be careful, though: I'm not kidding about not being able to un-see what is seen. (And I'm not just talking about the tasteless serial killer running joke--though the Sith review doesn't show us any victims, instead treating us to a Buffy-style hot ass-kicking babe who shows up at Plinkett's house with a battle axe to take revenge, which, hey, a big improvement.)

No, I mean: it's not always a good thing in your life to recognize badness. Here I will tell you a story that many people have heard before, but it so very illustrates what I'm talking about. Many years ago, before we had children, my good friends Adrianne and Carla invited me and some other friends to go camping on South Manitou Island. Camping on SMI is rugged. I think there's a cold-water standpipe, but otherwise there are no amenities. You hike, and hang out in the woods, and we took our kayaks over on the ferry with us. Overall it wasn't really my thing; I'm glad I went, but I like room-service type vacations, and I didn't stay as long as everybody else did.

Anyway, Carla's friend Kate also came, and she was a coffee connoisseur. I remember sitting by the fire one morning watching Kate grind her coffee and brew it in a French-press pot she had brought with her. Battery-powered coffee grinder (I'm pretty sure, though memory may be embellishing here) and French press on the no-amenities island. I suppose I wasn't as subtle with the eye-rolling as I might have been, because Kate decided to explain to me why she was willing to go to so much trouble to have a decent cup of coffee even when she hadn't showered in two days and had to haul the water half a mile and heat it over an open fire. It had to do with good coffee having texture, and more than one flavor tone, and layers, and she described all these things to me in detail. "Jeez," I said to myself, "what a pretentious snob."

The next day, on my way home, I stopped for lunch at a diner-type family restaurant, and I had coffee. Because I really liked coffee. I took one sip--I remember this sip, I will remember it always--and said to myself, "Gah! Kate was right! This coffee is terrible!"

Kate had taught me two things: how to recognize and appreciate good coffee, and how to recognize and depreciate the bad stuff. It's both a gift and a curse, because before my South Manitou Island coffee-appreciation seminar, I liked bad coffee just fine. Cheap coffee, easy to make, and you can get it anywhere. I was happy.

Now I have become a person who values good coffee so much that when I travel, I take my own beans, grinder, and coffee pot.*

Kate ejected me from my innocent coffee Eden.

This is my go-to story about this phenomenon, but I could give so many examples: books my friends devour gleefully that I can't get through because I'm too good at recognizing too many varieties of bad writing. Or how I recently noticed in a dialogue scene in an episode of Buffy that when a certain actor wasn't facing the camera full-on, his mouth wasn't moving even though the sound track was his voice speaking, and now I see that happening all the time. Or how, many years ago, David and I studied design and typography together. This means that, if we make a flyer for your event, it will look a lot better than most people's amateur flyers. It also means that we are always distracted by bad design on menus, and the signs on businesses, and crappy kerning in headlines and logos. In some ways, life was better when we just didn't see those things. Though critiquing the contrast, alignment, repetition, and proximity on the table tents does always give us something to talk about on date night.

So, on the one hand, I want to encourage you to watch a Plinkett review--perhaps especially his Sith review, if you're squeamish about the whole serial-killer thing, because there are no tied-up women in his basement in this one (though there is a thing with a cat that is not funny but at least is so obviously fake that, for me at least, it was also not disturbing--just eye-rolling). To me, two minutes of gross-out unfunny humor is a price worth paying for 90 minutes of really worthwhile insight into film, and if you're willing to risk it, and can put up with a lot of profanity (watching a few HBO shows over the last few years should perhaps be a prerequisite; it trains the ear), you will learn a lot, especially if you haven't had a film course or thought much about how movies are written, filmed, and edited. When you are watching a good movie, you may well find yourself appreciating the framing of shots, or the editing of key scenes, or the deft handling of expository dialogue, in a way you never have before.

On the other hand: if you have not thought about these things before, there are probably a whole lot of movies you have liked just fine that will now be ruined, to a greater or lesser extent, once you have learned to see this stuff. Sometimes, I think it can be argued, it is better just not to know. Only you can make this call.

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*And people make fun of me for it. But come to my room for coffee. Although, actually, right now neither Kate nor I drink coffee. She lost her taste for it during her last pregnancy, and I gave up caffeine a few months ago, and then a couple of weeks ago gave up even my morning decaf because of acid reflux issues. I'm so middle-aged. But I appreciated my coffee while I could. Now I drink many cups of decaf Lipton tea every day, and am actively resisting any efforts anyone might make to teach me to appreciate good tea. Decaf Lipton tastes good to me, it's cheap, and you can buy it anywhere. I'm not planning to mess with that any time soon.