Subtitled Suspension (Of Disbelief)
Why I like my gay films 'in foreign'
I prefer my gay films with subtitles. And streamed. I mean, someone might see me in an art-house cinema. (Another reason, in addition to all the rave reviews, I've yet to see All of Us Strangers.)
Non-Anglo gay films are, I find, generally just better and more engaging. This isn’t difficult, though. Thanks to social media and a shared language, the UK is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of the American culture war machine, and there’s nothing more tedious than that.
You might object that I recently raved about the 2023 UK film Saltburn– but Saltburn is satire. And arguably not really ‘gay’ either.
I prefer my gay – sorry, LBTQIA2S+ – films ‘in foreign’ also because they’re more ‘exotic’, and because the unfamiliar language, dialects, customs, and locale means it’s easier to suspend disbelief.
If they were speaking in an American or British accent, I would, I'm sure, start tutting and huffing, ‘Mary, please!’.
However, I think it’s fair to say that many if not most non-English speaking countries tend to do people stuff better than English-speaking countries, even before US wokery replaced art and communication with ‘raising awareness’.
Not that I’m any expert on people stuff – being thoroughly Anglo and single myself. I fear anyway that wokery is doing its ghastly work in non-English speaking countries as well - just a bit slower.
In case you’re curious, I’ve listed some of the most memorable gay films - which here means films with a male-male romantic/intense friendship storyline, and no budget - I’ve seen in the last few months, mostly by accident, with Netflix or Amazon Prime algorithms serving them up to me.
I told you I was lazy.
Where Are You Going, Habibi? Ibrahim, a confident but DL German Turkish lad (Cem Alkan) living with his more traditional parents, falls for a straight blond wrestler thief (Martin Walde) – and who wouldn’t? – in this naughty feelgood movie by Tor Iben from 2015.
Ibrahim’s daring, ‘self-hating’, almost predatory pursuit goes against all the out-and-proud shibboleths, and also good sense, but has a gloriously unrealistic ending that delivers the timeless and beautiful (to me anyway) dream that unconditional love, and excellent technique, can make a bad boy good.
Consequences, a sparse, shredded 2018 Slovenian film by Darko Stante about bad boys and proto gangsters with great haircuts, starring Matej Zemljic as a charismatic, taciturn, troubled lad dealt a bad hand who is sent to a youth detention centre.
As powerfully realistic, both about destinations and origins – and the motivations of others – as Habibi? isn’t, it also features a selfish, phobic mother instead of the usual cliché of the ‘toxic’ dad.
Close – a stunning 2022 Belgian film about the loss of innocence to prejudice, which I wrote about here. Not only is it ‘in foreign’ – it doesn’t use many words at all, to extraordinarily potent effect.
The Man With The Answers, a sweet Greek 2021 road trip movie by Stelios Kammitsis, in which nothing very much happens to a great soundtrack – save that a shy, lonely, and cute - natch - former Greek diving champion (Vasilis Magouliotis) meets an annoying, bossy German gay (Anton Well).
Who turns out to be exactly what he needs.
My Best Friend is a delicately done 2018 Argentinian film by Martin Deus set in the crisp, pure beauty of Patagonia, about the unlikely but passionate and Platonic friendship between two teenagers, sensible, sensitive, smart Lorenzo (Angelo Mutti Spinetta) and troubled rebel Caito (Lautaro Rodriguez) – one possibly gay, the other possibly not.
The Endless Summer, an Anglo film, but not a gay one – rather a classic, 1966 surfing movie by Bruce Brown, following two pretty young Californian surfer dudes, one blonde (Matt Hynson) one brunette (Robert August), around the world.
With an engaging, chatty, wise-cracking commentary by Brown, the lyrical, beautifully shot Technicolor images of the boys mastering the waves together off Africa, Australia, Tahiti, and Hawaii, or carrying their boards back across the hot sands, silhouetted against the sinking sun, convey, at least aesthetically (and despite the careful mentions of attention from 'local girls') the perfect holiday romance.
Oh, and there's no dialogue. Luckily, Brown didn't pack his microphone.
Which allows me to subtitle it in my head.