Welcome to 5 Favorites. Each week, I will put together a list of my 5 favorites (films, performances, whatever strikes my fancy) along with commentary on a given topic each week, usually in relation to a specific film releasing that week.
With the release of Bros, romantic comedies are about to get a lot gayer. There are very few wide releasing gay comedies and that’s a shame, but now we have a chance to acknowledge and celebrate queer love stories in cinema. Once again, there aren’t a lot of them and I’ve certainly not seen all of the ones that exist, but these five films are my favorites so far. Special mention to some films that I didn’t ultimately select: Jeffrey, The Favourite, and Call Me by Your Name. Please keep in mind that these are my favorites, not the best as Call Me by Your Name and The Favourite would likely shift into the top five.
The Crying Game (1992)
Neil Jordan’s The Crying Game is, at its heart, a love story. Built into a thriller framework, the narrative themes revolve around then-uncommon romantic entanglements. The story is of an Irish Republican Army (IRA) cell that has taken a British soldier (Forest Whitaker) hostage. Suspecting he may die, the soldier asks Fergus (Stephen Rea) to seek out and protect his girlfriend Dil (Jaye Davidson) since he won’t be able to do it himself. At first, Fergus pursues a relationship with her, but discovers that she is transgender, a situation he had not been prepared for. He must come to terms with his attraction to her identity.
Not only were transgender characters incredibly uncommon in film, the entire LGBTQ community was struggling with its identity after being scape-goated and terrorized for decades, culminating in the devastating AIDS crisis. Although this film isn’t about that, it is about the LGBTQ community in an era of history where such surprises were very controversial. This and Pulp Fiction were among the last that Harvey Weinstein didn’t heavily mess with at Miramax before releasing. As such, it remains one of the best films Miramax ever produced and is perhaps at the peak of creativity in Rea’s, Davidson’s, and Jordan’s respective careers.
Brokeback Mountain (2005)
Another film that redefined what could be shown in cineplexes, Brokeback Mountain helped change a lot of hearts about gay representation in cinema. Prominent straight actors Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal headlined this film about two seasonal workers set to watch over a flock of sheep in the Rocky mountains, secluded from the world around them. As the pair falls in love, their lives are forever impacted with each traveling similar, but divergent paths after their time together comes to an end.
Ledger gave easily the best performance of the year and Gyllenhaal is fantastic as are Michelle Williams and Anne Hathaway as the pair’s later romantic interests. Director Ang Lee was working at the pinnacle of his career and he managed to turn this simple love story into a story for an entire generation. It challenged social mores while exposing the realities that faced gay men in that time period and asked audiences to empathize with their struggles. The closing moment of the film is one of the most bittersweet exultations of love ever captured in cinema and helped sell this film as a new course in what was possible for cinematic representation.
Out in the Dark (2013)
A film you aren’t going to hear about when people discuss their favorite gay love stories is this Israeli drama set in a modern landscape where the Israelis and Palestinians are at war over ideologies. The setting provides a strangely poetic parallel between the struggles of LGBTQ people and the fight of Palestinians to be seen as valuable members of society against a government hell-bent on sequestering and diminishing their identities.
The film stars Nicholas Jacob as a gay Palestinian and Michael Aloni as gay Israeli who meet and fall in love over the course of the film. Jacob’s Nimer struggles with his own identity as he faces exclusion from his own community on the basis of his sexual orientation while being discriminated against by the Israelis due to his nationality. Director Michael Mayer’s directorial debut is a quiet, unassuming exploration of national identity competing against personal identity and the struggles certain oppressed members of society face when they are hated for different aspects of their being. Jacob and Aloni are terrific in the film and Mayer’s subtle, uncomplicated approach to filmmaking helps drive home the film’s themes with introspective brilliance.
Carol (2015)
I haven’t seen a lot of queer love stories that fall into the L, B, or T categories. That’s largely because the number of such films are only now starting to increase, sometimes thanks to the watershed moments of gay representation I referenced previously. That said, one of the best lesbian love stories I’ve yet seen is this Todd Haynes film from Phyllis Nagy’s adaptation of her own novel. The story revolves around shop girl Therese (Rooney Mara) who falls in love with wealthy socialite Carol (Cate Blanchett) as the two bond while Carol is shopping for her daughter’s Christmas gift. As the pair spend more and more time together, Carol’s carefully curated world begins to crumble as her husband finds her dalliances offensive and Carol must decide between living out the romantic entanglement while losing everything else that defines her or keeping a hold of what she has while losing the one person she loves.
Blanchett never brings anything but her A game to her roles, but Mara is brilliant opposite her, both giving performances that could be considered among their very best. The narrative is simple and told with evocative grace by Haynes. The cinematography by Edward Lachman is sensational. The color palette is reminiscent of Haynes’ previous Far from Heaven, which is in turn a tribute to Sirkian melodramas. This film is very similar in style and intent, but stands out as its own film, moving from the background gay romance of Far from Heaven to a foreground lesbian romance. Seeing a queer filmmaker tackling a queer story is a welcome change of pace and shows how far we’ve come in filmic society.
Love, Simon (2018)
Each of the four prior films cited here are bleak or bleak-adjacent, so I thought the list needed something a bit lighter. Love, Simon is a warm, loving comedy drama about a young man (Nick Robinson) who finally comes to terms with his sexuality only to have it revealed to his entire school where his fears about coming out get a reality check. The film is from hotshot TV producer Greg Berlanti and was his first feature directorial effort since 2010’s Life As We Know It. Through his DC shows for the CW, Berlanti has helped push the boundaries of LGBTQ representation on television and while he’s a bit late to the romcom crowd with this one, it does precede Bros by four years.
Love, Simon is more coming-of-age high school story than romantic comedy, so Bros might get a pass. Further, it only made a paltry $40 million at the box office, which is a bit anemic compared to a lot of other romcoms of the past. While it wasn’t a box office behemoth, it was a quietly pleasing little film with solid performances form a young cast and a step forward for young adult films featuring LGBTQ characters. That’s one thing all of the films on this list can lay claim to is pulling modern cinema into a more queer-friendly space. And if you like watching sweet little high school dramas where love triumphs in the end, this is a worthy film to look out for.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.