Movie Review	Movie Reviews Archive

Quinceañera
Written and directed by Wash Westmoreland and Richard Glatzer. Starring Chalo Gonzalez, Jesse Garcia, Jason L. Wood, David W. Ross.
How to order Poster Boy
Written by Lecia Rosenthal and Ryan Shiraki and directed by Zak Tucker. Starring Matt Newton, Valerie Geffner, Michael Lerner, Karen Allen, Jack Noseworthy.
How to order Another Gay Movie
Written by directed by Todd Stephens (from a story by Tim Kaltenecker). With Richard Hatch.
How to order

The end of the summer has become, these last few years, the traditional time for gay-themed films to reach independent cinema screens. And why not? The summer blockbusters have run through their audiences, many new gay films got their premieres at the plethora of june pride-month LGBT film festivals, and gay audiences will pretty much go see queer films anytime. This year brings a spurt of gay independents that run the range from good, to bad, to nearly ugly: Quinceañera, Poster Boy, and Another Gay Movie. Interesting, it's this last film-- truly terrible in so many ways-- that's the most important.

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Sudsy Latin soap

Quinceañera is a lovely film written and directed by Wash Westmoreland and Richard Glatzer. Westmoreland made a name for himself (as Wash West) in the late 1990s with the hardcore porn titles Dr. Jerkoff and Mr. Hard and Animus . In 2001 he moved to more mainstream fare when, along with Glatzer, he wrote and co-directed The Fluffer-- a funny and compellingly serious comedy-of-manners about the porn industry. Glatzer had already made the estimable AIDS comedy Grief in 1993, and his narrative sensibilities blended well with Westmoreland's sense of sex and style. In 2003 Westmoreland (again as Wash West) made The Hole-- a classy, funny porn parody of The Ring. In Quinceañera they've combined efforts again to produce a charming, funny, and moving story of Magdalena (Emily Rios), a young Latina who, just before her 15th birthday-- her quinceañera-- finds herself unaccountably pregnant and a disgrace to her family.

What sounds like a routine plot of a YA novel soon becomes far more complicated. Magdalena moves in with her elderly uncle Tio Tomas (Chalo Gonzalez) and cousin Carlos (Jesse Garcia), a butch and streetwise gay teen. They all live in an apartment owned by Gary (David W. Ross) and James (Jason L. Wood), an upper-middle-class gay couple who become intricately, and unpleasantly, involved in the trio's lives.

Nearly everything about the film works. Westmoreland and Glatzer find the right tone with every character, and the interplay between class and sex, social aspirations and sex, and ethnicity and sex are all exquisitely balanced. Quinceañera was marketed as an "ethnic coming-of-age movie" not a "gay movie," but this just demonstrates the poverty of categories.

Political drama queens

Poster Boy-- written by Lecia Rosenthal and Ryan Shiraki and directed by Zak Tucker-- is not a great movie. In many ways it's a mess, but an ambitious one that rises above what it might've been (and what it's being advertised as: a run-of-the-mill lightweight gay comedy).

Henry Kray (Matt Newton) is the closeted gay son of politically cynical, homophobic Southern senator Jack Kray (Michael Lerner)-- think Jesse Helms-- and his unhappy, usually-soused wife Eunice (Karen Allen). Henry, who usually guards his emotions carefully, meets Anthony (Jack Noseworthy), a former ACT UPper who lives with Izzie (Valerie Geffner), an HIV-positive heterosexual woman prone to despair. Yes, you know the plot-- Henry and Anthony have an affair, Henry is pushed by his father's homophobia to come out, complications ensue.

Clichéd? Sure, but none of the characters react exactly as we might think-- Karen Allen's Eunice is deftly drawn and acted, and there's no simple, feel-good political message. The film appears to be shot on video, and along with Tucker's use of a handheld camera, this gives the movie a documentary look that well serves the material's emotional complexity. While Poster Boy is by and large successful, it has such modest goals that in the end it feels a little stunted.

Speed bumps needed

It's difficult to know what to say about Another Gay Movie. Certainly not much that is nice. Written by directed by Todd Stephens (from a story by Tim Kaltenecker) this is a parody of Hollywood teen films. Great idea-- these films are ripe for parody-- but Another Gay Movie tries so hard as to be nearly unbearable.

The basic plot is taken from American Pie-- four gay teens who have just graduated high school vow to have anal sex before they go to college. There are references also to films such as Porky's, Carrie, Psycho, Get Real, and a host of others.

There are so many problems here it's difficult to begin. First of all, just lifting plot-points and even whole scenes is not parody. Here one of the boys fucks a quiche, not an apple pie; in another scene, a fantasy sequence at his high school prom, a character is drenched in cum not blood-- you get the idea. Director Stephens (whose Edge of 17 and Gypsy 83 were wonderful) paces the film at such a frantic, hysterical pitch that even when the jokes might work (not many do), they're killed by manic overdrive.

What's interesting-- and important-- about Another Gay Movie is its unashamed vulgarity and a refusal to make gay sex anything less than physical. I can't think of another film that deals with douching before getting fucked, shaving your asshole, finger-fucking and then smelling your fingers, scat play, or just plain old getting-fucked-by-two-guys-at-the-same-time with such enthusiasm or bad taste. The film also contains quite a bit of frontal nudity (including some of "Survivor" winner Richard Hatch). But it remains that Another Gay Movie is just mostly grating and unfunny. If it were better-- and kept its hardcore look at sex-- it would've been a joy.

Author Profile:  Michael Bronski
	Michael Bronski is the author of Culture Clash: The Making of Gay Sensibility and The Pleasure Principle: Sex, Backlash, and the Struggle for Gay Freedom. He writes frequently on sex, books, movies, and culture, and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
	Email:	mabronski@aol.com