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The top 10 queer-centric movies of 2023

From ‘Rustin’ to ‘Barbie,’ it was a banner year in cinema

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Barry Keoghan in ‘Saltburn.’ (Photo courtesy of Amazon Studios Prime Video)

It’s been a great year for movies, we’re glad to say, but that’s made it harder than usual for us to compile our annual list of the 10 best queer-centric films. Still, we’ve made the hard calls necessary, and come up with our picks for the most outstanding of all the movies we’ve covered over the last 12 months.

You all know how these things work, so we won’t waste space with unnecessary explanations. Here, listed in reverse order, are the Blade’s Top Ten Films of 2023:

10. Rustin (Dir: George C. Wolfe)

Biopics face a difficult challenge when it comes to presenting an authentic portrayal of their subject: How do you encapsulate a person’s life into a two-hour story without relying on broad strokes? This frank and inspiring look at Civil Rights hero Bayard Rustin, whose monumental contribution to the movement was all-but-unsung for decades thanks to his open homosexuality, skirts the usual pitfalls by focusing on a specific episode in his career-orchestrating the 1963 March on Washington where MLK delivered his culture-shifting “I Have a Dream” speech – and delivering a behind-the-scenes snapshot of a seminal moment in American history at a time when stories about the triumph of activism feel more urgent than ever. Even so, it makes it onto our list mainly on the strength of star Colman Domingo, whose unapologetically thorny interpretation of the late queer icon is an engrossing – and refreshingly un-romanticized – powerhouse from start to finish.

9. Of An Age (Dir: Goran Stolevski)

What yearly “Best of” list would be complete without one or two under-the-radar gems? This Australian import (made in 2022, but released in the U.S. early this year) qualifies on both counts, but more importantly it’s a reminder that – despite frequent complaints to the contrary – there are great queer romance movies being made. This one is about two teens (Elias Anton and Thom Green) who spend a day together and fall hard for each other, but time and circumstance are not on their side; years later, reunited at a wedding, they find the connection between them has endured, but it may be too late to do anything about it. It’s a simple premise, and not much happens in terms of plot, but the winning authenticity of the love story it tells – and the way it captures unresolvable longing – is infinitely and universally relatable. It’s not a gay love story, it’s a love story between two people who happen to be gay, and that makes all the difference.

8. Rotting in the Sun (Dir: Sebastian Silva)

Even more under-the-radar, perhaps, is this out-of-left-field contender from out Chilean-born filmmaker Silva, who casts himself and real-life social media star Jordan Firstman as fictional versions of themselves in an outrageous, interwoven stream-of-events narrative that savagely satirizes the perpetually distracted state of self-obsessed modern culture while offering a darkly humorous commentary on cultural classism. It’s a lot to juggle in a single movie, but Silva pulls it off audaciously in a movie that does not go where you expect it to go and defies easy categorization by blending absurd farce with heartrending tragedy without missing a single beat. It also features un-simulated queer sex, and the fact that bold move is not the main attraction is itself testament to the power of this film’s unique vision. An MVP performance by veteran Chilean actress Catalina Saavedra is the richly satisfying icing on the cake.

7. Asteroid City (Dir: Wes Anderson)

This might be a controversial choice for us, given that critical response for this quintessentially Wes-Anderson-y think piece has been sharply divided and that the “queer factor” involved is relatively low; nevertheless, we stand by it, and only partly because the existential summer of “Barbenheimer” (more on that later) began with the quirky cult filmmaker’s visually stunning fantasia about a gathering of disparate characters in a kitschy New Mexican town for a government-sponsored “young inventors” competition during the height of 1950s-era “nuclear panic.” True to form, Anderson places meta-layers upon meta-layers by framing his narrative as a real-life theatrical play – penned by a queer playwright (Edward Norton) having a love affair with his leading man (Jason Schwartzman) – being memorialized in a TV documentary. And while this might make it hard for some to keep track of the story or identify with the characters, it also makes this movie into an almost perfect meditation on the way a cultural “zeitgeist” – in this case, the percolating dread that dominated world consciousness in the aftermath of the atomic bomb – manifests itself in our shared public imagination. An all-star cast of players (including Scarlett Johannson, Tom Hanks, Tilda Swinton and a host of others) only sweetens the pot.

6. May December (Dir: Todd Haynes)

It may be no surprise to see the latest film by “new queer cinema” icon Haynes on our list, but rest assured we’re not the only ones to recognize the brilliance of this uncomfortable character study in which a Hollywood actress (Natalie Portman), hired to star in a docudrama about a real-life tabloid sex scandal involving the inappropriate relationship and subsequent marriage between an adult woman (Julianne Moore) and an underage boy, descends on the couple’s household, stirring up long-unaddressed feelings for each of them as she loses herself in the persona of her role. Steeped in the tranquilizing suburban blandness that has always been a hallmark of Haynes’ melancholy, subversively divergent milieu, it’s the kind of movie that feels like a fever dream and leaves you grappling with issues you thought you’d worked out for yourself years ago – and while Portman and longtime Haynes muse Moore both deliver their usual stellar performances, it’s Charles Melton’s unexpectedly nuanced turn as the now-adult object of Moore’s transgressive desires that provides its troubled heart.

5. Oppenheimer (Dir: Christopher Nolan)

OK, there’s not really a specific queer angle to this introspective, epic-length film about the man who built the atom bomb, but the themes and questions it forces us to confront – all tied to the looming specter of effectively instant worldwide annihilation we’ve been living with ever since the nuclear blasts that brought WWII to an abrupt and sobering end – make it essential viewing anyway. Centered on the white-knuckle intensity of Cillian Murphy’s performance in the title role and bolstered by equally invested work from an all-star ensemble of supporting players (Emily Blunt, Robert Downey, Jr., Matt Damon, and more), Nolan’s finely wrought biopic becomes a meditation on responsibility, blame, the madness of mutually assured destruction, and – most significantly of all – living with an omnipresent sense of inevitable doom. Yet as depressing as all that sounds, the film resonates with enough humanity and compassion – even for its most ethically challenging characters – that we can walk away from it with something that feels almost like hope.

4. All of Us Strangers (Dir: Andrew Haigh)

Invading our list from the UK is the latest film from the writer/director who raised the bar for queer romance movies with 2011’s “Weekend,” a haunted (literally) love story in which a lonely London screenwriter (Andrew Scott) communes with the ghosts of his long-deceased parents (Claire Foy, Jaime Bell) while beginning a tentative relationship with a handsome but palpably sad neighbor (Paul Mescal). Based on a novel by Japanese author Taichi Yamada, it’s a ghostly tale more esoteric than supernatural, driven by mood, draped in primary colors, and infused with life through the tenderness between its two fragile lovers, less interested in the details of a hypothetical afterlife than it is in the bonds of love – in all its forms – which connect us to each other beyond time and mortality. Sure, it’s gloomy on the surface, and it brushes up against sorrows that are mercifully unfathomable to many of us, but it somehow manages to leave us uplifted rather than unsettled – and almost as a bonus, the sweet-and-sexy chemistry between its leading men will stick with you long after the final credits roll.

3. Saltburn (Dir: Emerald Fennell)

We’re not going to lie: part of what earns this gnarly, aggressively twisted movie a high place on our list is its audaciousness. In its tale of Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan), a working class lad on scholarship to Oxford whose infatuation with a charismatic and wealthy classmate (Jacob Elordi) leads to a debauched and treacherous summer at the elegantly dilapidated country estate of the title, it turns a vaguely Dickensian story of fate, irony, and social commentary into an escalating wild ride that takes us places we don’t expect to go and never wanted to see, and it makes us love every guilty second of it. Yes, it’s dark and depraved, an over-the-top, starkly satirical look into the casually cruel world of the “ruling class” that forces us to ask just how far we would be willing to go to become a part of it, and it uses our own expectations against us to deliver a bombshell ending that might feel like a slap in the face for those who aren’t paying close attention (and possibly for those who are, too) – but all of that gives us even more reason to laud this second effort from the daring writer/director of “Promising Young Woman” as one of the most thrilling and unforgettable cinematic experiences of the year.

2. Killers of the Flower Moon (Dir: Martin Scorsese)

Like “Oppenheimer,” there’s no direct queer thread to be found in this late-career masterpiece from one of America’s most accomplished cinema artists, but its exploration of the deeply embedded racism that has been woven throughout our nation’s history has obvious resonance for anyone whose status as an “other” places them at risk of exploitation, oppression, and worse in a culture that is stacked against them. Based on the non-fiction book by David Gann, it chronicles a conspiracy in 1920s Oklahoma in which the indigenous Osage community, made rich by the oil fields under its tribal land, was robbed of its wealth by local white business leaders through a systematic campaign of marriage and murder, and the efforts of the then-fledgling FBI to bring the perpetrators to some kind of justice. With career-highlight performances from Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert DeNiro, as well as a revelatory turn from indigenous actor Lily Gladstone, there’s more than enough great acting to keep us mesmerized throughout its three-and-a-half-hour runtime – and the same understanding of the pathology of corruption that Scorsese deployed in his classic sagas about organized crime breathes powerful insight into a story that has just as much to say about the America we live in today as the one in which it takes place.

1. Barbie (Dir: Greta Gerwig)

When we first predicted this would be the movie of the year, our tongue may have been firmly planted in our cheek – but we’re not sorry to be able to say we were right. Not just a campy fantasy about a doll, it’s a truth bomb delivered in a candy-colored Trojan Horse, in which an unexpected existential crisis (do we detect a running theme in this year’s movies?) sends Barbie (Margot Robbie) into the human world looking for answers and ends up turning her own world upside down as Ken (Ryan Gosling), having seen the glories of “the patriarchy”, tries to remake Barbieland in his own image. It’s a premise that gives Gerwig (and partner Noah Baumbach, with whom she co-wrote the screenplay) plenty of fodder to skewer contemporary culture, and she takes aim at all the usual targets as she gleefully spreads the kind of progressive, humanitarian, pro-feminist, socially ethical messaging that conservative pundits like to fall over themselves dismissing as “woke” propaganda. But that’s not the endgame in this transcendent wonder of a movie, because Gerwig and company take things beyond the dualistic dogmas that stymie us in our quest for a more equitable world to ask some much deeper questions, creating a piece of absurdist cinema with as much intellectual weight as any film you’re ever likely to see. Of course, viewers hung up on the “culture war” talking points being batted around from every direction might not notice, any more than they are likely to notice the comprehensive array of nods and tributes she pays along the way to the iconic movies that inspired her, but one of the many joys of “Barbie” is that it reveals more with each repeat viewing – so there’s always hope they’ll catch on, eventually.

Oh, and even if the only queer content it contains comes in the form of deliciously unsubtle innuendo, there’s something quintessentially queer about it – and we’re not just talking about the color palette.

Ryan Gosling and Margot Robbie in ‘Barbie.’ (Photo courtesy of Warner Brothers)
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‘Pink Narcissus’ reasserts queer identity in the face of repression

Gorgeously restored film a surreal fantasia on gay obsessions

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Bobby Kendall stars in ‘Pink Narcissus.’ (Photo courtesy of Strand Releasing)

Back in 1963, there really wasn’t such a thing as “Queer Cinema.”

Of course there had been plenty of movies made by queer people, even inside Hollywood’s tightly regulated studio system; artists like George Cukor and Vincente Minnelli brought a queer eye and sensibility to their work, even if they couldn’t come right out and say so, and became fluent in a “coded” language of filmmaking that could be deciphered by audience members “in the know,” while everyone else – including the censors – remained mostly oblivious. 

Yes, the movie industry was adapting to the demands of a generation that had grown increasingly countercultural in its priorities, and topics that had once been taboo on the big screen, including the more or less open depiction of queerness, were suddenly fair game. But even so, you’d be hard-pressed to find examples of movies where being queer was not tied to shame, stigma, and a certain social ostracization that remained, for the most part, a fact of life. Hollywood may have been ready to openly put queer people on the screen, but the existence it portrayed for them could hardly have been described as happy.

Yet this was the setting in which a Manhattan artist named James Bidgood began a filmmaking project that would dominate his life for the next several years and eventually become a seminal influence on queer cinema and queer iconography in general – all executed, with the exception of an ambitious climactic sequence, in a cramped New York apartment utilizing elaborate handmade sets and costumes, which would define an entire queer aesthetic for decades to come. Though disputes with the film’s financiers would eventually cause him to remove his name from the project, resulting in years of anonymity before finally being credited with his work, he has now taken his rightful place as one of the architects of modern queer sensibility.

The movie he made – “Pink Narcissus,” which has been newly restored in glistening 4K glory and is currently being screened in theaters across the U.S. after an April premiere at Manhattan’s Newfest – didn’t exactly take the world by storm. When it finally premiered on “arthouse” theater screens in 1971, it was slammed by mainstream critics (like Vincent Canby of the New York Times, who compared it to “a homemade Mardi Gras drag outfit” as if that were a bad thing) and largely ignored, even as a new spirit of creative freedom was bringing more and more visibility to openly queer content. A screening at 1984’s “Gay Film Festival” reintroduced it to an audience that was finally ready to embrace its feverishly stylized, near-surreal fantasia on gay obsessions, and since then it has loomed large in the queer cultural imagination, providing clear and directly attributable influence over the entire queer visual lexicon that has developed in its wake – even if it has remained widely unseen among all but the most dedicated queer cinema buffs.

With a running time of little more than an hour, it’s not the kind of movie that can be described in terms of a cohesive linear plot. “Official” synopsis efforts have typically framed it as the story of a young male hustler who, while waiting for a call from a favorite “trick,” fantasizes about various erotic scenarios in his spangled and bejeweled apartment. But since it is a film with no spoken dialogue that takes place largely in the imagination of its central character, it’s difficult to place a definitive construct upon it. What’s certainly true is that it presents a series of daydreamed episodes in which its protagonist – played by sultry lipped Bobby Kendall, a teen runaway who had become a model for Bidgood’s “physique” photography as well as his roommate and (probably) on-and-off lover – imagines himself in various scenarios, including as a matador facing a bull (who is really a leather-clad motorcyclist in a public restroom), a Roman slave thrown to the mercy and pleasure of his emperor, and both a Sheik and a harem boy obsessed with a well-endowed exotic male belly dancer. Eventually, the young man’s thoughts venture into the streets outside, where he is immersed in a seedy, sordid world of sexual mania and degradation, before facing a final fantasy in which, as an “innocent” nymph in the woods (perhaps the human embodiment of the film’s titular butterfly), he is engulfed and consumed by his own sexual impulses, only to be reborn in his apartment to face the inevitable transformation from “twink” to “trick” that presumably awaits all gay men who dedicate their lives to the transgressive desires that drive them.

All of that, to modern sensibilities, might seem like a series of stereotypical and vaguely demeaning tropes intended to warn us against the slippery slope of a hedonistic lifestyle, composed into a moralistic avant garde parable in which pleasure and punishment are intertwined with all the surety of fate; but what sets “Pink Narcissus” apart from so many early examples of queer cinema is that, despite its reliance on “rough trade” trappings and the performative “tragedy” of its overall arc from youth and beauty to age and corruption, it exudes an unmistakable attitude of joy.

We’re talking about the joy of sensuality, the joy of self-love, the joy of partaking in a life that calls to us despite the restrictions of societal “normality” which would have us deny ourselves such pleasures; in short, the joy of being alive – something to which every living being theoretically has the right, but for queer people is all-too-often quashed under the mountain of disapproval and shame imposed upon them by a heteronormative society and its judgments. Considering that it was made in a time when the queer presence in film was mostly limited to victimhood or ridicule, it feels as much an act of resistance as it does a celebration of homoeroticism; seen in a cultural climate like today’s, when joy itself seems as much under attack as sexuality, it becomes an almost radical act – a declaration of independence asserting our natural right to be who we are and like what we like.

That’s why “Pink Narcissus” looms so large in the landscape of queer filmmaking. It’s the irrefutable evidence of queer joy singing out to us from a time when it could only exist in our most private of moments; it’s unapologetically campy, over the top in its theatricality, and almost comically blatant in its prurient obsession with the anatomy of the anonymous male models who make up most of its cast (and Kendall, who seems to dress himself in various outfits only to undress for the next erotic daydream), but it feels like a thumb on the nose to anyone who might shame us for for celebrating our sexual nature, which Bidgood’s movie unequivocally does. 

Restored to the vivid (and luridly colorful) splendor of its original 8mm format, “Pink Narcissus” is currently touring the country on a series of limited screenings; VOD streaming will be available soon, check the Strand Releasing website for more information.

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Queer history, identity interweave in theatrical ‘Lavender Men’

Exploring one of Abe Lincoln’s most intense male relationships

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Pete Ploszek and Roger Q. Mason star in ‘Lavender Men.’ (Photo by Matt Plaxco courtesy Pride Flix)

For someone who’s been dead for 160 years, Abraham Lincoln is still hot.

No, we don’t mean it that way, though if we were talking about the Lincoln of “Lavender Men” – a new movie starring and co-written by queer playwright Roger Q. Mason, who also wrote the acclaimed play from which it is adapted – we certainly could be. We’re really just making the observation that the 16th POTUS continues to occupy a central place in America’s national imagination. And in an age when our America is torn by nearly as much division (over many of the same core values) as the one he presided over, it’s impossible not to compare the ideals he has come to stand for with the ones currently holding sway over the country’s political identity, and wonder at how short we have fallen from the mark.

Yet there has always been a gap between the historical reality of Lincoln’s “Great Emancipator” reputation and the romanticized pedestal upon which he has been placed; and if he looms large as an influence over American identity, it’s as much for his enigmatic nature as for the values he represents. Was he a true believer in the principals of “liberty and justice for all” or a political pragmatist who recognized that preserving the nation – and its growing power in the larger arena of world affairs – required the abolition of an increasingly unsustainable system that had divided it? Your answer to that rhetorical question will likely depend on which version of “American Identity” aligns most closely with your own.

It’s also a question that’s further complicated in the context of Lincoln’s private life, something that has itself been the subject of debate as modern historians and scholars consider the questions about his sexuality unavoidably implied in his well-documented biographical record, which reveals not only a pattern of closely bonded male “friendship” with various companions throughout his life but plentiful evidence that the romantic nature of these relationships was something of an “open secret” in his lifetime, as explored in last year’s brash but scrupulously documented “Lover of Men.” If Lincoln was himself an “other,” a queer man who had risen to position and power in a world that despised and shunned people like him, what new light would that cast on his legacy?

That’s the crux of the premise behind “Lavender Men,” which builds a “fantasia” around one of Lincoln’s most intense male relationships – with Colonel Elmer Ellsworth, a young family friend who helped him carry out his 1860 campaign for president and would later become the first “notable” casualty of the Civil War when he was shot while removing a Confederate flag from the window of an inn facing the White House. The film, however, doesn’t take place in a period setting; instead, it happens in an empty modern-day theater – an apropos allusion to the location of Lincoln’s ultimate fate – where the overworked and underappreciated Taffeta (Mason) oversees the production of a play about the romance between Lincoln and Ellsworth (Pete Ploszek and Alex Esola). After a particularly demoralizing performance, the put-upon stage manager ponders alone about their own life – as a queer, plus-sized, Black Filipinx TGNC person trying to find connection and community in a world where they feel invisible – through an imagined retelling of Lincoln’s doomed love story in which the narrative is projected through the lens of their own struggle to be seen, loved, and accepted,

Expanded from the play and directed by co-screenwriter Lovell Holder, a lifelong friend of Mason who helped develop the project and oversaw the original 2022 stage production at Los Angeles’s Skylight Theater Company, the film was in his own words “shot over 10 days on a shoestring budget” – and it admittedly shows. However, it leans into its limitations, letting the spare, isolated atmosphere of the empty theater exert its own influence over the material. In this framing, Taffeta becomes something like a reverse ghost, a spirit from the present haunting a past in which their own unfulfilled longings – and resentments – are reflected through the rumored romance of a president and his “little” man, and their exploration of the narrative, with all its inherent observations about the dynamics of power, gender, status, and physical attraction, ultimately becomes a meditation on the importance of redefining personal identity free from the shaping influence of other people’s experience or expectations.

Needless to say, it’s not the kind of movie that will appeal to every taste; highly conceptual in nature, with a nonlinear storytelling pattern that frequently calls attention to its own artificiality, it might prove perplexing to audiences used to a more traditional approach. Even so, it’s refreshingly unpretentious, acknowledging its own campiness without undercutting the authenticity of the voice which drives it – which is, of course, Mason’s.

Delivering an entirely charismatic, commandingly fabulous, and palpably honest tour de force, the playwright/actor is at the center of “Lavender Men” at every level, evoking our delight, laughter, tears, discomfort, and myriad other shades of response as they take us on their historically themed tour of queer identity, which involves its own collection of repressive and/or demeaning social expectations about “fitting in” – and illuminate this hidden chapter of queer history along the way. Indeed, capturing their performance – which Mason reprises, along with fellow original co-stars Ploszek and Esola, from the stage production – is arguably the film’s most significant accomplishment. It’s a powerful example of the kind of fierce, spirited expression that is rarely seen outside the half-empty houses of underground theaters, well worthy of several repeated viewings.

For Mason, however, the thing that matters most is not their performance, nor even their brilliantly conceived script. Discussing the movie, he describes it as something much bigger than that: “I hope this film serves as a rally cry, a fountain of joy and a grounding of purpose for the LGBTQIA+ movement in the U.S. and abroad at a time when we need stories which affirm, empower and embolden us more than ever.”

“Lavender Men” is showing in limited theaters now. Watch for information on streaming/VOD availability.

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Jacob Elordi rides high in ‘On Swift Horses’

Sony Pictures’ promotions avoid referencing queer sexuality of main characters

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The stars of ‘On Swift Horse.'

You might not know it from the publicity campaign, but the latest big-screen project for breakout “Euphoria” actor and sex symbol Jacob Elordi is 100% a gay love story.

Alright, perhaps that’s not entirely accurate. “On Swift Horses” – adapted from the novel by Shannon Pufahl and directed by Daniel Minahan from a screenplay by Bryce Kass – actually splits its focus between two characters, the other of which is played by “Normal People” star Daisy Edgar-Jones; but since that story arc is centered around her own journey toward lesbian self-acceptance, it’s unequivocally a “Queer Movie” anyway.

Set in 1950s America, at the end of the Korean War, it’s an unmistakably allegorical saga that stems from the marriage between Muriel (Edgar-Jones) and Lee (Will Poulter), a newly discharged serviceman with dreams of building a new life in California. His plans for the future include his brother Julius (Elordi), a fellow war vet whose restlessly adventurous spirit sparks a kindred connection and friendship with his sister-in-law despite a nebulously strained dynamic with Lee. Though the newlyweds follow through with the plan, Julius opts out in favor of the thrill of a hustler’s life in Las Vegas, where his skills as a card shark gain him employment in a casino. Nevertheless, he and Muriel maintain their friendship through correspondence, as he meets and falls in love with co-worker Henry (Diego Calva) and struggles to embrace the sexual identity he has long kept secret. Meanwhile, Muriel embarks on a secret life of her own, amassing a secret fortune by gambling on horse races and exploring a parallel path of self-acceptance with her boldly butch new neighbor, Sandra (Sasha Calle), as Lee clings obliviously to his dreams of building a suburban family life in the golden era of all-American post-war prosperity.

Leisurely, pensive, and deeply infused with a sense of impossible yearning, it’s the kind of movie that might easily, on the surface, be viewed as a nostalgia-tinged romantic triangle – albeit one with a distinctively queer twist. While it certainly functions on that level, one can’t help but be aware of a larger scope, a metaphoric conceit in which its three central characters serve as representatives of three conflicting experiences of the mid-century “American Dream” that still looms large in our national identity. With steadfast, good-hearted Lee as an anchor, sold on a vision of creating a better life for himself and his family than the one he grew up with, and the divergent threads of unfulfilled longing that thwart his fantasy with their irresistible pull on the wife and brother with whom he hoped to share it, it becomes a clear commentary on the bitter reality behind a past that doesn’t quite gel with the rose-colored memories still fetishized in the imagination of so many Americans.

Fortunately, it counterbalances that candidly expressed disharmony with an empathetic perspective in which none of its characters is framed as an antagonist; rather, each of them are presented in a way with which we can readily identify, each following a still-unsatisfied longing that draws them all inexorably apart despite the bonds – tenuous but emotionally genuine – they have formed with each other. To put it in a more politically-centered way, the staunch-but-naive conformity of Lee, in all his patriarchal tunnel vision, does not make him a villainous oppressor any more than the repressed queerness of Muriel and Julius make them idealized champions of freedom; all of them are simply following an inner call, and each can be forgiven – if not entirely excused – for the missteps they take in response to it

That’s not to say that Minahan’s movie doesn’t play into a tried-and-true formula; there’s a kind of “stock character” familiarity around those in the orbit of the three main players, leading to an inevitably trope-ish feel to their involvement – despite the finely layered performances of Calva and Calle, which elevate their roles as lovers to the film’s two queer explorers and allow them both to contribute their own emotional textures – and occasionally pulls the movie into the territory of melodrama.

Yet that larger-than-life treatment, far from cheapening “On Swift Horses,” is a big part of its stylish appeal. Unapologetically lush in its gloriously photographed recreation of saturated 1950s cinema (courtesy of Director of Photography Luc Montpellier), it takes us willingly into its dream landscape of mid-century America – be it through the golden suburbs of still-uncrowded Southern California or the neon-lit flash of high-rolling Las Vegas, or even the macabre (but historically accurate) depiction of nuclear-age thrill-seekers convening for a party in the Nevada desert to watch an atom bomb detonate just a few short miles away. It’s a world remembered by most of us now only through the memories and artifacts of a former generation, rendered with an artful blend of romance and irony, and inhabited by people in whom we can see ourselves reflected while marveling at their beauty and charisma.

As lovely as the movie is to look at, and as effective as it is in evoking the mix of idealism and disillusionment that defines the America of our grandparents for many of us at the start of the second quarter of the 21st century, it’s that last factor that gives Minahan’s film the true “Hollywood” touch. His camera lovingly embraces the beauty of his stars. Edgar-Jones burns with an intelligence and self-determination that underscores the feminist struggle of the era, and the director makes sure to capture the journey she charts with full commitment; Poulter, who could have come off as something of a dumb brute, is allowed to emphasize the character’s nobility over his emotional cluelessness; Calle is a fiery presence, and Minahan lets her burn in a way that feels radical even today; Calva is both alluring and compelling, providing an unexpected depth of emotion that the film embraces as a chord of hope.

But it is Elordi who emerges to truly light up the screen. Handsome, charismatic, and palpably self-confident, he’s an actor who frankly needs to do little more than walk into the scene to grab our attention – but here he is given, perhaps for the first time, the chance to reveal an even greater depth of sensitivity and truth, making his Julius into the film’s beating heart and undisputed star. It’s an authenticity he brings into his much-touted love scenes with Calva, lighting up a chemistry that is ultimately as joyously queer-affirming as they are steamy.

Which is why Sony Pictures’ promotions for the film – which avoid directly referencing the sexuality of its two main characters, instead hinting at “secret desires” and implying a romantic connection between Elordi and Edgar-Jones – feels not just like a miscalculation, but a slap in the face. Though it’s an eloquent, quietly insightful look back at American cultural history, it incorporates those observations into a wistful, bittersweet, but somehow impossibly hopeful story that emphasizes the validity of queer love.

That’s something to be celebrated, not buried – which makes “On Swift Horses” a sure bet for your must-see movie list.

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