19, lover of the body genres, gay. I’ve never liked star ratings. Take mine loosely and generally.
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Marnie 1964
I’m queer for liars.
As Hitchcock’s (probably) most explicitly twisted movie, I should be all over this, but instead Marnie serves as a reminder that restraint can sometimes work out for the best. It’s worth comparing with Vertigo, Hitchcock’s earlier and much more successful exploration of, among other things, sexual perversion and hetero sadomasochism. Vertigo leaves these foundational concerns just barely implicit—right beneath the surface, beneath the level of the characters’ (and the audience’s) comprehension—and hence lends them the atmosphere of an…
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Interview with the Vampire 1994
Look, everyone knows I love it when a bunch of really talented people marshal an incredible amount of big budget Hollywood resources in the service of an irredeemably silly vampire sex project, but if you’re going to do it, you have to at least not be boring: a bar this fails to clear for long stretches of runtime. An incredible amount of stuff happens, but the pace feels so plodding and tiresome, really draggy. Also the color palette has that orangey-fleshy…
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Querelle 1982
Perhaps love is a den of killers.
It’s brilliant, it’s beautiful, it’s sad, it’s scary, it’s disastrous, it’s perfect, it’s my favorite film. Watching Querelle fills my heart with joy and gives meaning to my life. I fall in love with it more every time I see it (this is my fourth). And yet still I have difficulty putting words to this love; much like Salò, trying to tackle what makes it so important to me feels like a gargantuan task…
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Beau Travail 1999
I felt something vague and menacing take hold of me.
I impulsively chose to revisit this tonight because I was in the mood for some tortured gay desire (when am I not?), and Denis’ potent brew of repression, longing, rage, sadism, and regret did indeed affect me as strongly and devastatingly as it did on my first viewing back in February. But the centrality of the colonial context came through much more immediately and forcefully this time around, and while…
