John Clum's Theater, Music, Film and Media Reviews

BOY LOVE

January 7th, 2026

We enjoy so many Asian series on Netflix that our homepage is filled with Asian shows. I first got hooked on Korean shows like Crash Landing on You about a spoiled rich South Korean woman who, thanks to a sudden windstorm, finds herself in North Korea somewhat like Dorothy found herself in Oz. This version of North Korea is relatively benign compared to the grim reality of that dictatorship. Of course, she is discovered by a handsome North Korean soldier who hides her. Their bickering-to-love trajectory is straight out of traditional romcoms. Later I got hooked on Korean mysteries, Japanese series about socially inept chefs (food plays a major role in Japanese series), and Japanese medical shows, particularly the charming Dr. Coto’s Clinic and After School Doctor. Then I happened upon a series called Love Is a Poison which sent me down the rabbit hole of BL (Boy Love).

The Japanese series LOVE IS A POISON is one of the rare Asian BL series available on Netflix. The series centers on Ryoma Shiba, an uptight thirtyish lawyer whose only interest is career advancement. He’s already on the way to becoming Senior Partner in his prestigious law firm. His world is shaken when a mysterious young man, Haruto, keeps showing up. By the end of the first episode, Haruto has managed to move into Shiba’s apartment and, with his skills as a con man, obtains information that helps Shiba win his cases.

Much of the humor in the series is built on the contrast between Shiba’s uptightness and Haruto’s lack of inhibition. In one episode, Haruto convinces Shiba to go with him to a spa for a “hot and spicy weekend.” The sexually inexperienced Shiba is terrified.

When Shiba and Haruto become a loving couple, the show settles into a domestic pattern that must be common in Japanese culture. Shiba, the primary breadwinner, comes home to Haruto’s beautifully cooked dinners. Gay couples are legible to Japanese audiences if one man takes the woman’s role.

In the charming series, What Did You Eat Yesterday (not yet available in the US), Shiro, a lawyer, comes home every day to cook a sumptuous meal for his partner Kenji, a hairdresser. The food seems to be the most important bond. When after years together, Shiro brings Kenji to meet his parents, the older couple are obsessed with finding out who is the man and who is the woman in the relationship.

The first season of Love Is a Poison follows the formula of romantic comedy. Shiba and Haruto bicker with each other but are obviously smitten. Boy meets boy, boy loses boy, but the couple declare their love in the last episode. Season two take a more melodramatic turn after Haruto’s evil father enters the scene. Still, the most entertaining moments are the most romantic ones.

There is excellent chemistry between Shogo Hama and Katsumi Hyado, the actors playing Shiba and Haruto. They play comedy well together and are convincing as two men strongly attracted to each other. While there is no political discussion of gay marriage (illegal in Japan), the couple wear wedding rings and clearly see themselves as married. The sex is very carefully presented. We are supposed to believe that these men are in love and share a bed, but don’t have sex for months.

When I watched Love Is a Poison, I thought, “Hmm, a Japanese gay series. Interesting.” Then I discovered that Love Is a Poison is one of hundreds of examples of BL (Boy Love), that are produced all over Asia. A friend suggested that I subscribe to Viki, a series that specializes in Asian romantic films and series including BL. From there I found GaGaOOLala, a similar site. The conventions these series fascinated me. To some extent, they are adaptations of the conventions of heterosexual romcoms: two people who initially don’t get along fall in love, face a crisis in their relationship and are reunited. As I delved further into these series, I discovered that Boy Love series (what they are called in Asia) are extremely popular and that their target audience is young heterosexual women. And gay men, of course.

Boy Love began early in this century as a popular manga genre in Japan. It was inevitable that the television and film industry would take advantage of the popularity of the genre. The genre quickly spread to Taiwan, Thailand, South Korea, and, surprisingly, mainland China, which produces some of the best series. Sometimes a popular Japanese series will be adapted for one or more of the other countries.

A lot of scholarly work has been produced on why Boy Love stories are so popular with Asian women. Somehow watching good-looking, sensitive (sometimes downright weepy) men in romantic relationships appeals to young Asian women as much, if not more, than heterosexual romances. Early in my career, I was interested in how gay men could read themselves into heterosexual romance. I would have to be more of an expert in Asian culture to understand how straight women enjoy reading themselves into gay romance.

What do these series offer Western gay men? Well, if you, like me, find Asian men attractive, there is much male pulchritude and, if you like romantic comedies and dramas, they offer the kind of somewhat innocent romance that used to the stock in trade of 1950s Hollywood films. The sex is usually confined to kissing and some shirtless embracing. I have only encountered one series that went beyond that.

The plot lines in these series are very similar and fall into specific genres. I couldn’t get interested in the many schoolboy romances that are available. We now have European versions of these in the highly successful Netflix series Young Royals (Sweden) and Heartstoppers (UK), and a glossy, high-budget American version with Prime’s Red, White and Royal Blue. I’ll deal with the wildly successful Canadian series Heated Rivalry in a separate blog.

From watching a few of the many office romance BL series, I can see that BL series and films have quite rigid formulae. While both leads are very good-looking, one of the two leading characters seems more androgynous than the other; usually more boyish looking and more emotional. The other is likely to be a bit older, taller, more emotionally mature, and in a superior position to his partner (his boss or the more popular, more athletic kid at school). One tends to be gregarious, the other more of a loner. One tends to be secure; the other less so. One tends to be more aggressive. One tends to be from a wealthy background; the other poor or middle-class. What is odd in the series with men in their twenties or thirties is that at least one of the couple is often sexually inexperienced. Often one has never thought about his sexual orientation before. Talking about their feelings is a crucial part of the relationships. These are sensitive men often negotiating their first love.

I couldn’t help but notice echoes of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice in many BL series. A sensitive young man finds himself drawn to a taciturn, slightly older man. The older man has great difficulty expressing his feelings. As a result, he seems cold. The younger man understandably has difficult reading the signals the other man is trying to send.

A number of the adult series are workplace romances. The most successful is the Japanese comic series Ossan’s Love (Viki), about Haruta, a thirty-three year old real estate salesman who discovers that both his middle-aged, married boss and his co-worker Maki are in love with him. First presented as a one-hour drama in 2016, the characters and situation were so popular that a series was presented in 2018, followed by a feature-film sequel in 2019. Shortly after that, a new series moved the characters out of the real estate office and into an airport. Haruta became a flight attendant avoiding the advances of the pilot. In 2024, a new series was produced with Haruta back in the real estate office. Later a Hong Kong version and a Thai version were produced.

Screenshot

Haruta caught between his boyfriend and his doting boss on Ossan’s Love

There is romance in Ossan’s Love, but much of the success of the series can be attributed to the comic talents of the cast. The show is a combination of romance and slapstick sitcom. Tanaka Kei, who plays Haruta, is a gifted clown, a male Lucille Ball. Haruta may be thirty-three, but Tanaka plays him as if he were a child. Both Yoshida Kotaro, who plays his lovesick boss, and Kento Hayasi, who plays Maki, Haruto’s boyfriend, are also superb comics. Some of the slapstick battles between the jealous Maki and the doting boss are hilarious.

The viewer has to accept the notion that Haruta is a thirty-three-year-old virgin who has never thought about the possibility of loving another man (or, it seems, a woman). His conversion happens, as is usually the case in Japanese BL dramas, with no discussion of sexual orientation. You also have to get past all you have thought about sexual harassment in the workplace in order to be amused by the boss’s schemes to attract Haruta. Ossan’s Love lives in a fantasy world where nothing needs to be taken seriously.

The Korean series, The New Employee is more typical of BL office romances. Fresh from a graduate degree in management, Seung Hyun starts a job as an intern for an advertising agency. He is good-looking and charming, but in his mid-twenties and still a virgin, whose only romantic experience is an unrequited crush at university. His boss, Kim Jong Chan, is a total workaholic with little in the way of social skills. Although he brings in 50% of the agency’s profits, his aloof attitude has made him many enemies at the firm. Kim quickly sees that his young intern has the kind of brilliant new ideas he needs. He also quickly becomes enamored of his cute young assistant. Seung Hyun is friendly with two young women in the office but he only has eyes for his boss.

Screenshot

The boss and his intern in The New Employee

Seung knows he is gay—he even belonged to the lesbian-gay alliance at university—but the romance with his boss is his first real relationship. The innocence of at least one of the lovers is always part of these romances. So is the age difference between boss and his assistant, although the boss doesn’t seem much older.

Here, as in other series, the new romance is a rekindling of an adolescent romance. First love, even when unrequited, is the only true love. The Japanese series, Tokyo in April Is… is an even more intense version of the story of a reunion of adolescent lovers who were separated. After a forced separation when they were fifteen, and years abroad, Kazuma gets a job at an advertising agency where Ren is the head designer. As is the case in many iterations of the genre, one of the couple has great difficulty expressing his feelings. Older people (corrupt management, harsh parents) keep creating crises for the couple.

The creepiest of the BL workplace series is the Taiwanese production, You Are Mine. The formula is the same. A cute young man from humble origins becomes secretary to the General Manager (and President’s son) of a large corporation. The secretary is sweet, outgoing, naïve; his boss is demanding, temperamental, moody, withdrawn. He’s also handsome (everyone is good-looking on BL series). When the boss becomes attracted to his cute secretary, he becomes downright unprofessional. The young secretary is justifiably baffled and frightened by his boss’s advances. He knows the boss is attracted to him but thinks his intentions are less than honorable. He also is aware of the class difference and can’t imagine why the boss is so obsessively infatuated with him. When he tries to resign, the boss invokes a non-existent clause in his contract which makes resignation impossible. The boss is totally, obsessively smitten, but handles it in the most awkward way possible. The series makes it impossible for the viewer to have any sympathy for him. This is a BL series, which means that love, even weird obsessive love, wins out in the end.

Screenshot

Obsessive love Chinese style in To My Shore

To My Shore from mainland China, the best written and best acted series I have encountered, takes weird, obsessive love to violent extremes. You Shu Lang, a manager at a pharmaceutical company, accidentally rear ends the fancy car owned by Fan Xiao, an executive at a crooked conglomerate. Both men suffered awful childhood trauma. While You Shu Lang has built up a kind, competent persona, he seems to be emotionally blocked. Fan Xiao has become a ruthless monster who distrusts any sign of goodness. Circumstances bring the two men together a second time in a hospital where You Shu Lan enlists Fan Xiao’s help in saving a baby. Fan Xiao, becomes obsessed with hurting You Shu Lang, first by trying to steal his boyfriend, then by seducing him into a perverse, controlling relationship. While his goal seems to be to destroy You, he finds that he is falling in love with him, which makes him even more obsessive and controlling. The early episodes trace a warped love-hate story that ends in prison for Fan Xiao and the need to start life and career all over again for You. When Fan Xiao gets out of prison, he tries to become a kind of guardian angel for You Shu Lang. Can their destructive love turn into something positive?

This is Emily Bronte or Patricia Highsmith territory, but the writing, based on a novel, is a cut above most series, and the acting of veteran Hao Yi Ran and debutant Yun Qi is excellent. The emotions here, as in many BL series—are operatic. Actors Hao and Yun balance the heightened emotions with enough of a sense of realism to maintain sufficient credibility. The series has been so successful that at least one more bonus episode is in the works. The stars have become internet celebrities.

Maybe I, an opera queen of the first order, am drawn to BL series because they are so operatic. The emotions are either repressed or taken to extremes. The acting is somewhat stylized. The stories are about the discovery of powerful desire and the possibility of true love between two men who discover their sensitive side. In the charming Japanese series Old Fashioned Cupcake, a lonely, repressed thirty-nine-year-old executive and his twenty-nine-year-old subordinate see women chatting amiably in a café and decide they will pretend to be women so that they will share confidences and feelings. As men, they cannot do that. Every weekend, they go to a dessert place frequented by women. Eventually, they realize that they have strong feelings for each other. Through role-playing as women, they learn to express those feelings. And, as there has to be in Japanese series, there is the ritual of sharing food together. Maybe what women see in these series are men who can express their emotions more fully than the men in their lives. What we gay men see are love stories between beautiful men and affirmations of male-male love, all with a “forever after” happy ending.

Screenshot

Learning emotional freedom from the ladies in Old Fashioned Cupcake
On Broadway: STEREOPHONIC and ONCE UPON A MATTRESS

August 26th, 2024

In my theatergoing experience, it has usually been the case that a play that is three hours long could benefit from some pruning. I have seen HAMLETs and KING LEARs that ran well over three hours and the time seemed to fly by. Eugene O’Neill’s plays are all much too long for. their content—self-indulgent characters babbling endlessly. Recently in Chicago, Brandon Jacob Jenkins’ PURPOSE ran almost three hours and no one seemed to mind. Even more than an average length play, a long play needs absorbing characters, brilliant dialogue, and a gripping story.

                  The multi-award winning STEREOPHONIC by David Adjmi clocks in at three and a quarter hours. Does it need to be? The individual characters are not particularly interesting, their dialogue is pretty flat, and much of what happens is familiar from films and television series. Nonetheless, the play somehow works.

                  Based loosely on the history of the 1970s group Fleetwood Mac, much of STEREOPHONIC takes place in a recording studio in Sausalito, California in 1975. Basically, we witness the all-night recording session of the album that will make the group famous. Peter, the alpha male of the group, is a ruthless perfectionist. He and one of the female singers, Diana, are romantically involved. The British members of the group seem less driven than the Americans. Reg, the bass player, is either swigging from a liquor bottle or burying his nose in cocaine. Simon, the drummer, would like to be able to exert a bit more individuality rather than be told exactly what to do. Holly, the keyboard player, wants to find her way through all of the male ego. Out of the studio the band members flirt and fight. Inside they work at being an ensemble.

                  The set allows us to see the personal and artistic side of these characters. Downstage is the control room where the sound engineers sit. The area is also the lounge for the musicians when they are not in the studio, the place where their personal interactions take place. Behind a large glass window is the studio itself where the real work happens.

                  The group is a dysfunctional intentional family. They have been living together in a rented house when they are not in a recording studio. We watch their personal relationships poison their artistic relationship. Peter is a master of the hurtful put down. Strangely, the reaction to his cruelty is usually silence (there are quite a few long pauses. Harold Pinter would have loved it!).  No one wants to risk fighting back. Of course he becomes increasingly isolated. Is he an uncompromising perfectionist or just a nasty S.O.B? Diana, his partner of nine years, leaves him and leaves the group to embark on a solo career.

                  There are two themes that are developed in STEREOPHONIC. The first is the hard work involved in creating even a pop album. We’ve seen that story before, but it is presented here more realistically than we may be used to seeing. The other, more fascinating dimension of the work is the difficulty of being an ensemble. We all know the story of the Beatles and many of us know the trials and tribulations of Fleetwood Mac. Here we watch the creation and breakdown of an ensemble.

In the first half, the group records together, much like a live performance. As, later, individuals are recorded on separate tracks that are mixed together, the individuals in the group resist Peter’s increasingly tyrannical direction. Members decide to go their own way.

The final scene shows us the group’s last performing session. They now are stars and are recording in Los Angeles, but most of the members want to move on. At the end, the most important creative figure is Grover, the recording engineer, who seems to have no life outside the studio. Grover has developed from a novice engineer to “producer,” the person who takes the bits and pieces and creates the album.

Under Daniel Aukin’s direction, the ensemble cast is brilliant. The play demands good old-fashioned realistic acting, and the seven actors truly inhabit their characters. They are also fine musicians. Composer Will Butler gets billing equal to the playwright’s, but don’t go expecting a musical. Only a few of songs are performed in full.

Is the length justified? At the end of the 105 minute first act (as long as many plays these days), I thought why am I watching these boring people. However, the conflicts and transformations in the second half justify the entire experience of the play.

Back before Rodgers and Hammerstein and Stephen Sondheim, most musicals were “musical comedies,” meant to make an audience laugh while giving them some enjoyable tunes. The performers were singing comics. The 1950s was the last decade when musical comedies still ruled Broadway. They became rarer and rarer. ONCE UPON A MATTRESS was one of the last great old-fashioned musical comedies. It had an odd history. The show was first performed in 1959 at the Phoenix Theatre, a former Yiddish theatre down on Second Avenue. George Abbott, the master of the genre, directed. The musical is most famous for being the launching pad for the career of Carol Burnett, who quickly moved to television stardom. The original production earned a Tony for Burnett and one as Best Musical. Burnett did three television productions of ONCE UPON A MATTRESS. All were cut to various degrees, leaving the scenes with Burnett and pruning much of the rest. In 2005, Sarah Jessica Parker starred in a short-lived Broadway revival. Earlier this year, New York City Center Encores produced a revival with a revised, sharper book by Amy Sherman Palladino and starring Sutton Foster. The critical raves and audience euphoria led to the show being moved to Broadway for a limited run. Lear de Bessonet, one of the most inventive directors working now, staged the simple production. As usual with Encores productions, the action is played on a simple set in front of the orchestra.

ONCE UPON A MATTRESS is based on the old child’s tale, “The Princess and the Pea.” It is joyous fun for adults, but kids would love its colorful storybook sets and costumes and its silliness.

Forster, her co-star, the brilliant Michael Urie, and the supporting cast have truly captured the pace and style of old-fashioned American musicals. They are all shameless and all hysterically funny. Foster is one of the great Broadway divas of this century. We all know that she can sing or dance, but I don’t think any of us knew that she is a great clown, the equal of folks like Lucille Ball. You would have to have a heart of stone to get through Foster’s first ten minutes on stage without tears of laughter rolling down your face. Urie is smart enough to match her by underplaying. Will Chase, Ana Gasteyer and the rest of the cast make a glowing comic ensemble.

Mary Rodgers, daughter of Richard Rodgers, didn’t compose the scores of many musicals. Too bad. Her tunes are delightful here.                  All the principals are fine singers who do the songs justice while maintaining the zany humor. The orchestra sounds like a Golden Age ensemble. Real instruments, not synthesizers.

You can see one of Carol Burnett’s television versions of ONCE UPON A MATTRESS on YouTube. Still, it’s worth a trip to New York to see this charming revival.

I also saw WATER FOR ELEPHANTS, a new musical based on the book and movie of the same title. The songs all sounded like other songs one has heard. The performances are as flat as the dialogue. This is a circus show with some sub- Cirque de Soleil acrobatics and a few impressive puppets. I kept thinking back to two really good shows about circuses and carnivals, BARNUM, with a delightful Cy Coleman score and terrific performances from Jim Dale and Glenn Close, and Gower Champion’s magical production of CARNIVAL with a lovely score by Bob Merrill, brilliant staging from Gower Champion and a superb cast (Anna Maria Alberghetti, Jerry Orbach, Kaye Ballard, and James Mitchell). WATER FOR ELEPHANTS was not in this league.
DER ROSENKAVALIER and THE RIGHTEOUS at the Santa Fe Opera

August 11th, 2024

The Santa Fe Opera is a special haven for opera lovers. Tucked away in the hills north of the city, it is one of the most beautiful places to hear opera on this planet. The theatre is open on the sides and at the back of the stage, but thanks to some clever engineering, the sound is fine. The stage is built as an acoustic shell. Between the orchestra pit and the auditorium is a narrow channel of water that helps to disperse the sound. Large baffles keep the rain and some of the wind from threatening the performance.

The company was founded by a young conductor, John Crosby, in the mid-1950s. Crosby’s parents provided the initial funding to buy the land and build the original 500 seat open air theatre. The Santa Fe Opera now performs in a beautiful covered auditorium that seats over two-thousand people. The scenery surrounding the theatre provides the grandeur.

This summer, we saw two productions that represented John Crosby’s original vision. Crosby loved the operas of Richard Strauss, which became the backbone of the company’s programming. In Crosby’s day, a Strauss opera was always on the menu. He was equally devoted to contemporary opera. Our visit included a Strauss opera, Der Rosenkavalier, and a premiere, Gregory Spears and Tracy K. Smith’s The Righteous.

Richard Strauss was fortunate in collaborating with as fine a dramatist as his librettist, Hugo von Hofmannsthal. The librettos for Strauss operas contain some of the most finely drawn characters in all of opera. Der Rosenkavalier is long, but every moment tells us something about the characters on stage.

Der Rosenkavalier builds on a situation in the Mozart-da Ponte masterpiece The Marriage of. Figaro. There a teenage page, Cherubino, played by a woman, has an unrequited crush on the unhappily married Countess. In Der Rosenkavalier, the boy, still played by a woman, becomes the lover of a princess who is the wife of the Field Marshall. The boy, Count Octavian, beliefs at the outset that his passion for the married older woman is noble and eternal. The Marschalin knows better. “Today or tomorrow,” she sings, “you will leave me.” The Marschalin is one of the most fascinating characters in all opera. At thirty-two, she already feels that time is her enemy. She sings at one point that some nights she has the urge to stop all the clocks in the palace. Of course, she is right about Octavian. When he sees the teenage Sophie, a wealthy bourgeoise girl who is to be married off to the boorish Baron Ochs, it is love at first sight.

Hugo von Hofmannsthal originally intended the oafish nobleman Baron Ochs to be his central character. Written for a comic bass (aren’t all foolish, randy middle-aged characters in opera written for basses?), it’s a long role. Ochs is an awful snob and a lecher to boot. He has no manners. Much of the opera is devoted to his humiliation. Like Malvolio in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, the humiliation goes on a bit too long. It’s the Marschalin we care most about. Her graceful surrender of her young lover at the end is a great operatic moment. The role demands a great singing actress.

I have seen many good productions of Der Rosenkavalier during my lifetime. My first, at the Met in the 1950s, starred the great Swiss Mozart-Strauss soprano, Lisa Della Casa, as the Marschalin; Met favorite Rise Stevens in the title role; and the German Strauss specialist Hilde Gueden as Sophie. A decade later I saw a production with Della Casa as Octavian; Elizabeth Schwarzkopf as the Marschalin; and Judith Raskin as Sophie. Veteran German bass Otto Edelmann was the Baron Ochs at both these performances. These great singers set a standard for my judgement of productions of this opera. For us old-time opera lovers, nostalgia is part of the experience—judging present performances on the basis of our memories (probably idealized) of past ones. The current cast at Santa Fe is a mixed bag. Of the women, Ying Fang, the Sophie, is the most powerful. Still in her twenties, Fang is already one of the most important lyric sopranos. She can comfortably sing the stratospheric vocal line Strauss wrote for his high sopranos and she can act. I have never before seen a Sophie who emerges as a worthy rival to the Marschalin. Rachel Willis-Sorensen’s voice has lost some of the bloom it had before she started taking on heavier Verdi roles, but she sang the Marschalin with great sensitivity to the words as well as the music. Paula Murrihy looked good as Octavian and acted the role as convincingly as a mature woman can act like a seventeen-year-old boy, but was far from the greatest Octavian I have heard. I have heard Matthew Rose sing Baron Ochs before. I have never seen him act the role as well as he did in this staging.

In the Santa Fe opera production, directed by Bruno Ravella, the characters still occupied baroque palaces, but the gorgeous costumes placed them in 1950s high fashion. There were moments that verged on surrealism, particularly as Baron Ochs gets lost in his sexual fantasies. I love productions that surprise me. This production was full of brilliant directorial inventions that actually clarified the text.

Der Rosenkavalier is also a conductor’s opera. I have seen fine performances conducted by Rudolf Kempe, Karl Boehm, James Levine, Charles Mackerras, Kiril Petrenko, among others. Karina Canellakis’s conducting placed her in this pantheon.

If in Der Rosenkavalier Hofmannsthal ‘s original conception of an opera about a male character became a work in which the female characters were far more interesting. The same can be said of Gregory Spears’ and Tracy K. Davis’s The Righteous. Ostensibly the work focuses on David, a proud man of God who leaves his pastoral role to enter politics. He sees his new role as the result of God’s calling, but that is a rationalization for his powerful ambition. At the end, his is Governor of the state, but has lost the three people who meant the most to him: his best friend Jonathan, his first wife Sheila, and his second wife Michele. We should care most about Paul, but he isn’t a very interesting character dramatically or musically. We have seen his type before in plays, movies and television series and Spears didn’t seem inspired to write powerful music for him. It doesn’t help that Michael Mayes, who plays him, seems to be dangerously forcing his voice.

Nor does it help that Spears and Davis decided to make Jonathan a countertenor. Jonathan loves David in ways David cannot return, not only because he isn’t gay, but because his ability to love is limited. Making Jonathan a countertenor neuters the character and removes any erotic element. Anthony Roth Costanzo is a fine singer, but his voice got lost at the Santa Fe Opera. Jonathan is a gay man who ultimately runs the family corporation—not likely for a gay man in the 1970s in the Southwest.

The wives are far more interesting. Wife one, Michele, Jonathan’s sister, comes from a rich, powerful family. Her father is a petroleum mogul who has becomes governor of the state. Having lived with that kind of ambition, Michele does not want to see her husband enter politics. Nor can she be silent about his affair with Sheila, a married woman who is an ardent believer and church volunteer.

By the end of the opera, Jonathan, Michele and Sheila have moved on. Jonathan frees himself of his business responsibilities and moves to California to live the way he wants to. Michele becomes a successful lawyer. Sheila becomes more involved in church work. The three characters don’t need David in their lives to thrive.

Both Michele and Sheila get grand arias that take them on powerful emotional journeys. Spears has proven in his earlier works that he knows how to write the sort of elaborate vocal solo that was central to traditional grand opera. His music for the two women is beautiful and emotionally powerful. The greatest music is given to the chorus. The opera opens with a hymn and closes with an elaborate ensemble with principals and chorus. Again, grand is the word that comes to mind.

Jennifer Johnson Cano and Elena Villalón stole the show as Michele and Sheila. They gave thrilling performances. The chorus was brilliant. I have always been impressed with Jordan de Souza’s conducting. He kept this large scale work in balance and did full justice to Spears’ rich orchestrations.

The Righteous needs some revision, but there is enough wonderful material there to justify another production somewhere.
LISTENING TO SCHEHERAZADE

July 28th, 2024

We all know that listening to music is a nostalgic experience. Recently, a friend in her late seventies invited me to a giant Beatles Singalong in a nearby park. It sounds like most of the audience will be folks who were, like me, young adults during the Beatles’ heyday. When I hear the classic Beatles songs, I am taken back to my early twenties when they were wildly popular. In 1964, I had a summer job at a movie theatre that was the site of the New Jersey premiere of A HARD DAY’S NIGHT. The ecstatic Bacchantes literally pulled the theatre doors off of their frames in their furious rush to get in. It was impossible to hear anything of the very clever film for the screaming of the assembled multitude. Eventually more level heads realized that the Beatles wrote great songs. I can chronicle my life in my twenties through Beatles albums particularly the ones that changed popular music (RUBBER SOUL [1965], REVOLVER [1966, the year I finished my doctorate and suffered the culture shock of Durham, North Carolina], SGT. PEPPER’S LONELY HEARTS CLUB [1967], the white album [turbulent 1968], and ABBEY ROAD [1969]. The Beatles’ career as a group ended in 1970, the year my first marriage ended. The Beatles weren’t just music: they were part of growing up in the 1960s. Hearing Beatles songs takes one back.

I could name other groups and singers that were part of my life back then. Crosby, Stills and Nash. Joni Mitchell. Judy Collins. Last night we were in the lobby of Steppenwolf Theatre and “They Paved Paradise and Put Up a Parking Lot” was playing. My response was to recall the first time I heard that Joni Mitchell song.

What does all this have to do with Rimsky Korsakov’s SCHEHERAZADE? A couple of nights ago, the Grant Park Orchestra under the leadership of Eric Jacobsen gave a superb reading of this chestnut. As far as I can tell, SCHEHERAZADE isn’t performed much these days. For those of us who fell in love with classical music in the early years of long-playing vinyl recordings, it was a great piece to show off one’s new hi fi system. The work became even more popular a few years later with the advent of stereo when all of us music lovers had giant speakers that dominated our living rooms. Big sound systems demanded big music—splashy works like Respighi’s Roman works and SCHEHERAZADE. The more substantial works that dominated the lp era (Mahler’s symphonies found their audience in this period) were also great showcases for home stereo systems. When cds replaced vinyl for many music lovers, Rimsky-Korsakov’s piece had a resurgence of recordings. There have been no major recordings of the work since 2007. The classical music recording industry is pretty much dead and physical recordings have been replaced by streaming. Oddly, many music lovers have gone back to scratchy vinyl.

The middle-aged men on either side of me at the performance of SCHEHERAZADE spent the entire piece texting on their phones. Clearly the music didn’t grab them. Maybe, like my husband, they came to hear the magnificent STABAT MATER by Francis Poulenc in the first half of the concert and didn’t think the Rimsky-Korsakov piece was worth their undivided attention. Perhaps they thought of pieces like SCHEHERAZADE as background music. After all, our local classical station in Chicago programs bits and pieces of larger musical works as if they are meant to be Muzak rather than works worthy of our full attention.

I listened to the piece attentively but thought I did not need to hear it again. The orchestra was excellent, and Eric Jacobsen brought out all its instrumental detail. Sometimes a really good performance only displays the weakness of a piece. What the piece did was take me back to when I was a kid spending my pocket money on records. I can remember my first recording of SCHEHERAZADE on RAC’s cheap Bluebird series and losing myself in the piece. I remember playing the lovely third movement theme in a piano version. I can also remember going to the Mosque Theatre in Newark sometime in the early 1960s to see the old Ballet Russes on its last legs performing the ballet version the company first staged in 1910. I would swear the faded sets were the original Bakst painted scenery. The 1910 ballet was laughable oriental kitsch by this time badly danced. I couldn’t help thinking of that production as I listened to the fourth movement in Grant Park. Maybe if Scheherazade evoked memories for the men next to me, they would have listened instead of texted. They, too, would have had one of those experiences of Á la recherche du temps perdu that are part of the experience of music of the past. For some of us older folks, the music we hear gives us pleasure in the present while at the same time taking us back.
MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL–The Musical at the Goodman Theatre

July 21st, 2024

At the center of the musical version of John Berendt’s saga of life in Savannah is a killing. Middle-aged antiques dealer Jim Williams is accused of shooting Danny Hansford, a bit of rough trade who, shall we say, has both a day and a night job with Williams.

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is far from the first musical about an alleged or convicted murderer. Roxie Hart in Chicago took care of her boyfriend; Velma Kelly her cheating husband. They were acquitted. Let’s not forget Sweeney Todd who pays for his crimes. Chicagois one of the longest-running musicals in Broadway history. Sweeney Todd is revived regularly. Why doesn’t Midnight in the Garden of Evil work? One reason is that the writing and performances don’t make us root for Jim Williams and Danny Hansford. They are basically unpleasant people who need some likability. The wonderful perversion of Chicago and Sweeney Todd is that the audience ends up on the side of the killers. In Tom Hewitt’s performance, Jim Williams doesn’t have the old Southern charm the character needs, particularly when he has half a dozen songs to sing. His singing, by the way, is far from effortless. Jim Williams is just plain nasty to Danny, but nothing in Austin Colby’s performance or Taylor Mac’s writing for Danny makes the audience care about him. He’s just a nasty piece of business. Hewitt, who is in his mid-60s, is a decade or two too old for the part. Should Jim be old enough to be Danny’s grandfather? If we don’t care about either man, the issue of whether or not Jim is guilty of Danny’s death doesn’t seem very important.

As a result, the success of the show hangs on J. Harrison Ghee’s fabulous performance as Lady Chablis. Ghee has star written all over him/her/them. They have the charisma and charm a big musical needs. The show comes to life every time Ghee is onstage. Alas, Lady Chablis’s story has nothing to do with the main plot.

The most gaping hole in the show is the forgettable score by Jason Robert Brown. Brown has written a couple of the best scores of the past thirty years. Parade is a classic and Brown’s score to The Bridges of Madison County (yes, the musical!) is one of my favorites. Neither show was a hit on its first outing, and Brown has a strange reputation of writing decent scores for weak shows (Honeymoon in Vegas, Mister Saturday Night, Urban Cowboy). This is not one of Brown’s stronger scores. His cleverest lyrics are for Jim Williams, but even there the lyrics need to help make us root for the man. They don’t.

Veteran Sierra Boggess does all she can with the chief society lady, Emma Dawes, but she and the ladies outstay their welcome. One song from them would be enough. Boggess is a real trouper, but there is almost an air of desperation in her efforts to put across weak material. She’s had worse to work with–she was the lead in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s disastrous sequel to Phantom of the Opera, Love Never Dies.

Taylor Mac has tried to weave together all the key threads of John Berendt’s book. He tries to parallel Jim William’s rise and fall and rise to that of Lady Chablis. They are both performers in their way—the self-made piss-elegant Southern queen and the drag queen who is, to quote La Cage aux Folles, her “own special creation.” Neither is ever going to fully belong. If the show is going to go anywhere after Chicago, the parallels have to be drawn more vividly. The song “Restoration” midway through the second act starts to do that, but we should see the kinship between these characters more clearly from the beginning. And the performer playing Jim needs to be as fabulous in his way as Lady Chablis is. Only then will the show take off.

The problem may be in Rob Ashford’s direction. From the outset, he plays up the voodoo and racial history of Savannah, but they aren’t what the show is about. The show is about two queer folk trying to survive in their segments of Charleston society. That should have been his focus from the moment the show starts.

All the other aspects of the show—Christopher Oram’s skeletal sets, Toni-Leslie James’s costumes, and Neil Austin and Jamie Platt’s lighting were fine. The choreography (Tanya Birl-Torres) is as blah as the score.

Seeing a new musical in Chicago is always exciting. We in the audience speculate on the show’s future. If the necessity corrections in writing, composing and casting were made, would a show like this succeed in the current Broadway lineup of glitzy jukebox musicals. Would current Broadway audiences shell out the current outrageous prices to see a musical about a gay man who kills his young sociopathic lover? The top-grossing shows on Broadway last week were still family fare—The Lion King and Wicked. I wouldn’t invest in this one.
Samuel D. Hunter’s LITTLE BEAR RIDGE ROAD at Steppenwolf

July 11th, 2024

LITTLE BEAR RIDGE ROAD, now having a sold out run at Steppenwolf, is a quintessential Samuel D. Hunter play. Like most of his work, the ninety-minute play is set in Hunter’s native state of Idaho and features characters who are in physical, psychological, and spiritual stasis. They yearn to connect with other people but can’t make the leap from self-absorption to familial or romantic love. As usual, there is a lost, gay character whose psychic wounds are not easily healed.

The lost gay character in LITTLE BEAR RIDGE ROAD is thirty-something Ethan (Micah Stock), a writer whose writing block is a symptom of his inability to make positive choices and move forward. Ethan’s favorite phrase when forced to make a decision is “I don’t know.” The only positive decision he has made is to leave his affluent, super-controlling partner. When we meet Ethan, he has returned to the small Idaho town in which he was raised to sell his father’s house. Ethan has no positive feelings about his neglectful drug-addict father. He has come to his reclusive aunt’s house to find the deed to his father’s house. Aunt Sarah (Laurie Metcalf) is a bristly woman who loved her career as a nurse, but now faces being an invalid herself. Like everything else in her life, Sarah wants to deal with her cancer alone on her own terms.

Sarah invites Ethan to stay with her for a few days. Unable to decide what to do next, Ethan is still there a year later. In the meantime, he has met and become somewhat attached to James (John Drea), a sweet graduate student in astro-physics at the university. Ethan and James met on a hookup app, but from the outset, James seeks a relationship, not just sex. I must admit that the one nagging question I have about the play is why James would be drawn to someone as emotionally damaged as Ethan. I kept wanting to yell out to James, “Run!” Ethan is all resentment: at his father for not taking care of him, at his aunt for not being willing to rescue him from his father, at his former lover for not trusting him, and at anyone who does not share his financial problems. James is connected to the world. In one lovely scene, he tries to introduce Ethan to the wonders of the night sky. Still, James is more a character foil than a fully drawn character.

Sam Hunter’s gift is making us care about deeply flawed, deeply wounded characters like Ethan. Perhaps his only hope is to become as self-sufficient as his Aunt Sarah, but she, like many of us, reaches a point where she cannot function alone. Ethan seems incapable of looking forward. Perhaps there might be healing in looking backward creatively through his writing.

LITTLE BEAR RIDGE ROAD is, like many of Hunter’s plays, an absorbing character study. It is one of Hunter’s minimalist plays. His last and possibly his best play so far, A CASE FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD, required two fine actors and two chairs. LITTLE BEAR RIDGE ROAD is performed with only a recliner sofa. With the help of director Joe Mantello, the script and fine actors do all the work. Laurie Metcalf is a specialist in playing spiky characters. She allows us to understand that there is vulnerability under the hard, protective shell. Micah Stock has the more challenging role. Like many of Hunter’s characters, Ethan is a mess, but Stock makes the audience feel his pain. John Drea makes James a bit too passive, but the problem is in the writing. Loving Ethan would be a challenge. I’d like to know more about why James takes it on. Or are we to see him as one of those people who want to be settled in a relationship—any relationship? Are there no other gay men in Moscow, Idaho? James needs a bit more detail before the play goes to New York.

A minor quibble. Hunter’s titles usually hint at something about the play. LITTLE BEAR RIDGE ROAD gives us a location that doesn’t seem relevant.

Nonetheless, LITTLE BEAR RIDGE ROAD is a lovely, bittersweet play, an excellent capstone to a particularly strong (with one exception) Steppenwolf season. Any theatre that can give us Brandon Jacob-Jenkins’ PURPOSE followed by LITTLE BEAR RIDGE ROAD, is to be celebrated. We’ll forgive them the amateurish, stupid POTUS. If only next season looked as promising.
THREE FILMS OF GAY LIFE IN THE COUNTRYSIDE

June 29th, 2024

My final Pride Week film selections are European films that take place in the countryside, focusing on the loneliness and anguish gay men experience when there is no supportive community, only hostility—where the closet is a necessary defensive stance. This is particularly true in countries that are officially opposed to homosexuality. Can there be a happy ending for gay people in such places?

LIUBEN (2023, Directed by Venci Kostov)(Prime) has been heralded as the first gay-themed film to be produced in Bulgaria. Actually, Venci Kostov, the director, has spent his career working in Spain and the film is a Spanish-Bulgarian co-production. Set in a small village, LIUBIN deals with both homophobia and prejudice against Roma people.

Twenty-something Victor has come back to his father’s village for his grandfather’s funeral. When his parents separated twelve years before, Victor went with his Spanish mother to Madrid where he is in an unsatisfying relationship with a man his father’s age. Victor’s father craves a relationship with his son. He has even built a house with a floor for Victor if he ever chooses to come home. The father’s all-male social group includes a racist, corrupt policeman. Victor seems emotionally withdrawn, more a passive observer than a person in control of his life. After the funeral, he decides to stay in his father’s house for a while, perhaps as an escape from his own domestic life, perhaps because of his fascination with a young local.

Shortly after his arrival, Victor encounters Liubin, an eighteen-year-old Roma who lives in a tightly knit community. Liubin has impregnated and has promised to marry a girl from the village. Liubin is something of a Roma cliché, a rebellious free spirit, a teenage male Carmen for our time. He seems to be constantly cheerful and uninhibited, but there’s a dark side. When a garage owner treats him violently, Liubin goes back at night and sets fire to the garage. Victor witnesses this late-night arson attack and helps Liubin make his getaway. Their friendship slowly develops into a full-blown romance that does not please either Victor’s father’s homophobic friends or Liubin’s Roma community. The consequences are far worse for Liubin. Victor goes back to Madrid, his mother, and his older lover.

The homophobia in LIUBIN is more benign than the racism, more menacing words than action. The corrupt white power structure goes to exteme measures to prevent any more Roma children being born into their community. White justice only serves the interests of the whites in the community. The Roma have their own violent system of justice.

LIUBIN is a powerful, well-acted portrait of the social dynamics of Eastern European small-town life. That is also true of the Hungarian film LAND OF STORMS (2014; Directed by Adam Csaszi). LAND OF STORMS is based on a Hungarian murder case, but rather than offer a whodunit or courtroom drama, Csaszi has chosen to show us the events leading up to the murder. In the process, he creates a heart-rending tragedy.

LAND OF STORMS begins in Germany where Szabolcs has joined a minor soccer team. Soccer training seems to be a form of structured violence in which the coach constantly humiliates Szabolcs in front of his teammates. We discover that the coach is just another version of Szabolc’s father who has forced him into a life he does not want. After Szabolc’s has been red-carded in a crucial game, he gets into a fight with his best friend, Bernard, in the showers. Basically, he accuses Bernard of being sexually attracted to him. After this instance of the pot calling the kettle black, Szabolcs quits the team and goes to a small village in Hungary to live in a ramshackle farmhouse his grandfather has left him. There is no power or plumbing and the roof is a sieve.

Late one night, Szabolcs wakes up to the sound of a young man stealing his motorbike. He knocks the thief off of the bike, but rather than hurt him or have him arrested, Szabolcs heals his wounds and offers him a job. The would-be thief, now fellow laborer, is Aron, a poor boy who takes care of his invalid mother. In his village, Aron is a good boy who goes to mass on Sunday and who properly courts one of the village girls. Like all the men in the village, he drinks a lot. Szabolcs and Aron become friends.

One drunken night, Aaron masturbates the semi-conscious Aron, throwing the village boy into a state of confusion. The relationship elevates to a sexual relationship, but Aron does not know what to do with this new aspect of his life. Foolishly, he tells his mother that Scabolcs “felt him up” and that Aron didn’t stop him. As a result, Aron has to watch Szabolcs be brutally beaten by the young men of the village. Aron is also prevented from seeing the young woman he has been courting. Still, he goes back to Szabolcs. To the villagers, he has become a kind of prostitute, being paid for sex by this relatively well off outsider.

Meanwhile, Szabolcs has tried to re-establish a relationship with his father, who wants him to go back to soccer. Out of loneliness, he has also called his estranged friend Bernard, who shows up and confesses his love to Szabolcs. Bernard’s arrival on the scene does not play well with Aron, but the three men have drunken sex together. Bernard wants Szabolcs to go back to Germany with him, but Szabolcs feels responsible for Aron and won’t leave him alone in this hostile environment. The scenes with Aron and Bernard vying for Szabolcs are beautifully presented. Aron doesn’t speak or understand German, so Bernard can talk to Szabolcs without Aron understanding him. Nor does Bernard understand Hungarian. We see how Szabolcs is caught between two possibilities: life with Bernard, which would involve going back to Germany and soccer, or the life he has created here with Aron. They have taken up beekeeping, which obviously brings them joy. Unfortunately life on the farm with Aron endangers them both in a deeply homophobic community. Scabolcs realizes that Aron needs him, but does not understand the extent of Aron’s confusion and anguish. The young man is tortured by the other village men and becomes totally guilt-ridden when his invalid mother tries to commit suicide. He loves Szabolcs, but sees the object of his love as the cause of all his problems.

The end of LAND OF STORMS is both surprising and inevitable. Csaszi has presented it, not as a sensational moment, but as the culmination of a series of emotionally devastating events. András Süto and Ádám Varga are brilliant as the star-crossed lovers. If we feel more for Varga’s Aron, it is because he is the character who goes through the most emotional turmoil. Since neither young man is very articulate, they have to create their characters though facial expressions and body language.

I wonder if LAND OF STORMS could get made in Viktor Orban’s virulently anti-gay Hungary. The film is a powerful depiction of the power of homophobia, including internalized homophobia. It is also full of tender scenes of male sensuality.

Francis Lee’s 2017 British film GOD’S OWN COUNTRY is a film that starts out sad and ends up relatively joyful. We watch the emotional and spiritual awakening of a bitter, closed-off young man.

The first sight we have of Johnny Saxby (Josh O’Connor in his first film role), is of him vomiting after a typical night of heavy drinking. Johnny lives on a Yorkshire farm with his crippled father and grandmother. Neither offer him any affection. Basically, he works as the hired hand, doing all the farmwork with no encouragement or praise. At night Johnny gets drunk at the local pub. Occasionally he has sex in the pub toilet. He won’t let the men he is with show any affection. Nor does we want to be friends with them.

Gheorge (Alex Secareanu),a Romanian casual laborer, is hired to help Johnny. At first Johnny is hostile toward him—he has had no role model for friendly discourse—but the two men are attracted to each other. After one bout of rather violent sex, Gheorge slowly teaches Johnny how to express affection physically if not verbally. He also teaches him to love the rough Yorkshire landscape. The men come to love each other but Johnny’s lack of emotional experience and his internalized homophobia sabotage their relationship.

Johnny needs Gheorge, not only because of their emotional and sexual bond. Gheorge is also a much better farmer. Johnny will need Gheorge to keep the farm. He will also need him if he is to be at all happy.

Josh O’Connor brilliantly captures Johnny’s inarticulate blossoming from bitterness to love, from hating his work to becoming devoted to it. Handsome Alex Secareanu is also a man of few words, but one whose emotions lie closer to the surface. The scenes of growing intimacy between the two men are beautifully depicted. The great Gemma Jones and Ian Hart play Johnny’s taciturn grandmother and father.

The happy ending of GOD’S OWN COUNTRY is a great relief after seeing LIUBEN and LAND OF STORMS. All three are excellent films.
NUOVO OLIMPO: Another film for Pride Week

June 26th, 2024

One of my favorite directors is Turkish-born, Italian Ferzan Ozpetek, who has been making films since the 1990s. While he has made films on a variety of subjects, some of his best work has focused on the dynamics of gay relationships. His first feature film, Hamam (1997), told the story of a Turkish-born Italian man trapped in an unhappy marriage, who has inherited a derelict Istanbul hamam (Turkish bath). When he goes back to Istanbul to sell the property, he falls in love with a young man whose family had been managing the hamamand decides to renovate and reopen the establishment as a place where men attracted to men can meet.

La Fate Ignoranti (2001, released in the U.S. as His Secret Life), centers on a recent widow who discovers that her husband had a male lover for years. The film explores the relationship between the wife and the lover that moves from hostility to friendship. Mine Vaganti (2010; released in the U.S. as Loose Cannons) is a delightful comedy about what happens when the two male heirs to a large pasta-making business come out as gay.

Ozpetek’s most recent film, Nuovo Olimpo (streaming on Netflix), traces the lives of two men over forty-five years. In 1978, Enea, a film student, and Pietro, a medical student meet at the Nuovo Olimpo, a movie theatre that shows old films while gay men cruise each other in the auditorium, the hallways, and the toilets. Pietro is a shy, serious virgin who is attracted to Enea, but can’t bring himself to have sex in a toilet stall. Omnisexual Enea borrows the key to a large Roman apartment from his best friend, a young woman he occasionally has sex with. Enea is candid with her about his attraction to men, particularly the diffident Pietro. The two young men have a magical night of sex in this grand apartment, but an accident prevents their meeting the next night. The romance is over, but the two men never forget it.

Ten years later, Enea is a filmmaker whose first successful film is a recreation of his passionate night with Pietro. Pietro, now a married ophthalmologist, sees the film, but is so closeted and emotionally closed-off that he cannot express his response. Enea, a successful filmmaker, falls in love with Antonio, who becomes his devoted partner and his production director. They live in the apartment in which Enea and Pietro had their passionate night years before. Pietro on a couple of occasions over the years has tried unsuccessfully to restore contact with Enea.

Years later, Enea has an accident on a movie set that temporarily blinds him. Pietro is brought in to operate. The ensuing reunion allows the men to finally say goodbye to each other. Pietro will stay with his wife, who now understands why their marriage has been so cold, and Enea will stay with his devoted partner.

There is a moment in Nuovo Olimpo when Enea reads of the death of the great Italian filmmaker, Federico Fellini. One can see the influence of Fellini’s work on Ozpetek, particularly the films where Fellini uses aspects of his own life. It is also obvious that, like a number of gay directors, Ozpetek has been influenced by the romantic melodrama of American filmmakers like Douglas Sirk. The basic outline of Nuovo Olimpo—a lost passionate connection that haunts the lovers for the rest of their lives—will be familiar to most movie lovers. It is certainly evident in Lie with Me, which I discussed in my last blog.

One of the most fascinating aspects of Nuovo Olimpo is the depiction of the cinema where Enea and Pietro first meet. Ozpetek gives the viewer a vivid picture of how this old theatre became a meeting place for gay men of all ages. It was a social center as well as a site for sexual encounters. Everyone seems to know everyone else. The theatre is managed by a larger-than-life woman, Titti. Years later, when Pietro goes back to try to find out where Enea is, the theatre has stopped showing classic Italian films and now shows porn, though the audience seems to be the same. Ozpetek’s presentation of this theatre reminded me of other works in which a movie theatre becomes a site of queer eroticism. Tennessee Williams wrote two superb short stories, “Hard Candy” and “The Mysteries of the Joy Rio,” about a run-down New Orleans movie house, formerly an opera house, where men go to have paid sex with young hustlers. Jaiming Tang’s beautiful recent novel, Cinema Love, opens in a shabby movie theatre in a small Chinese town in the 1980s, which is the only place where gay men can safely meet. The story follows three people whose lives were affected by that theatre as they move from China to impoverished lives in New York’s Chinatown where they are still haunted by the past of the Workers Cinema. I highly recommend this deeply moving novel—and Ferzan Ozpetek’s lovely film, Nuovo Olimpo. That film might lead you to view the other fine Ozpetek films I mention. Many are available on streaming services.
Movies for Pride Week

June 25th, 2024

I have been celebrating Pride week by streaming my own Gay Film Festival. Here are the best of my recent viewings.

Philippe Besson’s 2017 novel, Lie with Me (the literal translation of the French title is “Stop with Your Lies”), is a semi-autobiographical work about looking back on one’s first teenage love. The book was a bestseller in France and appeared in English in a translation by Molly Ringwald, of all people. As someone whose young loves were all unrequited, I found Besson’s story deeply moving. Oliver Peyon’s 2022 film version, now on Prime, is a beautiful rendering of Besson’s bittersweet novel. Besson’s novel focused on the furtive teenage romance of two boys. Peyon’s film, which moves back and forth between present and past, is as much about memory and grief as it is about young love.

Successful writer Stéphane Belcourt has been invited back to his home town, Cognac, to do a book signing and to give a speech at a banquet sponsored by the distillery of the town’s most famous product. Stéphane hasn’t been back home in thirty-five years and has not been looking forward to this visit. What he remembers of Cognac is a three-month teenage love affair with another boy, Thomas Andrieu, that has been the stuff of his memories and his fiction (Thomas is the name of the love interest in Stéphane’s novels).

Stéphane was a somewhat effeminate, bookish, middle-class boy who was surprised to receive a brief note from Thomas Andrieu, a poor farmboy who seemed to be one of the straight tough guys, ordering Stéphane to a secret meeting place where the boys had their first sexual encounter. Thomas insisted on secrecy, but the boys began meeting regularly and the sex turned into a full teenage romance. Coming back to his home town unleashes all of Stéphane’s memories of his love for Thomas, and his grief and anger at Thomas’s sudden departure to work on a family farm in Spain.

The first person Stéphane meets when he arrives in Cognac is Lucas Andrieu, the son of Thomas. Lucas now lives in Los Angeles working for the distillery and is in Cognac leading a group of American distributors on a tour. Lucas, it turns out, has engineered Stéphane’s visit in order to meet the author whose books seem to be chronicling a romance between the author and Lucas’s father, who committed suicide. Lucas is obsessed with discovering exactly what Stéphane meant to his father. The two men’s relationship begins amicably, but tension grows as Stéphane resists giving Lucas the information and closure he needs. Both men have to deal with their grief at the loss of Thomas.

The memories of the encounters between young Stéphane and Thomas are beautifully presented. We see Thomas briefly change from a dour, frightened young man to one filled with joy during his time with his young lover; yet Thomas is always aware of the social distance between the two boys. Stéphane will leave and have a career and life away from the small town. Thomas will always work on the farm and will have to keep his sexual orientation a secret. Thomas will ultimately marry and have a child, though he reads all of Stéphane’s novels and is unhappy enough to end his life. Stéphane has never had a successful adult relationship. Thirty-five years ago, Thomas knew that being openly gay would have made him a pariah in his home town. He escapes to Spain partly because he is afraid that his romance with Stéphane will be exposed. Stéphane returns to a town where there is still awkwardness around homosexuality.

The film tells us little about handsome, charming Lucas, other than his grief over his father’s death. How did he get from a farm to Los Angeles and become this sophisticated, English-speaking man? Like Stéphane, he got away, but he, too, seems to have no personal life. Lucas, by the way, is played by Victor Belmondo, the grandson of 1960s French film star Jean-Paul Belmondo. You can see the family resemblance.

The flashbacks to the idyllic past of the teenage boys, the focus of Besson’s novel, are beautifully rendered. The boys experience untrammeled joy in their time together. The contemporary scenes are more complex. As the title suggests, Stéphane and Lucas do lie to each other. Stéphane is reluctant to share with Lucas details of his romance with Lucas’s father and the hurt he felt when Thomas left without any warning. Lucas at first withholds that he has already figured out Stéphane’s relationship to his father. Stéphane still is angry at Thomas’s desertion; Lucas is furious at his father for being too much of a coward to admit his feelings for other men. In a touching climactic scene, Stéphane finds a way to heal both him and Lucas.

Lie with Me is a lovely film, in many ways richer than the novel on which it is based. Highly recommended.

Cassandro (2023; Directed by Roger Ross Williams) is a fictionalized version of the life of lucha libre star Sául Armandáriz, who became known as Cassandro. As a teenager Sául, a poor gay man from El Paso, started crossing the border into Mexico to wrestle. After losing a number of matches under various names, he decided to become an exotico, a wrestler who appears in drag. Often matches with exoticos came early in the evening before the main bouts. If the exoticos wrestled straight appearing fighters, they were supposed to lose. Cassandro made history as a champion exotico and as an openly gay fighter in the macho world of lucha libre. His career lasted over thirty years.

Williams’s film about a man defying the dominant homophobia of his culture is perfect Pride Week entertainment. In the film, Sául lives with his mother, to whom he is devoted. His father left home when Sául announced that he was gay. He has an on again, off again sexual relationship with a married man who is also a luchador.

Like his real counterpart, the Sául of the film has substance abuse problems. His success and increasing arrogance make him unpopular with most of his fellow wrestlers. By the end of the film, he has lost his mother and his lover. Still, in the world of lucha libre, he is a big star.

Gael Garcia Bernal catches Sául’s love of performing and his need for the adulation he receives from the crowds as well as his difficulty relating to the people close to him. It is another terrific performance from an actor who has specialized in playing complex characters. Cassandro is a film about a gay man in a macho world and a macho sport who refuses to hide his gayness.

The wrestling scenes are great fun if a bit tame by lucha libre standards. The film doesn’t mention the extent to which the wrestling matches are choreographed.

By the way, I highly recommend the new novel, The Sons of El Rey by Alex Espinosa. The book is the story of a poor Mexican, Ernesto Vega, who becomes a successful luchador. Ernesto is married but, much to his wife’s chagrin, is in love with another man, Julian.

When Ernesto’s wife becomes pregnant, he and she move to Los Angeles where eventually he opens a gym that offers lucha libre training. Ernesto’s narrative alternates with that of his son, Freddy, and his gay grandson, Julian.

The Sons of El Rey, one of the most powerful novels I have read recently, is the saga of three generations of troubled men. It is also a celebration of the role lucha libre has in the lives and culture of poor Mexicans.

More Pride Week film reviews to come. It’s only Monday!
MARY AND GEORGE: Sex and Violence with a Bit of History Tossed In.

May 13th, 2024

Like many historical television series and films, the STARZ series Mary and George trades historical accuracy for sensationalism; but with Julianne Moore and the beautiful, talented Nicholas Galitzine in the titles roles and Tony Curran offering a volatile, fickle, dissolute version of King James I, it is great fun, soap opera on steroids.

                  The basic facts of the series are true. Mary Villiers, a minor aristocrat with ambition that rivals Lady Macbeth’s, knew that for her to have any power, she had to get it through the men in her family. She found money to send her beautiful son George to France to learn courtly skills, then plotted to get him in front of King James so that he might become the King’s favorite. James, who seems to have been bisexual or homosexual obviously was smitten with George, whom he made Duke of Buckingham and Lord High Admiral. George, his mother and his half-brothers greatly benefitted financially from his power. When James died in 1625 and was replaced by his son, Charles I, George stayed in power until he was murdered in 1628. The upstart, ruthless Villiers always had a lot of enemies and were not popular with the public.

                  The real King James was a complex person. His upbringing was turbulent. His father was murdered and his mother, Mary Queen of Scots, was removed from the Scottish throne shortly after James was born. We know what happened to her. James became King  of Scotland when he was thirteen months old.  During his childhood, the country was actually ruled and he was raised by a series of noblemen. He was quite a scholar and wrote important books from an early age and commissioned the great translation of the Bible that bears his name. He had prudent ideas about foreign policy and was eager to unite England, Scotland and Ireland. James believed (even wrote a book on) the divine right of kings. Unfortunately, he had terrible relations with parliament, which he regularly dissolved. He loved hunting and elaborate entertainments, which strained the treasury of the realm.

                  His reign gave us some of the greatest literature England has produced. He was the patron of Shakespeare’s company from 1603. Ben Jonson wrote the texts for some of James’s court entertainments. John Donne was in his prime.

                  The James of the series is a totally dissolute hedonist who spend most of his time in the company of semi-clad or unclad young men. Once in a while, he shows flashes of Machiavellian guile, but usually takes the advice of his male lovers, whom he elevates to positions of great power. Tony Curran manages to create a mercuric, unpredictable, totally selfish James, sort of a gay 17^th century Donald Trump.

                  George, dependent on his mother’s guile and advice, is not as savvy as the historical George. In the series, he is a pretty boy out of his depth. This is because the writers have put the focus on Mary who ruthlessly rises through her sons. Mary’s sidekick, lover, and lady in waiting is a prostitute with a taste for homicide (no historical basis for that). Julianne Moore, star and Executive Producer, obviously is having a ball playing this monster whose ambition has no limits. She clearly thinks she is smarter than the men around her but must use them because women have no property or power. George both hates her and needs her. Nicholas Galitzine shows us a young man desperate to be independent of his mother, but not quite ruthless enough to survive on his own.  Essentially, he is placed in the position of women: his power depends on his sexual power over the King.

                  Some of the moments in the series that seem most outlandish really happened. Mary did lock her son up overnight with Katherine so that her reputation would be so sullied that she would have to marry him even though her parents disapproved. George who has up to now been interested only in men, develops a close relationship with his clever wife.

                  There are a variety of murders that remind the viewer of all the murders in the plays of King James’s time. There are also lots of semi-clad and unclad bodies romping around. Sex and violence—what more can one ask from a slice of history?