Ladymol's Review

You have to wonder why this isn’t a better known gay movie. It’s so much better than most of the films we’ve reviewed. On the surface it’s a very simple love story about two young men, Mark and Joey. Beneath this deceptively easy to watch plot is a deeply affecting story about families and love.

Mark is a sculptor who specialises in temporary urban sculptures to make political statements, usually gay or AIDS related. My favourite one is where he nails coloured items of clothing to a fence line, each white item representing 100,000 Americans who have died of AIDS, blue for every 100,000 with the disease and red for the rest of the world with the disease. As the camera pans down the fence line, the white and blue are shocking enough, but the red just goes on and on and on. And this film was made 4 years ago.

Joey is a simple, sweet, genuine young guy who works picking up trash. Sometimes he finds pieces that he keeps; each seems to hold a special significance to him that other can’t see.

Joey and Mark have probably the most believable gay relationship I’ve seen portrayed in a film. It’s hard to believe that these two actors are actually partners, so convincing is the life they lead.

Mark is trying to reach his father on the telephone, unaware that his father is dead. His father’s passion is making models of churches and cathedrals and when Mark discovers the body, some of this passion creeps into him, throwing him off the balance of his normal life.

Coping with their increasingly strained relationship, Joey comes out to his adoptive parents. Their reaction prompts him to want to seek his biological parents.

There are wonderful moments in this movie that you miss on the first watching. One of Joey’s finds in the trash is the little truck that Mark as a child places on his mother’s grave. I think the message of this movie is that everything is connected somehow, only we can’t see the big picture, only the little details that make up our individual lives. In that, this film reminded me a little of Latter Days. They are both movies that can be seen on many levels.

I’m delighted that I found this film. I'm pretty certain you’ll love it, too.

Cerisaye's Review

A gentle and understated feelgood movie.  With a sweet gay love story at its heart.  A film about living HIV+ that, like Drôle de Félix, doesn’t define a character.  It was made in 1994, when an AIDS diagnosis was still a death sentence.

Mark is out to save the world, an angry artiste who makes ephemeral conceptual sculptures to emphasise political points.  An art student, he works a series of crazy temporary jobs.

Joey is sweet and childlike, a cross between Peter pan and a Womble, who picks up garbage for a living, and rescues interesting items to take home for his collection.

Mark and Joey meet and fall in love, just like that.  Instant attraction, bonded over a few sticks of shared chewing gum.  Joey asks Mark out for coffee.

There’s a rather annoying nellyish narrator, David, who serves as a linking device in an episodic story.  I could’ve done without him.  Though the same character is fine in the body of the film, as Mark’s best friend.

This is simply one of the most natural depictions of gay love that we’ve seen.  Mark & Joey are attractive but pretty ordinary guys really.  They are so much in love they glow, intimate, affectionate and sexy.  The two actors are just superb.  It’s like watching real life.  They watch TV, lounge around, brush their teeth together.  Little things, like Mark pulling the covers over his sleeping lover.  Smoochies.

Joey prefers to avoid confrontation, happy and content in his own world. Joey works a kind of magic on Mark, mellowing his anger.  Together they build a modern family.

Careful use of flashbacks establishes the characters. Mark wants to reconnect with his father: a man who builds elaborate scale models of cathedrals.  Joey is trying to find his real family; his adoptive parents having rejected their gay son.  Denial no longer an option when Mark is presented at a very awkward Thanksgiving dinner.  Though his sister is supportive.

Love is what gives life meaning, families and partners.  Life is too short to waste on anger or hate, regret or recrimination.  Or building cathedrals in the mud.  It’s not always easy, but the rewards are worth the effort.  Life isn’t a Disney movie.  Thank God.  But this movie shows how it should be.  I loved it.  And I think you will too.