Queer film club: season 1
I very much doubt I could remember all the queer movies I've seen, much less write you a coherent list of the good ones. That's not a boast - my memory is terrible, and I'll watch any old shit with gays in.
(Gay Older Millennials: begging for scraps of representation and complaining bitterly when we get them…)
What I can do, however, is offer up the impromptu Queer Cinema Club programme I put together for some friends over lockdown.
This was broken into seasons, and I’m not sure why but six movies felt like the right size.
Enjoy season one! Or at least please comment with minimal vitriol and better suggestions.
Season 1: intro
Season 1 takes us from the approximate start of recognisably contemporary queer cinema to the Love, Simon era of gay-movies-made-for-straight-people in roughly chronological order. It's a fair (if safe) cross-section.
Beautiful Thing, 1996
Adapted from Jonathan Harvey's play of the same name, and played half way between stage and screen, this is the iconic British coming out movie. It feels theatrical in places, but holds up well and gets bonus points for being set on the Thamesmead estate. Beautiful Thing predates Queer as Folk by four years, and Rose by ten, but it blends elevated soapishness with a knowing and irreal quality in a way that has me half expecting the TARDIS to materialise at the end of the first act.
Watch on: BFI Player, DVD
See also: Get Real, Edge of Seventeen.
Jeffrey, 1995
The obligatory AIDS crisis one. If we're doing it, we're doing it with jokes and Patrick Stewart in a lovely cardigan, damnit. No, we can not watch an actually good movie instead.
See also: everything gay that got an even faintly positive critical reception before about 2005
Watch on: Amazon in the US, YouTube, probably DVD in the UK?
As a more serious aside: the best actual treatment I have seen of this epoch has been in series form. Both Don't Ever Wipe Tears Without Gloves, and It’s a Sin handle the AIDS crisis with humanity and emotional power. They’re very different shows, but one thing that unites them is the ultimate warmth. They neither skirt the tragedy nor wallow in it. Watch both, if you emotionally can. I’m not judging - it’s tough.
Latter Days, 2003
Pure sad-sweet feelgood schmaltz (with, granted, a dollop of nasty trauma at the end of act two) about a good little Mormon boy having naughty trouserfeels for the narcissistic twink next door. Also: Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Tara off of Buffy. Starts in the post-Will & Grace feelgood Ken-doll gayness of the early noughties, and grows some teeth.
Watch on: Amazon rental, DVD, probably Apple TV
See also: The Broken Hearts Club, Friends and Family, Big Eden
Fuera de Carta (Chef's Special), 2008
By the mid 2000s, queer characters got to be assholes with a redemptive arc too, and there were plenty of stories to tell beyond teenage longing. In this case: a farce about fragile masculinity, an aspirant Michelin-starred chef finally dealing with the knock-on effects of coming out later in life, and having a teenage son, and a storming ego. It's quite a lot funnier than that sounds.
Watch on: Amazon in some regions, DVD, Dekkoo
See also: Mario, The Pass, or Reinas (Queens) if you're here for the Spanish farce more than the brittle men.
Lilting, 2014
Serious Contemporary Queer Dramas now all have that soft lighting and those cuts to rustling trees, but I want to use Weekend in a future season called something like "they actually fuck", so Bereaved Ben Whishaw Makes Bad Choices it is. This is delicate and beautiful, and reliably makes me cry.
Watch on: Amazon, DVD, Apple TV
See also: Weekend, Silent Youth
Giant Little Ones, 2018
A very different teen experience to bookend Beautiful Thing. This, Love, Simon, and Alex Strangelove all hit in 2018, and all provide quite different answers to the question of how you do the queer teen movie in a culture where the coming out trope has been so thoroughly done, and acceptance is - while not a solved problem - significantly better. This is, um... not the cheerful one? You can tell because it does that Serious Modern Queer Film cinematography thing, rather than being a thinly-disguised Bleachers music video.
Watch on: Amazon rental, Apple TV, DVD
See also: Centre of My World, Screwed, North Sea Texas
When we were watching over lockdown, we only got as far as S1, but I’ll follow up with some future posts based on my notes for later seasons. Candidate themes included “lesbians”, “who hurt you, France?”, and “let’s make it weird”.