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Showing posts with the label 1982

Nagu'a (Hebrew) [Drifting]

This was probably one of the earlier Israeli gay films to have come out back in 1982. Our main protagonists have only two things he cares about - his homosexuality and the fact that he is making a 'gay' film. This would be film maker always says ''I'm busy with my film right now'", except you never see him do anything about it, because he is much more interested in sleeping around with different guys. People simply wander into and out of Robi's life, and if his character evolves during the course of the story, the change is difficult to decipher. Robi is a young Israeli who lives his grandmother and works at her store. He dreams of finding true love and becoming a movie director, both of which seem increasingly difficult. He has a friend with benefit situation with another guy named Han, who is married but they have good thing going. They both go to a cruising park, where Robi is supposedly looking for someone who looks like him and can play lad in the ...

Partners

Released back in 1982, this film is a gay themed cop "buddy" film. There are only a handful of films from the 80s which handled the queer theme head on (whether you agree with the portrayal or not is a different issue), so I was quite impressed. You can find all sorts of stereotypes in the films and quite a few are stuff that people can find offense to, but don't forget, the film is like almost 40 years old. After the police department is criticized for failing to solve the murder of a gay man, the Chief assigns the clichéd manly Detective Sergeant Benson to go undercover with the gay desk officer, Kerwin. Kerwin naively believes that he is closeted, although the entire Department knows about his sexual identity. Naturally, this means that the two will spend the remainder of the film bonding with each other, while tracking down clues about the killer. For the most part, Benson works through his homophobia by uttering homophobic remarks whenever he gets angry and having se...

Victor Victoria

I have been hearing about this film for many many years now. But for some reason, given it came out way back in 1982, I had my reservations and I couldn't bring myself to see the film. Also, top be honest, I am not really sure if it was a classic gay film or is it just a cult film thats loved by gays because of Julie Andrews. Finally, all my hesitation went for a toss after having seen this film. Set in 1930s in Paris, aging Toddy is MC at one of the clubs. His male lovers are faithless and his career is at a standstill. A chance encounter with Victoria, a brilliant female singer changes his life forever. When she keeps getting rejected and finds herself starving in Paris, its Toddy who comes with a brilliant idea. He asks her to pretend to be a man and then play a female impersonator in a club. With her style she will become popular. Their bets pay off. They become best friends and we have a girl, pretending to man impersonating to be a woman. They soon become talk of the tow...

Querelle

Why? Why? Why? Why did the director ever make this movie. Just about everything in this movie was bad. Poor performances, awful sets which look so fake, no storyline, poor cinematography. The saving grace in such films is usually good physical sex scenes but even that was not there in this movie. After a long time I had to fast forward and see a movie just because it was so damn boring. French sailor Querelle arrives in Brest and starts frequenting a strange whorehouse. He discovers that his brother Robert is the lover of the lady owner, Lysiane. Here, you can play dice with Nono, Lysiane's husband : if you win, you are allowed to make love with Lysiane, if you lose, you have to make love with Nono... Querelle loses on purpose. Sound interesting but believe me it was not. It was a bad bad film. Except for the lead main character, all the other men were so un attractive. The movie is supposedly based on some book. I wonder what kind of book was that. The acting is completely theatri...

Making Love

First a few facts. This movie was made in 1982. So we need to remember how conservative the society in general was at that time and how easy or difficult was it for being to accept their sexuality. Zach, the doctor and Claire, a successful TV producer are a happily married couple for 8 years. Their is such an amazing chemistry shown between the couple that they seem just perfect. This is until Bart, a novelist walks into Zach's office and arises in him the long-repressed feelings of attraction towards other men. Zach kepts getting drawn to Bart who for some reasons want to keep a distance from him. As Zach starts spending more and more time with Bart, Claire starts assuming him haing an affair with a woman. Not being able to handle it anymore, Zach comes out to Claire and after initial shocks and fights, they both get used to it. Bart was never meant for Zach. In the end its shown that both Zach and Claire and happily settled with thier respective partners. Story sounds so simple b...