two small and interesting movies
Mar. 5th, 2009 11:10 am![[personal profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
teenytinypressYesterday morning I watched a movie called Gypo, a film from the UK which tells the same story about a married couple and a young woman who falls for the wife from three different perspectives. The film also has much to do with immigration to the UK as the young woman and her mother have moved there from the Czech republic and are waiting to become citizens of the UK. The director manages the three perspectives in a clever way such that there is a small amount of repetition, but mostly as the movie progresses, the different perspectives fill in blank pieces and let you put everything together. I happened upon the film in the library catalog and hadn't heard of it before. It follows the Dogme rules of filmmaking, which require the use of ambient light and sound, much improvisation of dialogue, etc. I was pretty impressed with this movie, and the people in smaller roles are especially good: the girl who plays the couple's teenage daughter is great as is Rula Lenska, who plays the mother of the Czech girl. The story of the young woman falling for the older woman is unusual, and the movie doesn't really reveal why it happens, but maybe sometimes that's how things happen, sort of out of nowhere?
This morning I watched Save Me with Chad Allen and Robert Gant. (I kept wondering if they would play the song, "Save Me," by Aimee Mann, but they didn't.) The good thing about this movie is it's pretty even-handed: nobody is "right." Chad Allen is a young gay guy who is on a self-destructive bender, and when he overdoses, his brother pays for him to spend two months at a Christian "recovery" center. The center is run by Judith Light and her husband, and really, back in the days of Who's the Boss, who would have thought that Judith Light is such a good actress, but she is. It's hard to like her character, but it's also hard to dislike her because she's so sincere. Anyway, I guess you could say that the premise of the movie is figuring out the role of religion in turning your life around, and what it means to turn your life around. I liked this movie a lot because it's complicated: it doesn't let you just be 100% irritated at the people who run the recovery center, but it also shows the emotional/psychological damage that the men are sustaining from trying not to be gay.
This morning I watched Save Me with Chad Allen and Robert Gant. (I kept wondering if they would play the song, "Save Me," by Aimee Mann, but they didn't.) The good thing about this movie is it's pretty even-handed: nobody is "right." Chad Allen is a young gay guy who is on a self-destructive bender, and when he overdoses, his brother pays for him to spend two months at a Christian "recovery" center. The center is run by Judith Light and her husband, and really, back in the days of Who's the Boss, who would have thought that Judith Light is such a good actress, but she is. It's hard to like her character, but it's also hard to dislike her because she's so sincere. Anyway, I guess you could say that the premise of the movie is figuring out the role of religion in turning your life around, and what it means to turn your life around. I liked this movie a lot because it's complicated: it doesn't let you just be 100% irritated at the people who run the recovery center, but it also shows the emotional/psychological damage that the men are sustaining from trying not to be gay.
