Film focusing on gays fails to mine new vein

“Love! Valour! Compassion!” Directed by Joe Mantello. Written by Terrence McNally based on his play. Running time: 115 minutes. Rated R (for nudity, language, adult situations and content). Nightly at 5:10, 7:25 and 9:35 p.m. and Saturday-Sunday matinees at 12:40 and 2:55 p.m. Aug. 4-7 at the Railroad Square Cinema in Waterville.

“Love! Valour! Compassion!” is a film that fails in spite of — or, more likely, because of — its obvious manipulations to extend several enjoyable moments into an engrossing whole. No new ground is broken here, no surprises, which is disappointing as the film is based on Terrence McNally’s lauded 1994 Tony Award-winning play about eight gay men who must confront themselves, one another and the scourge of AIDS during the course of a summer. I did not see this play when it ran in New York, but I did read McNally’s original script. Whatever magic may have bloomed in the intimacy of a theater, or within the pages of a book, has failed to flower on film.

Directed by Joe Mantello, who also directed the play off-Broadway, “Love!” is not the raw, daring, avant-garde film we need it to be. It does not press against, nor does it tear down, the invisible limiting walls Hollywood has thrown up for gay films (i.e. audiences are only comfortable pitying the gay man with AIDS or laughing at the gay man in drag). In fact, it builds upon these walls and becomes exactly what you don’t want it to be: obvious, dated, sentimentalized, melodramatic, forced and contrived. Without flinching and without conscience, it dips into a well of stereotypes that are only mildly interesting, yet never fully conceived or, for that matter, compelling. I wanted to like this film, but left the theater feeling as though I’d just seen a rehashing of every gay film that came before it.

Some reviewers are saying this film is an updating of “Boys in the Band,” which is wrong because that film is about homosexuals dealing with their homosexuality. “Love!” is about homosexuals dealing with other homosexuals. A big difference.

The film does succeed on some levels. Its themes — love, valour, compassion — are universal and are showcased here to suggest that the dividing line between gay and straight society is not as definite as some would propose or even hope (in fact, that line is appropriately blurred). The film handles male nudity as casually as Hollywood has always handled female nudity. Some of the performances are good. John Glover, who plays identical twins John and James Jeckyll, is strong in each role (his last name, however, is about as silly and subtle as Nathan Lane’s entire career). Glover allows us to see through John’s rage the loneliness of an older gay man. In the kinder, dying James, he expresses a dignity that, while sometimes simpering, is more often touching. He is a talented actor who can say more with a raised eyebrow or with a lifted chin than many of the film’s other actors can say with a mouthful of McNally’s dialogue.

Seinfeld’s Jason Alexander, who plays the HIV-positive Buzz, sheds his clothes along with his inhibitions and delivers many of the film’s best moments. He is good here, funny and scathing, and is heralded by one character as “the love child of Judy Garland and Liberace.” Near film’s end, to protect himself, he lowers the iron curtain he once raised. Finally, we see him for who he really is: a frightened man whose life is being cut short by a disease he knows he cannot defeat.

The cast, however, is not without flaws. Stephen Spinella and John Benjamin Hickey, who play Perry and Arthur, are unbelievably annoying as a couple celebrating 14 years together. Only through sheer luck could they have found each other. I cannot imagine anyone else putting up with their yuppie whining. Randy Becker, who plays the darkly handsome Ramone, is cast as a preening tempter whose abdominals have received more of a workout than his intellect, a role, I’m assuming, that wasn’t much of a stretch for the vacant Mr. Becker. Justin Kirk, who plays the blind Bobby, is altogether flat … except in one scene, when he is told by telephone that his character’s sister has died. Here Kirk is called upon to summon the supreme powers of melodrama, which he excels at, and does so with a take-no-prisoners flourish that is reminiscent of a wounded calf being served up to a ravenous pack of wolves. It’s all rather embarrassing.

Had this film been released 10 years earlier, it would have made a statement. Today it merely rests comfortably on ground already broken by other writers and directors far more daring.

Grade: C-

Video of the Week

“Smilla’s Sense of Snow” Directed by Bille August. Written by Ann Biderman. Based on the novel by Peter Hoeg. Running time: 120 minutes. Rated R (for language, violence and adult content).

Much like Anthony Minghella’s “The English Patient,” whose Egyptian deserts were affecting in their luminous beauty, “Smilla’s Sense of Snow” excels in its cinematography. Its stunning images of Greenland and Copenhagen — absorbing and richly atmospheric — are reason alone to see this suspenseful, yet contrived, thriller.

The film is about Smilla Jasperson (Julia Ormond), a woman who investigates the death of an Inuit boy who falls from a rooftop. The boy was Smilla’s friend and, suspecting foul play, she delves into the mystery, eventualy uncovering secrets some powerful individuals would rather she not know.

The film begins fantastically and ends fantastically: Nothing in its last third can be taken seriously. But as a character study, the film works. Smilla’s relationship with the boy begins with her rejection of him, but eventually grows into love, something surprising and rather special considering Smilla’s unwillingness to allow anyone near her.

If you’re in the mood for something different and can suspend disbelief for two hours, this film, which also stars Vanessa Redgrave, Gabriel Byrne and Richard Harris, is worth a look.

Grade: B

Christopher Smith, a writer and critic who lives in Brewer, reviews movies each Monday in the NEWS.