Gay Films

Much easier to define. Films about homosexuality. But then that's quite a wide field, ranging from the hysterical and didactic Boys In The Band, to Visconti's superbly moody and elliptical Death in Venice. The main point in most of these films, though, seems to be as an exercise in public relations — to show the public that homosexuals aren't all grubby child molesters, but that they are mostly just average, decent human beings. To do this, however, it's necessary that you don't alienate your audience too much. And so avoid showing gay sex as much as you can. Such things, after all, can induce fainting fits and severe nausea in "normal" people.

Even so, Wolfgang Peterson's The Consequence carried a Censor's Note that 'some scenes may offend' — which meant that it showed two men kissing, and smoking in bed afterwards. Pretty shocking stuff. Oh, I forgot the scene of the reform school boys gang-banging Babette......But The Consequence for all that it was predictable, earnest, and occasionally melodramatic, was quite a good little film convincingly acted by its two prinipals, and with some very real and moving scenes. Unlike To An Unknown God, by Jaime Chavarri. Sure, it was quite well acted, quite well directed, and with just tons of sensitivity — but dull, dull, dull.

I don't think it's really any surprise that the best 'gay' film at the festival was the only one that didn't take time out to push its barrow and stand on its soapbox. In Rainer Werner Fassbinder's erratic and intense (and stylistically very exciting) In A Year of 13 Moons, it is almost inconsequential that the main character happens to be a disintegrating transsexual. But Elvira wins our deep sympathy like no-one does in the other films. And that sympathy, simply for another human being, carries quite a weight. [unclear: En] rambling. Fassbinder's highly [unclear: stylised] of tragedy is brilliant. If you like that a of thing, which I do.