Weekend
I promised myself, as well as Shii and Gorp, to finally watch this movie. I haven’t seen all to many “gay films”, especially if you don’t count “Humpday” which is only ironically gay, but the ones I have seen based on recommendations were pretty awesome. So here I am.
Oh the gayness. I actually thought that those non-gay people that the main dude hangs out with are pretty cool. They were probably supposed to show how disconnected the main character feels to “normal people”. By that logic, I guess I have to feel some sort of disconnect to the gays.
As straight people, I think we have literally no means of entering nor understanding the illustrious circle of gays. (It doesn’t really make sense – as a woman, shouldn’t I have a few things in common with these men who are also into men?) A female friend of mine started liking a guy after she thought she was lesbian all her life and then fell into some sort of identity crisis because she was suddenly different from her friends. Isn’t that exactly how it should not be? Well well, I don’t have very many deep thoughts about the whole political agenda of gays, especially since most of my friends just tend to take it for granted. A lot of things are more convenient when you are friends with a gay man, because you can largely treat him as another female (you can undress in front of them without it being awkward, talk “girl stuff” etc.), but apart from that there really isn’t much of a difference.
So “Weekend”, like most other gay movies, have these clichés lingering on top of them. Are all gays skinny and beautiful (OK maybe they are, if I look around myself), do they all do cocaine and go to gay clubs, do they all sleep around and have one-night-stands all the time? I highly doubt it. We all have our problems, but not all of us are angry about it in this kind of way.
I read several times about how “Weekend” is a movie about two people falling in love with each other, not necessarily the gay stuff. I beg to differ. At least one of them makes a huge deal about being gay, and that is OK considering that they are. Women have a tendency to make a huge deal about being a woman too, but in both cases, it is not about love. Luckily, “Weekend” is also about love, and the main characters have a lot of chemistry. They talk quite openly about their lives, their past and their opinions, in this way that only lovers do, and that is quite awesome. From the way they talk to each other, especially their willingness to disagree with each other, you can feel how just two days of conversation made them really close. Recently, I have been complaining a little about how everything I read, and almost everything I watch, is so detached from myself. I recently had a discussion about the Makioka Sisters and reminisced about how close I felt to those characters. Most of what I watch lacks heart, and the strongest point of “Weekend” is that it has a heart. The characters might be clichéd, but they also are very realistic.
Personally, I feel most similar Tom Cullen’s character, the slightly less angry, much more realistic bottom, the less funny amongst the two of them. The simple fact that I can feel close to any of them means that the film did a really good job. It’s most definitely the best gay movie I have ever seen, so if Brokeback Mountain hasn’t shocked you too much, give this one a try. Oh and this is one of those films with a subtle, great ending scene.