Straight Talk

Because people are actually reading my blog (thank you!!), I feel compelled to make an effort to say something that goes beyond my own mental masturbation: I should at least try to enter a territory of mutual masturbation and according to some article I read the other day, if I am lucky, prostitution (a book deal).

Am I using a lot of words of a sexual nature? If so, you can blame it on The Sex Movie, which is, along with Satoshi Kon's groundbreaking anime films Paprika, Millenium Actress, Tokyo Godfathers and Paranoia Agent, probably one of the most stunning films that I have seen in the last decade. For those of you who saw Shortbus and heard me rave on and on about John Cameron Mitchell's achievement when it came out last fall, let me tell you: this one may even surpass the glorious, wondrous Shortbus (although it definitely can't touch the SB soundtrack).

The Sex Movie is a night in a windowless apartment with two men and two women. The Straight Guy, The Straight Girl, The Gay Guy, and The Lesbian. During this night, these four twenty/thirty-somethings participate in a discourse about attraction and assumptions. Frequently straight people ask gay folks, "How do you know you're gay?" And teh gays have learned to reflex with, "How do you know you're straight?" In this movie written and directed by Colton Lawrence, we are forced to ask and answer both questions at the same time in real, meaningful ways. Lawrence successfully penetrates the rhetoric and transforms these questions from devices into a meaningful way to talk about emotional existence in a sexual world (or sexual existence in an emotional world, depending on which character you're talking to).

He doesn't do it alone. Mike Fallon, Eleese Longino, Michelle Mosley, and Matthew Tyler turn in stunning performances in this low-budget indy film. We don't just hear Lawrence's subtext about the desire in the room, we see it on their faces and hear it in their voices. The violence between the four individuals is palpable, and when Rafe flinched at JD's angry movements, I flinched with him. The layers of emotion and intellect that shield and comprise our sexual selves are all visible without being overly simplified.

At the very base of it, I also found that the ending was surprisingly satisfying. The dialogue turns in so many directions that even if the ending is predictable, which maybe it was or wasn't, the journey to it is unexpected, thereby making the ending unpredicted as well.

You might be wondering why I say that this tops Shortbus. Shortbus, also a low-budget indy film, pushed the boundaries in a lot of ways. It's an amazing piece of work that spoke to me so much that I saw it three times during the original one-week run at the Princess Theatre. (along with most of KW's gay community, I am guessing!) The sex is all real, the cast wrote the film after they were selected, and it's a story about how to have an orgasm. Whereas the characters in TSM believe they know what they are about, the people in SB are lost and in a sense the film follows them as they look for answers.

But in the end, I think The Sex Movie managed to capture a moment I have longed to understand and never imagined would be transferable to film. At the end of both TSM and SB, our characters (and audience) get answers. What I like about TSM is that the characters get answers that they either weren't looking for or they were actively avoiding. This mirrors the coming out experience for so many of us who are gay, lesbian, intersexed, transgender, transexual, bisexual, pansexual, asexual, queer, not straight, or straight but not narrow. It is often gradual, it is at turns painful and then funny and both those things simultaneously, and most of the time, it is something that at one stage or another, we feel has been forced on us aginst our will.

I still have my days where I want to trade in my girlfriend for an Abercrombie Hunk because then I'd be closer to fitting in, and my kids, should I choose to have any, would have two biological parents as partners. I used to have a lot of those days. Luckily now they are only occasional, but I didn't get there without some work and in the end, the jarring acceptance of a truth about who I could love and whom I could let love me. (And damn am I lucky that Lucy chooses to love me.)

So as Coming Out Week wraps up, I am thinking a lot about these moments when with violent and painful and crazy and loving emotions we come to terms with who we are and ask others to do the same. At GLOW (Gays and Lesbians of Waterloo) discussion group this week, I heard the sadness of those whose parents refuse to accept who they love and the triumph of those children, who found the strength to be honest anyway. And I remember my first coming out week, 7 years ago, when one of my blockingmates (Harvard-speak for housing group) told me that she liked me but I was still a sinner. I remember my friend in high school who became homeless when her parents found out she loved women.

What does all of this have to do with The Sex Movie? Well, for the first time, I have seen a movie that successfully grasped and captured these many narratives simultaneously, even if not always explicitly. It's an uncomfortable film, and you may find yourself covering your eyes/ears at various moments. But it's worth forcing yourself to keep watching.

Besides, it's only 84 minutes run time ;)

Soundtrack for this entry: Kill Bill: Volume 1 and Volume 2