This is the sort of pretentious crap that has killed art-house cinema. The fact that the players speak English makes it more criminal to hear dialogue that appears to have been written in French and then sloppily translated. The actors speak like they are reading bad subtitles and are therefore forced to speak some very idiotic sentences indeed.
The young actors are pretty but surprisingly sexless. They come across like twelve year old girls, not mature enough to pretend they have any of these feelings. This is stressed even more by the casting of older men in female roles, at once an insult to women and to gay men.
Any film in soft focus is considered "beautiful" today and this one is particularly ugly with fantastic scenery badly photographed and endless shots of lakes and cottages that add nothing to the setting. The prison scenes are strictly 1960's bad theater of the absurd.
This play on film presents a convoluted jilted lover plot worthy of a daytime soap pretending it is saying something important about homophobia. Indeed who is the true villain here? The jealous lover who killed for his love and became a priest in his atonement or the selfish and closeted Simone, who was dumping his true love after one beating from dad. It is Simone who is the sinner here but the writer would rather not see that and blames some smitten waiter for all the crimes of humanity. Apparently Simone paid for his real sins by ageing really badly, a punishment only a gay man would understand.
Even with it's drag queen women and naked girly-boys, LILIES is not good gay cinema. But it sure is queer.
The young actors are pretty but surprisingly sexless. They come across like twelve year old girls, not mature enough to pretend they have any of these feelings. This is stressed even more by the casting of older men in female roles, at once an insult to women and to gay men.
Any film in soft focus is considered "beautiful" today and this one is particularly ugly with fantastic scenery badly photographed and endless shots of lakes and cottages that add nothing to the setting. The prison scenes are strictly 1960's bad theater of the absurd.
This play on film presents a convoluted jilted lover plot worthy of a daytime soap pretending it is saying something important about homophobia. Indeed who is the true villain here? The jealous lover who killed for his love and became a priest in his atonement or the selfish and closeted Simone, who was dumping his true love after one beating from dad. It is Simone who is the sinner here but the writer would rather not see that and blames some smitten waiter for all the crimes of humanity. Apparently Simone paid for his real sins by ageing really badly, a punishment only a gay man would understand.
Even with it's drag queen women and naked girly-boys, LILIES is not good gay cinema. But it sure is queer.