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The Sodomite Deception (2021)
disgusting and awful on every level.
This film is not a loving celebration of Christianity but of some kind of perverted ideology not better than National Socialism. The swastika substituted by a cross. Jesus would twist and turn in his grave (if there was one)
Dune (2021)
only one complaint
I have about this masterpiece: it was too short. It could have went on and on. So addictive by visuals and score. The story follows no huge arc or climax but it´s going like a sinus curve with ups and downs in a very natural manner and pace. There were moments that burned into my mind. They felt either so sad or threatening. By all it´s epic scale it´s the cast with peak performances throughout who carry the / their story with dignity and heart. Timothée Chalamet surprised me in "Call Me By Your Name" but here he carries landscapes of emotions with the tiniest of facial movements in an even more sophisticated way. Rebecca Ferguson as his mother ist very good as well. This mother-son thing is something very special and not seen very often in movies. Mostly one can find mother-daughter or father-son stories. Highly recommanded. I am German btw. Dune was released here 16th September.
Sauvage (2018)
world without stability
Watched the movie here in Germany yesterday. This is a disturbing and raw piece of cinema. In the world shown here is no love for anyone or at least not from the right person or for the right person. Some very few moments of tenderness and warmth hit you in the heart and you want them to last, to be able to hold on to them, but they are extinguished immediately. With the protagonist we stumble through the world without support, but with boundless freedom, which has its price and is also not romanticized here. The camera really does not shy away from ANYTHING! I say this as a warning. I often felt like a voyeur (in a bad sense) and there were some scenes I could hardly watch. Even for me as a gay man with some experience. But they are also absolutely necessary. Nevertheless, I say that this movie is absolutely worth seeing. Those who can handle it will be moved. The main actor Félix Maritaud is simply unbelievable and doesn´t get out of my mind. Here's proof once again that the most daring LGBTQ films are coming from France. I don't see anything comparable in Germany far and beyond.
Mario (2018)
emotional rollercoaster ride
I just came back from theater and I'm very enthusiastic. When I saw some film pics a few weeks ago, I thought, once again, a shallow gay soft porn flick is released. But this is great cinema. The story between Mario and Leon follows a predictable course and a classic drama development, but it's so well acted that the audience soon became very quiet. Short story: Mario is a young "perspective player" in Bern and hopes for a contract in the premiere team as a professional after the just beginning season. The talented player Leon from Germany joins the team and is received with suspicion by the Swiss players. Because he scores, he is accepted, but his selfish way of playing makes a bad impression on all, even on Mario. The latter soon moves down from the village in the mountains to the city of Bern and shares an apartment with Leon, where one leads to tho other. On the pitch, both become a striker duo that harmonizes perfectly, Leon's playing style changes, they are a team. That's a romantic topos for me. The two have not only discovered themselves as lovers but also as brothers in the spirit of football.
Some scenes remind me a bit of "Freier Fall" (Fee Fall, 2013) with Max Riemelt and Hanno Koffler. There is a lot of running in sport dress on the court........The chemistry between Swiss Max Hubacher and the German Aaron Altaras is superbe. The film always becomes particularly strong when the two protagonists are together during the tender moments or the difficult ones. This is highly emotional and nuanced acting. There are really nice scenes with the two of them. Each boy is super sexy on his own, but together they are unbelievable. Max Hubachers blue eyes .....OMG..... A large part of the audience have been young women's groups, just by the way. The reason why I'm decribing this in more detail is, that for me, as a gay man, the credibility of displaying love, desire, loss and pain between two guys is essential for me. (the actors are straight) Everything else is secondary. Most of the critics don't deal with it, they focus more on the football subject. Probably because they are mostly straight. But for me this is first and foremost a love story.
Also worth mentioning is Mario's childhood girlfriend, played by Jessy Moravec, who won the Swiss Film Award 2018 for best supporting role along with Max Hubacher (as best leading actor). Some critics find the surrounding too clichéd: the ambitious father, a photo session for a newspaper. Well, for my part, I take it from the scriptwriter. And I didn't find the movie too long either. You can't concentrate such an emotional story like a stock cube, you also need lighter and quiet moments as a viewer to let it all sink in...........the setting is also great. It was filmed in stadiums in Bern (Swizzerland) and Hamburg (Germany) at FC St. Pauli even with full spectator scenery. Stunning. The football clubs have been very supportive to realize the movie. This brings in a lot of real atmosphere. The tension comes out of the contradiction of a mostly accepting private environment and the anachronistic homophobia in the football world. Mario's mother, for example, just thinks that her son has a good taste.... More good movies from Swizzerland please!
Call Me by Your Name (2017)
Ist es besser zu reden oder zu sterben? Is it better to speak or to die?
SPOILER: This question, quoted from a French novella (recited in German by his mother) will trigger something in Elio, the 17-year-old son of the Perlman family. This will be the first step towards growing up, at least as far as emotional things are concerned, of which he, he reveals at some point, knows nothing about .
He decides to speak. And by actually doing so, namely revealing his feelings to the man who hasn't left his mind since his arrival in his family's holiday villa, he raises the relationship between him and this man to a level that will change both lives. This man is Oliver: an American studen of Jewish faith, like the Perlman family itself, almost ten years older than Elio, beautiful like an ancient statue with a deep and very erotic voice. He spends the summer with the family "somewhere in Northern Italy" to help Elios father, a professor of ancient history and art, with his works and, incidentally, get to know the Italian "Dolce Vita".
About half of the movie's play time passes until this happens (more than an hour). Until then, the film seduces us with a summer feeling that drips out of all pores in every scene and then breaks our hearts very, very slowly from the second half on. The special thing about this film is that it never puts the love between the two men and also between Elio and his childhood friend Marzia into perspective or makes a comedy about them. The feelings of all these people are taken very seriously. This is not a romantic comedy, even if there are funny moments of course. And it's not a plot-driven drama in the usual sense with dozens of twists and turns! It does not follow the usual hollywood-like pattern: reception, conflict and resolution. None of that here! This is an impressionistic film without much plot except for this very simple love story. We dive into this world at a certain point, live together with the characters. Just lay back and enjoy! A less attentive viewer will probably miss it that something is developping between Elio and Oliver but it happens. A lot is communicated via codes. Nothing is spoken directly. I imagine that some people find that boring over the long distance. I think it´s great.
The whole first part is a single foreplay, seemingly without a goal at first. Both boys also flirt with girls and even after their first kiss, they don't immediately throw themselves into each other's arms. The whole push-and-pull game goes on for quite a while. There is a very nice scene in which Elio Oliver plays various variations of Bach's "Capriccio (about the departure of his beloved brother)", which he has assumingly dedicated to his brother. Here Elio dedicates it to his heartthrob. This whole film is full of eroticism, tenderness and symbolism, as the title: "Call me by your name" suggests. A kiss in the grass, a hand that touches another, a peach (and no apple!) that gets special attention from both of them. All this is played so beautifully and completely without kitsch, because it has been fought hard for by Elio against his own reason and speechlessness. Everything simply feels right and compelling. Oliver takes Elio under his wing as he doesn't let up. During her first sex he shows a very tender consideration for the younger one, nothing is pushed, both may show their insecurities and nervousness, a very great scene.
Simply everything about this film is beautiful. But it doesn't seem unnatural or artificial either: The house seems a bit run-down but not spick and span. There are no exaggerated sunsets but nevertheless a beautiful light in every scene. The landscape of Lombardy is beautiful but not spectacular. The family is wealthy, but they don't drive expensive cars or wear extraordinary clothes. They belong to an academic elite, but they also watch idiotic Italian music shows together. Women used to wear sweaty blouses here.
The great music, by the way, is always fitting, piano pieces by Bach or Ravel, 80s Italopop music, and three modern pieces by Sufjan Stevens. Really great the song "Love My Way" by the Psychedelic Furs: "...Love my way, it's a new road, follow where my mind goes" That's the main theme here! But there are also many scenes without music, but only silence and cricket chirping.
The actors Timothée Chalamet as the love-hungry Elio and Armie Hammer as the reluctant Oliver are great. The movie doesn't really give much away what they usually do, where they come from or what they think. Little is said, but looks, gestures and body language say everything what is important at this very moment. The film just lives in the present (summer of 1983). When both are together on screen, there are mainly totals and only rarely close-ups to capture their body language.
I find Oliver even more interesting than young Elio. In the book of the same name you really learn almost nothing about him. Here he is a real person, who may also show vulnerability and affection in the second half, after he remained rather an erotic projection surface first, although also a few of his characteristics are shown rather casually. Pay attention here to: overflowing egg yolk, gulped down apricot juice and an iconic dance performance in a village disco to the Psychedelic Furs, where Elio can´t get his eyes off of him.
The film also creates something special here: it brings together the universality of a "first love" and the pain associated with it, and then also the peculiarities of a gay / queer relationship. As paradisiacal as the whole setting appears, at a second glance it is not at all. Despite all liberality: both boys have internalized that they can express their love only indirectly and cannot live it openly. In public spaces they can hardly hold each other's hands, let alone kiss each other. When Elio shows up with Marzia, who seems to be pretty clear about what's going on in Elio, making out with her, it can happen completely openly. Elio actually boasts about it.
There are differences to the book, but many essential elements and scenes have remained the same, especially the melancholic mood. Some things can't be filmed for the cinema at all. The novel is quite graphic about sex. I recommend to read the book to anyone who liked the film. It is told entirely from the first person's perspective by Elio and is more of an introspective and a memory. For me it was even more heartbreaking than the film: Here Elio and Oliver meet again after 15 and 20 years. Here Elio finally realizes that Oliver was the love of his life: "We had the stars you and I. and this is given once only."
Call Me By Your Name celebrates the beauty of love and above all the beauty of pain without which one has not really lived. It is an ode to our rich European culture back to antiquity, whose ideals resonate here again and again.
I also had such a summer in Tuscany in 1985 with a youth group, when I was 18: In an old farmhouse run by Germans: Orchards and vineyards, an open kitchen with cooks from the next village, who could be watched preparing the food. We joined a village festival and a local girl asked me to dance with her under the lanterns and everyone could see it. There was a small reservoir neaby where you could go swimming. Someone had a guitar with him and always played when he was in the mood. Once on arrival we phoned our parents, otherwise not any more, there were no mobile phones yet. Everything from Italy that can be seen in the film is real. And I once had an "Oliver" who I shared exactly the same first name as myself. So we didn't even had to change it. But all that not at the same time, of course. This film has brought up all these memories. I could empathize with everything.
I also want to mention another film I saw last year that I love as much as CMBYN: God's Own Country. Also this movie is very sensual and erotic but the setting couldn't be more different. And yet these two films do something that is still quite new in the film: they portray gay love as something natural and beautiful and ennobling. Something that is not controversially discussed, questioned or relativized. This is the ideal where we want to get to in real life