Gay beach film
The realms of male sexuality are often violently policed. You’re either straight and fit in or you’re gay and will be ostracised. There’s little room for exploration and linear men doing gay things will often get bullied and shunned for it or will come up with ingenious ways of avoiding having to be associated with gayness, yelling “no homo” is but one example. It is this space of confusion and prejudice that the film Beach Rats explores as 19 year-old Frankie navigates the boardwalks of Coney Island. Inspired by a selfie of a young topless guy in a baseball cap (yup, this film was based on a selfie) this film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival assist in and won much critical praise. There is much to praise – plenty of epic writing, acting and filming, but it’s the central story I want to critique and the tropes used to tell it. Ultimately, I find this motion picture as confused as its protagonist, and not in a good way.
Firstly, the writer-director Eliza Hittman has been very clear in numerous interviews that this is neither a coming out nor a coming of age film, she calls it “a c
Before the screening
I’m going to try to write this one quick. This review of Beira-Mar has been sitting in my drafts folder for a week already, but I just couldn’t find the words to put down onto paper, but I’ll give it a try now.
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Last Saturday, after watching 45 Years (a motion picture that brought two awards to the two direct actors), my friends and I made our way to the showing of Beira-Mar. Like so many of the Berlinale films I went to this year, Beira-Mar wasn’t on my original list of must-sees—but I’m glad I was roped into seeing it.
Film screenshot – don’t you just love the actor’s blue hair?!
The motion picture tells the story of two teenage boys on a short journey of self-discovery. They each own their own issues and while on a concise trip together to the Brazilian seaside (one of my favorite places to think, if you remember…), they must resolve them. Each boy needed to come to terms with his own problem.
From here on out, I may write some spoilers, so, uh, yeah—watch out. I’m sorry, by Steve Desroches Like many LGBTQ youth, Billy Eichner longed to observe some sort of representation of male lover people in the world. Nevermind positive statement, but just some acknowledgement that people like him even existed. Sensing this, his supportive parents took him to see Madonna: Revelation or Dare in his native Fresh York City. As he sat there in between his parents, a year-old Eichner marveled at seeing so many gay men on screen as good as seeing two men kiss for the first age (Eichner was so inspired he would go on to have a Madonna-themed bar mitzvah). And as a new gay man he made a show to see every small indie LGBTQ-themed movie that popped up during the Gay Nineties and into the recent millennium; Jeffrey, The Broken Hearts Club, All Over the Guy, Edge of Seventeen. At the time, quality didn’t matter; it was just such a rarity to view gay stories told at all. But when it came to mainstream movies, LGBTQ characters were often caricatures, villains or victims, and usually a device to make direct people squirm, howl , or loathe. It’s i The Sixties beach movie craze began with Gidget () starring Sandra Dee and James Darren, a fictionalized look at teenager Kathy Kohner’s surfing escapades in Malibu during the mid-fifties. It was groundbreaking as the movie contributed to the mass influx of surfers to the beaches of Malibu and started a series of surf-themed films such as Gidget Goes Hawaiian with Deborah Walley stepping into Dee&#;s surfer role and Ride the Feral Surf with Fabian, Shelley Fabares, and Tab Hunter. The surf show soon morphed into the beach-party film, whose heyday was from through , where surfing was only used as a backdrop to fanciful teenage beach adventures. Beach Party from AIP starring Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello launched the duo in Muscle Beach Party, Bikini Beach, Beach Blanket Bingo, and How to Stuff a Wild Bikini. Soon other studios were releasing their own Beach Party rivals such as Surf Party with Bobby Vinton and Pat Morrow, For Those Who Think Young with James Darren and Pamela Tiffin, and Beach Ball with Edd Byrnes and Chris Noel. Some films var
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