I WANT YOUR LOVE

For some unexplained reason 30 year-old performance artist Jesse is forsaking his life in San Francisco to move back to his family home in Ohio, and he is very unsure if this is a good decision. His room-mate and best friend Wayne is throwing a going away party in the apartment they share, and he has his own dilemma as he is having second thoughts about having asked his boyfriend to move in. Jesse's biggest doubts seem to hang around his reluctance to move away from his ex boyfriend Ben who he obviously has feelings for, albeit confusing ones at best.  Luckily for Jesse he finds a mentor he can open up too at the party in the shape of his older neighbor Keith .... also an artist, and also attracted to Jesse in a non fatherly way too.

This edgy wee film shows this tight section of very likable gay men in a close knit community that are all in a quandary and at a cross roads of their lives.  Their situations are very real and natural as are their sexual encounters, but that's because they are exactly that. Filmmaker Travis Mathews has infused his narrative with un-simulated sex scenes i.e. pornography in this character driven plot which takes this current new wave of Queer Cinema one giant step forward.

I've procrastinated longer than usual in writing my review on this movie  .... not because of any negative views on pornography (which I certainly don't possess!) but my initial concern as to whether the explicit sex scenes overwhelmed the narrative, or if indeed I was too impressed with the whole novelty factor to make a valid judgement.  On reflection I now fully appreciate that the sexual acts ... beautifully performed and photographed by the way ... are an integral part of the whole piece.  (But did it really matter if they weren't anyway?) And the fact that it is breaking barriers doesn't alter the bottom line that this is a remarkably good movie. By using performers and performance artists and not actors, Mathews has added another level of reality to his movie that almost gives it a quasi-documentary feel at times.

The movie financed by Naked Sword an established pornography company played the festival circuit last year including N.Y.'s prestigious New Fest and won the approval of Stephen Holden of the NY Times.  It made a bigger splash earlier this year when the Australian Censors banned it completely causing James Franco, Mathew's friend collaborator on 'Interior Leather Bar' (which incidentally is not nearly as good as this) to loudly publicly defend it.

Hot on the heals of Ira Sach's 'Keep The Lights On' Andrew Haigh's 'Weekend' and David Lambert's 'Beyond The Walls' this is another rather excellent and totally engrossing movie that tells that a story about contemporary gay lives that are not picture-perfect, that do not shy from the truth, and are resilient, strong, and most of all, very relevant. 

If this clique represent the future of queer cinema then the future is very rosy indeed.

Available streaming or download now from http://www.iwantyourlovethemovie.com/

★★★★★★★★★

THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES

This enthralling new movie from filmmaker Derek Cianfrance (BLUE VALENTINE) is a thriller in three acts which link together to tell an engrossing story.  The first part .... by far the strongest .... is the story of Luke a stunt motorcyclist in a travelling carnival who discovers he has a bad son.  This tattooed covered toughie wants to give up on his life on the road and become a dad.  Snag is that Romina, the son's mother. has a new man, and also raising a family takes money. Luke intends to deal with his replacement, but first he sets about trying to get some big money quick.  He is encouraged by a new friend to utilize his biking skills to become a Bank robber which ultimately leads  to his downfall.

The second section is the story of rookie Policeman Avery Cross who is hailed as a hero for a deed he is not particularly proud off.  Avery is a complex man who really didn't know what he wanted out of life before the incident, and is totally confused now.  He is also the father of a new baby, and his wife wants him to leave the Police force and start a new life.  Avery is the son of a State Supreme Court and he read for the Bar but then gave it up to get his hands dirty working on the Beat.  When he uncovers widespread corruption amongst his colleagues he realizes that this is too dirty for him, especially when his Chief tells him to turn a blind an eye to it all.   He can't, and for once he asserts himself and reports the bent cops to the District Attorney in exchange for immunity and a job back in Law.

The final part of the story takes place 15 years later.  Avery is divorced, very successful and is now running for election to be Attorney General.  His 16 year old son A.J. has been left to run wild and now living at his father's house often on his own and he has developed more than a passing liking for drugs.  He has been transferred to another high school for his final year and he seeks out another loner to score some 'supplies' and they strike up a fledgling friendship.  His new pal is Jason, who is Luke's son.  Jason had always been told that his father died in car accident many years ago, but when he discovers the truth, and the part that A.J's father played in it, he seeks to settle some scores to pay for depriving him of a father.

I've been deliberately cagey in my synopsis for fear of giving too many spoilers, because the element of surprise is rather a crucial part of enjoying this movie.  And the story is after all the star of the piece.  Closely followed by the actor's rather electric performances naturally.  Ryan Gosling reunited with Mr Cianfrance is completely mesmerising as the tough looking Luke with the compassionate heart that really wants to make life perfect for Romina and baby Jason.  Bradley Cooper as Avery Cross proves that his exciting performance in 'Silver Linings Paybook' was no fluke, and that he can even top that!  The beautiful Eva Mendes played Romina, Ray Liotta was perfectly menacing as a bent Detective, Harris Yulin as Judge Cross ... but the other actor that really grabbed my attention was young Dane DeHaan with his sensitive portrayal of Jason.  Mr DeHaan also stars in 'Kill Your Darlings' that I saw in Sundance this year and which will be hitting theaters soon ..... he has the makings of a major star, remember you heard it here first!

The film starts with a bang and kind of ends with a whimper with with its third act full of revenge and redemption that runs a tad off the rails.  There was also one minor puzzling element that is still with me now : the fact that AJ who had been brought up in Upstate New York by his well-spoken mother has somehow ended up talking like a thug from some ghetto!

That said these are minor niggles in an excellent movie that was one of those rarities that actually was as good as the hype that preceded it.  Maybe even better.

★★★★★★★★★

GINGER & ROSA

Ginger is a deadly serious teenager coming of age in London in the 1960's at the height of the Cold War.  Up till now she has done everything together with her best friend Rosa but as Ginger starts  becoming a budding activist and a impassioned poet the girls start to drift apart.  Unlike Ginger, Rosa has struggled through school and holds her mother in great disdain and also cannot shake off her bitterness about her father walking out on them she was still a baby.  Ginger on the other hand worships Roland her father, a scruffy intellectual who had been imprisoned for being a pacifist,  and she also patronizes her mother for giving up her own career as an artist to be a much put-upon housewife.

As Ginger grows she is encouraged to pursue her new bohemian ways by her two gay godfathers even though one earnestly entreats her 'can't you be a girl for a moment or two longer?'   Their best friend Bella, who is visiting from the US, is a strident feminist and she serves as the catalyst to edge Ginger on.  This is all at the expense of the relationship between the two girls which sours when Rosa, who clearly has no ambitions to save the world, focuses instead on saving/seducing Roland, who has now finally left Natalie.  She does this right in front of Ginger, and we know by now that it is not going to end well for any of them.

This is the latest movie written and directed by Sally Potter and after her last two extremely disappointing ones ('Rage' and 'Yes') shows that she is getting back to the form when she burst on to our screens back in '92 with 'Orlando' and  'The Tango Lesson' in '97. To bring her work so alive, she always manages to pull in such first rate actors although surprisingly enough for this slice of quintessential English life, very few of her cast were British.  Ginger was stunningly played by Ellie Fanning : a veteran actress at 14 with some 13+ movies under her belt already.  Likewise young Alice Englert in the less showy role of Rosa is the daughter of new Zealand filmmaker Jane Campion.  Roland was played by Alessandro Nivola, the two gay godfathers by Oliver Platt and Timothy Spall, and Annette Benning was in the cameo role of Bella, and Jodhi May was cast as Rosa's mother.  Poor Christina Hendricks ('Mad Men') struggled so valiantly with her British accent that she (and you) couldn't focus on her playing Natalie at all.

I was enthralled by Ms Potter's attention to the most minute detail of the look and feel of this  piece : she captured the mood of the country perfectly in that period in the heady 1960's before we stopped worrying about the bomb and started making love instead.   What was less agreeable was the overabundance  of earnestness and the somewhat pseudo-sounding philosophising which started to drain one's patience big time.  It was both excessive and unnecessary.

Worth seeing though for Miss Fanning alone, and maybe  (!) because Sally Potter movies are few and far between.

★★★★★★

THE FALLS

It's tough being a young Mormon man.  At aged 20 you are made to leave home and dispatched to some far flung part of the world to pair up with another innocent youth and for the next two years be a Missionary and force the Gospel on to unsuspecting souls to recruit them as new members of the Church of Latter Day Saints. Of course its not the Gospel as in the Bible but Joseph Smith's take on religion and the great hereafter known as The Book of Mormon.

RJ the protagonist in this story is an ex high school athlete who is disappointed that his Mission is to be in Oregon a mere 6 hours away from his native Idaho and his long-standing girlfriend who he doesn't seem too broken hearted to be leaving.  (In four years he's never got past a peck on the check).  The senior Missionary who is to be his 'companion' i.e. they must stick together 24/7,  is Chris who must be addressed as Elder Merrill at all times.  

Chris has both more experience and more confidence than RJ but even he is thrown off-course after a couple of encounters with non-believers whose challenges make them both start to question the validity of the mission.  They realize that it is more than a tad presumptuous of two immature 20 year olds to be lecturing grown men about the iniquities of their lives.

It soon turns out that these two young men who hang around their apartment in their special Mormon 'magic' underwear have more of a passion for each other than the Prophet Smith would like.  After all its OK to be a polygamist and a Mormon, but certainly not gay.  

Their new found love coincides with them slacking of from hustling potential converts and starting to actually have some fun for the first time but when their Supervisor comes to check out what's up and he gets an eyeful of naked flesh, then the game is up.  Now they will have to head home in disgrace and face their families and their faith.

This is one of those micro-budget indie movies that I have a very soft spot for: totally easy to pick holes in the story, production and not least the heavy handed score etc etc, but it has a great deal to like and an immense amount of charm that balances it out.  

Two fine young actors playing the leads : Nick Ferrucci ('Tandem Hearts') as RJ gets a couple of fine monologues where he stands up for himself against the Church hierarchy, and Benjamin Farmer ('The Roomies') as Chris who ends up being the one with the least confidence after all. It has a script that took great strides to be as bi-partisan as possible about the Mormonism (why though?), and instilled it with a couple of really funny scenes ......when the boys are smoking pot and watching TV with someone they have befriended instead of converting, RJ admits that Mormons love censoring fun and that their version of the movie 'Usual Suspects' is now just a mere 27 minutes long.

For newbie writer/director/producer Jon Garcia it was a spirited debut and something of a daring choice for subject matter as lovelorn gay Mormons already featured in a now classic highly-successful queer movie 'Latter Day Saints' that this will inevitably be compared with.  It is not in the same league (it doesnt have Joseph Gordon-Leavitt for a start) but it has a freshness and very definite appeal as a good date night movie. Unless maybe if you are a Mormon, and living in Oregon or Idaho I guess.

★★★★★★★

LORE

Most movies about World War 2 are either about the atrocities of the Holocaust, or how the brave Allied Forces defeated the Germans again.  This movie however is about neither.  In fact it turns it all somewhat upside down as it is about a young German family who have been abandoned by their Nazi parents after Hitler's downfall and have to face the long perilous journey through a defeated Country in total chaos and now run by the Occupying Forces.

Lore at 14 years old is the oldest of the five siblings and takes charge as they set out penniless and without food from the Black Forest where they have been hiding out. Their destination is their Grandmother's farm the other side of Hamburg but as the trains are no longer running in a near chaotic country that has all but ground to a halt, they set out on their long perilous journey by foot.  Trading the remains of their mother's jewelry for any food wherever they can, Lore carefully tries to play up the fact that her youngest brother Peter is a mere baby hoping that the sympathy for his plight will persuade people more.

However everybody they encounter on their trek are not only in similar situations, but they are all so deeply consumed with the shock of their country's loss and the death of their beloved Fuhrer. They may be totally defeated and completely destitute but without exception all the people Lore and her siblings come across still cling to the Nazi ideology even now :  one farmer's wife staring at Hitler's portrait incessantly wails 'we broke his heart'.

Along the way the family meet Thomas a young man who after making eye contact with Lore, follows and then eventually joins them after rescuing the family from a potentially tricky encounter with some American soldiers.  Despite saving them, Lore turns on Thomas viciously when she discovers he is Jewish simply because that is part of the bigotry that she and her siblings have been so heavily indoctrinated in.

Along the way these young hungry children have to

pass the mutilated bodies of raped women and suicides with gaping head wounds ... they (and we) are spared nothing of the ghastliness of the sheer brutality of war. And then at one point when they can go no further Thomas is also forced to resort to violence to save the family, which is possibly the breaking point for Lore who has undeniably some attraction to this young man even though she desperate loathes him. The relationship between this angry young woman and the mysterious Thomas who turns out not to be Jewish at all is a hard one to fathom out.

Based from 'The Dark Room' an award-winning novel by Rachel Seiffert this provocative story (which I had been convinced had to be based on fact) was turned into a movie by Australian Director Cate Shortland.  Two interesting relevant facts about Ms. Shortland .... she is Jewish, and also doesn't speak a word of German even though that is spoken throughout.  Breathtaking performance by newcomer Saskia Rosendahl as Lore which held the picture together quite magically.

There are parts in this movie that make you so angry you are tempted to walk out in disgust.  Particularly scenes such as when the family sit waiting for a train now they are running again, and the conversation from the crowd is about how they vehemently insist that all the pictures posted everywhere about the Holocaust are all fakes and totally made up of actors. 'The Americans are such liars'.   It is not often when one can sit in a packed movie theater and there is complete and utter silent for every single second of the movie.  In this instance it is from a mixture of sheer horror and awe.

★★★★★★★★★

Now showing in an Art House near you and available from Amazon in May.

BEAUTY aka SKOONHEID

Francois is one of the unhappiest self-loathing closeted gay men I have ever seen on film.  He's a middle-aged South African who is first seen celebrating his daughter's wedding in what appears to be a happy family.  He is cold and matter of fact with his wife,  but that almost seemed like a natural state of affairs in a well established marriage like theirs. He gets his sexual needs taken care of elsewhere, not as one would suppose by a mistress, but by being part of a small clandestine group of straight men who meet up in secret to have sex with each other. These bigoted old white men hate 'blacks and faggots' who are totally banned from the group.

It's quite the regular routine that this rather sad old man has worked out which has seems to satisfy him but at the wedding he sees his best friend's son Christian all grown up and devilishly handsome and without the slightest encouragement from the young man, he gets totally infatuated. Suddenly the serious overly-cautious Francois turns into a stalker as he becomes completely obsessed with the charming young lawyer.

He secretly follows Christian back to Cape Town and turns up on his doorstep on the pretext of being there on business.  Totally unaware of the older man's desire Christian goes out to dinner with Francois, who he still addresses as Uncle as he has done since childhood.  The differences between the uptight old-fashioned business and the free-spirited confident young man are enormous and when Christian meets up with a friend when they are out, Francois misreads their friendly embrace and thinks that maybe Christian is not straight after all.

What follows is shockingly brutal and turns our loathing for the repressed Francois into nothing less than hatred. It's a very vicious punch-line that caught me totally unaware and has me still reeling as I re-think about it all now.

It's a thought-provoking and well executed glimpse at a whole tribe of blinkered closeted men who seemed trapped in the past that is (thankfully) disappearing. Their way of dealing with their sexuality seemed to hurt everyone involved and at the very least, made them all totally miserable.

The subject matter may have been disdainful, but the movie itself was completely compelling, thanks to a well written script, but mainly to a wonderfully pitch-perfect performance by Deon Lutz as Francois.

I cannot think that I have ever seen a gay themed movie set in South Africa, and definitely not one filmed in Afrikaans.  This one made the wait worthwhile, and it also won the Queer Palm at last year's Cannes Film Festival, which is quite an honor.

Should be seen whether you are gay or not, BUT it is not for the feint-hearted.

★★★★★★★★             Available from Amazon

BERT STERN : ORIGINAL MADMAN

Say the name Bert Stern to anyone and they will immediately think of the legendary set of photographs he took of Marilyn Monroe in her last sitting just before her death. Behind closed doors without anyone else present he captured her beauty raw and natural in stunning iconic images which still takes one's breath away even now. But Mr Stern, we learn from this new documentary, also had an inexhaustible ground-breaking body of work spanning several decades where he photographed everything from Smirnoff vodka bottles to Camel cigarettes with the same visionary eye and passion he used with Ms Monroe. He also combined his professional loves with his personal ones that got him into several scrapes including one with a Blonde and an 8" knife that she wanted to stab him with. The title of 'original mad man' is meant to convey that he was the first real star in a fledgling advertising industry in the 1950's, but the filmmaker would also have us construe it to be a comment on his erratic personal behaviour too.

The sections of the movie about his work are enthralling, and it is easy to appreciate what a sheer genius he was with his singular perception and consummate devotion to getting exactly the right shot, resulting in radical conceptual images and some iconic images. It touched on the early days when he worked at the now defunct 'Flair Magazine' with another budding photographer called Stanley Kubrick, and of his time at 'Vogue' under the great Diane Vreeland where he ended up being given 10 pages to photograph carte blanche whatever he wanted.

There was also the time in his life when a nasty divorce wiped him out financially and left him broke and but he ingeniously struck on the notion of photographing every single prescription drug for 'The Pill Book' the handbook for all Doctors and Pharmacists that sold sold some 17 million copies and made him enough money to buy another big house.

Stern, a very reluctant subject in front of a camera, was less of his bumptious self when he eventually talked about the sessions that made him such a star. His recollection of how he got Marilyn to pose like that for him was both touching and fascinating, and he seemed genuinely shocked at how well it all turned out.  For him anyway. 

Two other stories stick out too. One is where he relates how he came up with the concept of the infamous movie poster for 'Lolita' where he defied the Producers and made Sue Lyon look even younger.  The second tale is where he confesses that one of his worst professional mistakes was trying to re-create the Marilyn photographs recently using the ubiquitous Lindsay Lohan. The less said about that debacle, the better.

As intriguing and as complicated as all his many personal relationships with women were, there was too much of that part of his life in the movie and at the expense of showing more of his work. The fact that we were presented with rather convoluted and poorly edited stories about his wife and several of his girlfriends .... and even his lack of compassion for one of his daughters ... made the picture too muddied to follow in parts.

A lot of the confusion can be explained by the fact that this rather odd unbalanced movie was shot and directed by 83 year-old Stern's current amour Shannah Laumeister who is his junior by some 40 years. They had met when Laumeister was just 13 years old and she modeled for him a few years later and then became his Muse. She was far  too close to her subject to be objective enough, and a little too keen to keep reminding us of her role in the great man's life.

All said and done though, even though this is not the definitive movie on Bert Stern that the man deserves, it does at least give us more than a glimpse of a genius whose work revolutionized an industry and is the creator of some stunning photographic images that  we will never forget.

Now if only someone could explain to me exactly who those annoying Twins are with whom he has dinner with almost every night .... ....

★★★★★★★★

WHICH WAY IS THE FRONT LINE FROM HERE? THE LIFE AND TIME OF TIM HETHERINGTON

This deeply affectionate and totally disarming epilogue to the distinguished photo-journalist Tim Hetherington by Sebastian Junger his friend, colleague and co-director on the Oscar nominated 'Restropo' will have you reaching for your box of Kleenex.  And quite rightly so. Aside from his inestimable body of work, this devilishly handsome tall rangy Brit ex public schoolboy with his compulsion for travelling the rough spots of the world so that he could 'connect with real people in unique and unusual circumstances' was clearly an old fashioned gent i.e. a completely unselfish decent human-being with such an infectious joie de vivre.

His first big 'break' came when he travelled with the Rebel Army in Liberia as they sought to overthrow the dictator Charles Taylor in that country's bloody civil war.  Never being one to believe in the moral outrage of war, his work avoided all the usual horrific battle pictures and he focused on the effects and the devastation on the local inhabitants.  In this particular instance it was on children who had been deliberately blinded ... whose cause he took up when he stayed on in Liberia after the war was over.

In 2007 Tim won the World Press Photo competition for his picture of a tired American soldier covering his face with his hand following a day of fighting in the Korangal Valley, Afghanistan.  In the next two years he made several trips to Afghanistan with Sebastian Junger, and the two collaborated on the 2010 documentary 'Restrepo' based on their assignment in Afghanistan.  When I blogged my Review on this I recall declaring it one of the finest examples of cinema verite I had ever seen and 'an exceptional and stunning piece of journalism'.  Now after watching behind the scenes of how/why this whole movie came about, I am even more in awe.

On camera, Tim acknowledged that he risked his life in the course of his work for a lot of very different reasons ... some personal that he didn't enlarge on ... but mainly to find the objective truth.  His work, he said, was part of his need to build bridges, and so he avoided the usual method of photographer's obsession with detachment for objectivity so that he could make a connection with his subjects.  He did so with great ease and abundant charm even in some of the most scary and dangerous of places he ended up in.

When he met Idil the 'love of his life' in 2010 he vowed to give up covering wars, but straight after attending the Oscar Ceremony in LA in 2012 Tim changed from his tuxedo into his flack jacket and caught a boat to Libya.  There in Misrata he got shot .... not a fatal wound .... but on the journey to the hospital the other journalists with him couldn't stop the blood loss, and so he died.

Aged 40 with a 10 year career behind him and a reputation as a humanitarian and a photo-journalist that will last for many years to come ... and not just because of the Square named after him Libya or all his posthumous awards. From the interviews with his family you can see where he had inherited his strength of character from, and they also re-affirmed what all  his friends and colleagues bore witness to : this was a remarkable inspirational man with unlimited rare compassion.  He will be sorely missed.

The movie will be shown on HBO in the US later this year.  Do not forget to have your Kleenex handy

P.S. Sebastian Junger has since set up R.I.S.C. Reporters Instructed in Saving Colleagues.

★★★★★★★★★★

JOURNAL DE FRANCE

If most of us rummaged through our partner's storage room to check out what old photos and videos you could dust off, I dare say the novelty would wear thin very quickly.  However if you are the sound engineer Claudine Nougaret and your husband is the legendary veteran French cameraman Raymond Depardon then the years of archives would have some real treasures, many previously unseen.

In 2006 Depardon ziz-zagged across the country in  his wee van with a large-format plate camera taking snapshots of small-town life and rural France that was rapidly disappearing.  He uncovered barbershops, dilapidated corner tabac stores and sad looking local bars where time had stood still for at least 40 years.  The results were shown in an Exhibition entitled 'La France' in 2010.

It led to the misleading title for this movie that had an extraordinary wealth of glorious diverse material Nougaret had uncovered and edited that showed that as well as his beloved France, Depardon was not just an intrepid traveller but had been in some hot spots around the world just as history was being written.  Starting with the riots in Argentina, to capturing French mercenaries at work in Biafra, and the Soviet invasion of Prague, and following the rebels in Chad, and the sickening Coronation of Bokassa in C.A.R., the list seemed endless. His phenomenal reportage captured not just the events as they unfurled but how deeply they affected the local population.

Back home in France in the 70's he documented the rise of Giscard D'Estaing, one of France's most slimiest Presidents.  D'Estaing managed to shop it being shown at the time, and watching the small clip in this movie, you can understand why.

The concept of a montage of a lifetime's worth of photograph and newsreel footage may not obviously seem like a recipe for the compelling and entertaining movie that it turned out to be.  Full credit to Ms Nourgaret for some superb editing, and honing her own remarkable talent as a sound engineer as the soundtrack was stunning.

If I have one complaint at all, it was as I quickly got so engrossed in very vignette I was a tad annoyed that I never knew how the scene ended.  There was a particularly wonderful (very light) one that Depardon filmed in a Parisian Court House of a stand off between a bossy and irritated female Judge and a defiant plaintiff that put such a big grin on my face.

It was a surprising discovery and a sheer joy.  If it doesn't make it to an Art House near you,  it will be available on Netflix soonish.


★★★★★★★★

BAD BOY STREET

It's dawn in Paris, Yann a middle-aged gay man is walking home when he spots a cute young man lying in the gutter.  Turns out he's drunk and an American tourist. The street is in the 4th Arrondissement and is called Rue des Mauvais Garcons : hence the movie title.

Next morning the boy wakes up and cannot remember a thing, but has breakfast with Yann and then leaves promising to come back for dinner and a date that night. There is zero chemistry between the two, but Yann thinks over the eggs and sausage he has fallen for him.  The boy  ... his name is Brad .... stands him up, but then appears next morning with a lame bunch of flowers and an even lamer excuse.  They spend the day together and evidently fall in love, but still zero chemistry.

Yann once left Paris a long time ago to follow a Yank to Texas to live happily ever after with him, but he was back within a year with his tail between his legs.  He now has a mild case of columbophobia (fear of the US ....not to be confused with columbiphobia : fear of pidgeons).  Brad on the other hand is as American as apple pie even though for some unexplained reason  he has a very pronounced French accent (!),  turns out to be a big closeted movie star who has been hitting up the bottle more than men of late.  It doesn't bode well for them.  Especially as there is still zero chemistry.

The course of true love never runs smooth, but then by the end of this movie, we don't really care.  It's not the street, or the boys that are 'bad' as the title hints, but the script and the acting and film itself that was evidently shot on different film stock/cameras which didn't help either.

Skip this one and go find a bad boy in another street somewhere.

★★

CAESAR MUST DIE

Shakespeare's play 'Julius Caeser' about the Dictator who was murdered by by a gang of conspiring Senators who wanted to stop him running Rome as if he were King was the most perfect choice to be performed by a Prison drama group.  Especially this one in Rebibbia Prison High Security Wing outside Rome which comprises of a rough bunch of inmates most of whom are serving life sentences for a variety of very serious crimes who found they could relate to the plot a lot more than they could have ever imagined.

The veteran Italian filmmaking Taviani Brothers take on the project of producing the play and also making a film of the whole process from start to finish.

Near the beginning of the movie each of the prisoners who want to take part are seen auditioning in close up : it's totally captivating watching these murderers and drug traffickers put such raw emotion into their five minutes in front of the director to ensure that they  are picked.  Once the play is cast and they start rehearsals in earnest, they all have to make use of any free spots in the Prison as the theater is still being re-furbished.  This in in fact adds to the intensity of the drama especially as so much of it is filmed in black and white.

Even in the early run throughs all the performances are electrifying and frankly its nigh on impossible at times to convince one's self that not only are they not professional actors but are in fact illiterate criminals. One of them, Salvatore Striano a former inmate who came back to play Brutus, is so spell-bindingly wonderful that I even felt the tears swell up at one moment.

I'm sure Shakespearean purists will shudder at the liberties that the Taverinis (and their collaborator Fabio Cavalli who also played the director on screen) took with the text, but I have never ever seen such a exciting version of the play.  The one very sad note is after their triumphant final performance they are led back to be locked up in their solitary cells for the rest of their lives.

It deservedly won the prestigious Golden Bear Award at the Berlin Film Festival  ..... go see this 'murder must foul' it is a remarkable unique movie that I promise will totally enthrall you.

★★★★★★★★★