From the Village Voice


Kings or Queens
Opening the Celluloid Closet

Ang Lee plus straight teen-dreams playing gay cowboys equals the most acclaimed movie of the year—not even in the wildest dreams of Harvey Weinstein. DONNA BOWMAN

Stonewall, Harvey Milk, Fire Island, Edmund White, John Waters, and Andy Warhol are all going on simultaneously with Ennis Del Mar's loneliness. But gay culture can't save him. Gay culture doesn't know he exists. The idea of his "choosing" to live (and presumably die) alone in that closet of a trailer with two shirts in the middle of nowhere is tragic. It all hails from Annie Proulx, but Ennis is a man after Edith Wharton's heart. WESLEY MORRIS

My wife and I attended the first matinee of Brokeback Mountain and discovered a razor blade in our popcorn. I don't suspect foul play—razor blades are used to scrape the poppers after closing time—but the incident underlined the perilous atmosphere in which Brokeback is being released. I'm happy this beautiful film is being put out into the world, but I'll be happier when the politics surrounding it fall away. SCOTT TOBIAS

In rushing to get its love scenes out of the way, Brokeback Mountain relegates soul-sustaining ardor to the realm of the pretty young things. Heath and Jake's teenage pants party is politically thrilling and totally yummy to boot, but a tender makeout between two hairy, paunchy midlifers—now that would be radical. JESSICA WINTER

Brokeback Mountain raised the specter of a neo-Western first-wives club via its emotional investment in the disappointed spouses beautifully played by Michelle Williams and Anne Hathaway. Linda Cardellini's warmhearted waitress, Anna Faris's nervy chatterbox, and Kate Mara's pining daughter completed a full house of women whose plights were no less evocatively depicted than that of the entwined cowpokes. Far from diluting the film's queer power, the hetero element emphasized the durability of Ennis and Jack's rawhide passion. GRAHAM FULLER

It's no surprise that a Brokeback backlash is coming, but the form it's taking is odd: straight male critics complaining it's not gay enough. They think a gay film has to prove—or at least aspire to—its outlaw authenticity. Brokeback is not just another story of tragic, helpless victims. Repression, especially the internalized variety, is the clear villain here. It comes in many forms: Straight people claiming the authority to determine queer legitimacy and then fetishizing it is one. STEVE ERICKSON

The year's most transgressive homo love story was Tropical Malady. Just as the crags and bluffs of Brokeback swallow up its star-crossed lovers, at once creating and destroying for them a false Eden, the Thai jungle to which Malady's young men retreat becomes both an erotic sanctuary and a literal fantasy world. MICHAEL KORESKY

Want to know more about a prospective mate's obscurantist/pop inclinations? Ask said p.m. to name this film: One member of an inseparable male-male duo has gone missing, and not coincidentally, a terrifying beast is on the loose. The correct answer: Tropical Malady—or Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. ED PARK

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