Building Dreams on A Kiss

There are more than one reason not to become enamoured of Adam & Steve. The good news is that it is an effort written and directed by an openly gay actor and it stars another openly gay actor, Malcolm Gets. Mr. Gets has the honour of being the most antipathetic romantic lead ever on a sitcom. Granted it was on the overwrought Caroline in the City, but that's no excuse. Eric Lutes' often loutish character was much more enjoyable and besides he had great legs, if only he'd kissed his sidekick Andrew Lauer. Not as much as a digression as you might think, but first things first.

Mr. Gets gets kudos for being out. Well and very good. The plot device of his character losing bowel control during a one night stand does not. A matter that goes above and beyond Philip Seymour Hoffman 'sharting' in Along Came Polly. Roger Ebert actually reviews the film, which is a fete in that he actually pays attention to an independent gay film. He says this:

" I liked, for example, the visit to Adam's parents, who are the nicest people in the world although they suffer from the 'Bernstein Curse' (mother in neck brace, father in wheelchair, sister bites tongue). I liked the deadpan way [Parker] Posey plays the formerly fat Goth who has become a slender stand-up comic who still tells fat jokes. The scene where Adam, leading a bird-watching tour in Central Park, meets Steve again after a tragic duck shooting. And Sally Kirkland as an AA group leader shouting, 'No cross-talking!' during a verbal fight.

But what can we make of other scenes that destroy any dramatic effect and all but shout, This cumbersome scene is being committed to film by ham-handed amateurs?"

click here for the rest of his review





Richard Knight of the gay paper, Windy City Times gives a more favourable review. He praises it because the leads are grown ups, i.e. over thirty-five or something like that and he praises the kissing. The sight of two men kissing which has been addressed here more than once is a true cinematic fete that can be done in so many different ways. Craig Chester, the film's writer, director and star, is of the opinion that straight male actors playing gay don't put the right amount of finesse into it. That's probably not true -- among many others, one of the best examples is Elias Koteas and James Spader in the original Crash (1996). Knight supports that view in his review which appeared in the March 29th edition suggesting while asking that Gets and Chester "are completely at ease with the physical intimacy and probably did it without thinking?" He calls it "instinctive chemistry." Perhaps. What makes a kiss of any kind enjoyable is, first, that the kissers be attractive and secondly, very often, the passion that comes from the tension of whether or not it's going to happen. As comfortable as these two guys may be, does anyone want to see them kiss? As much as the audience may have wanted Antonio Banderas and Brad Pitt do the same in Interview With the Vampire? That scene certainly had the creative tension associated with an important kiss although it only seemed that it was going to happen. Maybe Brokeback should have had more 'instinctive chemistry" but that's not what it was about and -- it's gotta be said -- hot damn! it was Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal.

All that being said. Let's continue to build dreams.