From the Ledge

Just for the record, as someone who has been a long-standing, proudly goldstar stamp-bearing, laminated card-carrying member of the homo brigade, gay life isn’t all about getting laid at every lamppost (or on a king-size bed with 300 thread-count Frette sheets for some of us).  You’d never think otherwise, though, given the continuous mass media attention, bordering on sensationalism, on the sexual aspects of being gay– from the highly-eroticized, fetishistic male pairings in Lady Gaga’s Madonna rehash of a video, “Alejandro”, to the crackling, butch-loving intensity between vampire Bill and werewolf Sam in that Arkansas hotel room in the season opener of True Blood, to the flurry of blog twitters about Inception breakout star (and Goodman Theater headliner) Tom Hardy’s admission about his “fluid” sexual history – for example, here’s The Huffington Post’s headline:  “Inception Star Tom Hardy:  I’m An Actor, Of Course I’ve Had Gay Sex.”  Classy.   I am very ambivalent about all this so-called “mainstream acceptance” – all of this was almost unthinkable ten years ago (Will and Grace was pretty neutered, as many have observed), so I’m glad we’ve shown some progress in portraying and disseminating gay-themed material, but there is so much more to being gay than having sex.  Gay people, just like, uhmmm, straight people, struggle with relationships, face disappointments and failures, secondguess ourselves, aspire to create and nurture families as best as we can.  This whole dichotomy was pretty apparent in my previous weekend’s arts and culture activities:  one night, I was at Bailiwick Chicago’s F**king Men, a contemporary, all-male version of Arthur Schnitzler’s La Ronde, written by recent Tony winner (for Memphis) Joe Di Pietro; the next day I saw the exquisitely honest Lisa Cholodenko-helmed film The Kids Are All Right, possibly the best film I’ve seen so far this year.  F**king Men, despite a solid staging, sadly reinforces gay sexual stereotypes;  The Kids Are All Right goes beyond the gay sex (there is hardly any in it too, which is refreshing) and beautifully paints truthful, compelling 21^st century lives.

Di Pietro updates Schnitzler’s daisy chain of sexual partners – the play starts with an encounter between a male hustler and a closeted soldier in a cruising park, the next scene has the soldier picking up an uptight graduate student in a locker room, and so on it goes, until eight pairings later, an older famous closeted journalist hires the hustler from the first scene for a sleepover in his mansion.  Despite some memorable one-liners, there’s really nothing in F**king Men that we haven’t seen before – it’s like Queer as Folk warmed over in a hotdish.  There’s a closeted movie actor, a bisexual college student, a long-term gay couple in an open relationship, a porn star looking for love, among others, and lots of hot, male-on-male action (well, until the older journalist arrives – hey Joe Di Pietro, seniors have sex too!).  These boys are horny, lonely, conflicted, horny, deceitful, self-absorbed, horny.  Some themes that I thought should have been given more play, such as when does one reveal his HIV-status to his sexual partner or why people agree to stay in long-term open relationships, are brought up, then glossed over.  The gay Looking for Mr. Goodbar writing is trite; the relationships superficial without any honest resolutions; the characters tired archetypes.  Director Tom Mullen makes the most out of the sub-par material:  the pacing is tight, the scene-changes and lighting shifts unobtrusive, the blocking well-thought out (although I’m not too sure why the gorgeous Beau Forbes, playing the closeted actor, displays his wang in a scene that is supposed to be played with the actors’ backs to the audience).  The cast is solid, with the always interesting Ryan Lanning a standout once again as the neurotic, flamboyant playwright who hooks up with both the porn star and the actor (really, some of us have all the luck).

The Kids Are All Right starts off with what seems to be a gay premise:  the teenage kids of a lesbian couple seek out their sperm donor and invite him into their lives.  But gay filmmaker Cholodenko and her co-writer Stuart Bloomberg addresses broader, compelling, provocative themes:  What constitutes familial bonds?  What are the emotional and moral implications of having the sperm donor participate in the child’s life, when the very nature of the donor act calls out for both anonymity and distance?  In the light of all the polarizing debate around gay marriage, how does one define family within our 21^st century context?  What is the best way to rear children in that context?  The film isn’t as weighty as The Hurt Locker, for sure, but The Kids Are All Right is as relevant and as reflective.  Although Cholodenko and Bloomberg tackle important issues, they also write scenes of such sincere familiarity and truthfulness that the film is a genuine pleasure to watch.  Scenes such as the Moms (Annette Bening and Julianne Moore, both brilliant) awkwardly trying to figure out if their teenage son (a wonderful Josh Hutcherson) is gay; the sperm donor (an effortless Mark Ruffalo turning in a very complex, multi-dimensional performance; he is my early pick for Best Supporting Actor at next year’s Oscars) meeting the kids (a luminous Mia Wasikowska plays the older child) at his restaurant for the first time;  Moore and Bening having a fight during dinner with their close hetero pals- these are scenes that make you stand back and say whoa!  That’s totally me, or my friends, or my family members up on screen, dealing with the complexities, the inarticulateness, the anxiety and disappointments of everyday life.  And whether my friends, my family members, or I are gay or not.

Cholodenko works with this dream team of an acting ensemble brilliantly.  If there is justice in the world, Bening will finally win her Oscar (wait, I hope there isn’t any arggheeke@@#!! Hilary Swank arggheeke@@#!!  Awards-bait movie coming out later this year!).  It’s a riveting, beautifully nuanced performance – the scene when she confronts Moore with her infidelity with Ruffalo’s character is amazingly, painfully played.  Moore is her peer- beautifully and heartbreakingly capturing her character’s search for validation and accomplishment.  Wasikowska and Hutcherson are so warm, funny, truthful, and luminous, that you’re left highly impressed with great talent at such young ages.  But Ruffalo is the standout for me here – his Paul is both seductive and smug, reckless and thoughtful, initially perplexed at encountering children he has never known and then bravely, almost desperately, embracing them and the ready-made lives they’ve brought with them.  Oh, and I never thought anyone can raise my temperature (ahem, among other things-!) when they say “swiss chard”!

The Kids Are All Right is, in my view, a must-see for everyone, gay and non-gay alike.  It’s a film that allows for conversation and reflection; unlike F**king Men, for example, it doesn’t reinforce preconceptions or heighten dissimilarities with the “straight world”.  Being gay, ultimately, isn’t about being different; it’s about being the person you’re meant to be.

F**king Men is at Theater 773, formerly the Theater Building, 1225 W. Belmont Ave., until August 8.  You can catch The Kids Are All Right at the Landmark Century, 2828 N. Clark St., or other select theaters in the Chicagoland area.  It’s set to open wide in the next few weeks.

Tags: Bailiwick Chicago