On Sunday night, after a quietly debauched weekend of art, absinthe and more, I settled down in front of the TV for the debut feature from US writer-director Tennyson Bardwell, entitled Dorian Blues. This low-budget gay indie flick is yet another coming out and coming of age film, which despite a surfeit of cliches manages to coast home on a significant degree of charm, ably assisted by the charisma of its two male leads, a witty script, and a good sense of comic timing.
Michael McMillian is Dorian Lagatos, the titular character whose self-realisation the film follows. He's a wimpy gay nerd, over-fond of the word fabulous, with an aggressive, over-bearing father (Steve Fletcher) and a passive, emotionally distant mother (Mo Quigley). One of the only positives in Dorian's life is his effortlessly successful, football hero younger brother, Nicky (the charismatic Lea Coco, almost an equal lead rather than a supporting character).
Dorian Blues: Coco (far left) and Millian.
The film traces Dorian's slow coming out, and includes the token crush on his therapist; a cute & quaint scene with a prostitute who his brother sets him up with in an attempt to turn him straight; and the trauma of life as a newly gay man in the big city. The latter sequences include a flippant approach to a near-rape which raised my hackles a little, but that's a personal issue that will not resonate so strongly with everyone (a young man I am deeply fond of was raped following his first nervous visits to a gay bar, but I'll say no more of that here).
Despite unsure direction, overall Dorian Blues is a cute but forgettable addition to the ranks of queer cinema. It's certainly no Brokeback Mountain; hell, it's not even a Beautiful Thing, but if you're looking for something short, sweet and non-traumatic to while away an evening, this film might work for you.
Tonight, after a day at MCV and then a Fringe board meeting, I sat down with a glass or two of wine, and an Irish zombie movie.
It must be a trend - not the wine, Irish zombies I mean. At last year's MIFF I watched a D-grade Irish zombie flick called Dead Meat which used a mutation of mad cow disease as the basis for its plague.
Boy Eats Girl wasn't much better, unfortunately, although it was still entertaining enough for me to watch the whole film from start to end, which given that it's only about 80 minutes long isn't that much of a chore.
Written by Derek Landy and directed by Stephen Bradley, Boy Eats Girl focuses on the fraught love life of Nathan (David Leon), who has fallen in love with his friend Jessica (Samantha Mumba) but lacks the courage to ask her out. Thanks to his friends friends Henry (the puckish Laurence Kinlan) and Diggs (Tadhg Murphy) he attempts a rendevoux, but when it all goes wrong he drunkenly attempts suicide, which his mother, a thinly-drawn Grace (played by the directors wife, Deirdre O’Kane) accidentally assists.
Striken by guilt, Grace uses a book of voodoo rituals she's just happened to find in the crypt of the local church to bring her son back to life. Only problem is, the spell goes wrong, and Nathan is now a zombie, with an almost-uncontrollable appetite for human flesh. After one love-bite too many, a plague of flesh-eating zombies is soon running amok, and predictable mayhem ensues.
It's often been said that bad horror turns into comedy, and vice versa. This film proves that adage. While it never tries hard to scare, Boy Eats Girl does so very much want to be a blackly humoured comedy. Sadly, Shaun of the Dead it aint. Despite one or two strong performances, and some great special effects (especially in an especially messy scene involving what I think is a combine harvester and a snarling herd of zombies) Boy Eats Girl just doesn't work on most levels. That said, as far as B-grade, if not actually D-grade films go, it's not an entirely unsatisfactory waste of time.
And my favourite line from the film?
"You're supposed to make friends at school, not eat them!"
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