Review of Pedro Pinho’s film Laughter and the Knife, which follows a bisexual Portuguese engineer on an odyssey in Guinea-Bissau. A contemplative arthouse film poised between immersion and cinematic journey. To say the least, Laughter and the Knife is a film that has to be earned: a contemplative arthouse film (and therefore one that…
Review of the BL series Secret Relationships, which follows a young man caught in a love square involving three very different—and possibly toxic—admirers. Secret Relationships is a Korean BL series centred on a tense love square set in Seoul. Jeong Da-on (Kim Junseo) is a delicate, cute, hardworking boy. Although he comes from a modest family and has an unstable father addicted to gambling, he has managed to build a career through hard work and dedication. He has also found a benevolent patron in the handsome, well-to-do Sin Jae-min (Kim Ho-young), who acts somewhat like a protective big brother, always kind and always there when Da-on needs help. We understand that the young man has a crush on his mentor but hesitates to confess his feelings to him…
A review of Lucas Santa Ana’s film 300 SWEET WORDS (aka “300 letters” / “300cartas”), which plunges us into the heart of a particularly toxic gay breakup. After Bromance and Diary of a Teenager, Argentine director Lucas Santa Ana turns to a breakup film with the deceptive aesthetics of a colourful romantic comedy…
Review of Juan Briseño’s film The Suspended Breath (Seré breve al momento de morir). A tense gay love triangle set in the world of dance. A low-budget Mexican film, The Suspended Breath immerses us in the daily lives of two gay dancers, Sebastián (Martín Saracho) and Arsenio (Joan Kuri). The two young men fall deeply in love. Their whirlwind happiness heals Sebastián’s wounds and calms his self-destructive tendencies. But when a new choreographer, the highly authoritarian and sadistic Mikael (Mikael Lacko), joins their dance company, things become more complicated…
Review of Sam Wineman’s film HAG. A passionate thriller about a gay man and an obsessive female friend who does not wish him entirely well. What would Fatal Attraction look like if its characters were a gay man and a woman obsessed with him? It is not necessarily a question we had asked ourselves, but one that…
A review of Noel Alejandro’s film The Mirror, an original and poetic short film about a gay breakup. Noel Alejandro continues to explore his favourite themes—loss, disappearance, and reality blending with the fantastical when emotions become too heartbreaking—which he intertwines with his cinema of bodies. Since his earliest films, the director has used explicit scenes as a cinematic language in their own right: a climax of the plot, a kind of purgatory between the worlds of the living and the dead, those who remain and those who have left…
Review of Emanuel Parvu’s film Three Kilometres to the End of the World. A poignant portrait of a boy subjected to homophobia in a Romanian village. Although its form is not particularly surprising—with its dry style and documentary precision typical of many “social cinema” films—this feature film has the…
Review of My Personal Weatherman, a BL series portraying a relationship between a highly unequal couple. Boys\' Love series are fond of opposites attracting and power dynamics in intimacy. This Japanese manga adaptation goes even further (too far?) by immersing us in the daily life of a rather unusual couple....
Review of the film NO REGRET by Hee-il Leesong. Two boys from different backgrounds fall in love in Seoul in this troubled gay romance. Seoul, early 2000s. The handsome and sunny Su-min (Lee Young-hoon) takes on a series of odd jobs to survive. An orphan, he has learned to work hard to support himself. He works in a factory during the day and as a driver in the evening. He works...
Review of Nehir Tuna’s film Yurt, a Turkish film blending politics, religion and crypto-gay male friendship. A Turkish drama about youth confronted with religion and the rise of Islamism in the 1990s. Yurt, Nehir Tuna’s very beautiful first feature film, plunges us into the Turkey of the…
Review of the Thai gay film The Blue Hour, a unique work poised between teenage angst and fantasy. The screenwriter of the very interesting Boyslove series NOT ME, Anucha Boonyawatana delivers a bold work with The Blue Hour (that is, the blue hour, that moment just before sunrise or sunset when the sky takes on a bluish hue)….
A review of Hisayasu Satô’s film Muscle. A twisted relationship and obsession unfold in this strange feature film, which has become a cult classic. Muscle certainly cannot be recommended to everyone, as it is so bizarre and at times frankly disturbing. At the time of writing, director Hisayasu Satô’s film is impossible to find; it can only be tracked down indirectly through Internet searches…
