#bfi flare

NICOLA COUGHLAN

[Trailer w/ ENG SUB] Oh Hyuk is the music director of the film “The Dream Songs” (너와 나) by Cho Hyun Chul.

A group of straight Argentinean men hang out in a beautiful home with barely any clothes on, while playing pranks on each other and sending compromising pictures to various WhatsApp groups.

The supposedly decades long bond between these characters is totally unsketched outside of their apparent need to test each others' sexual boundaries. The film therefore functions only as a homosexual fantasy of what straight male bonding looks like, while purporting to levy the critique that – shock! – there may be a homophobic streak latent within their homoerotic horseplay.

That this is the most simplistic possible thought on the subject does not stop the film taking two hours to make its point. And that the Gay Viewers' arousal at this implicitly homophobic milieu is the sole source of the films libidinal quality – and marketable appeal – goes lamentably unaddressed.

James: I personally read it about 4 or 5 times. It was the Bible, for me.

Hugh: [prompted by introducer] Yes yes, obviously yes . . .

[audience laughs]

James: The thing about the book, is that Forster writes- you know in a film, we speak lines, and Forster has paragraphs of what the character's going through, thinking, and the dilemma he's facing, so in a way he's giving you the subtext, which as actors we need rather than saying the one line, there's gotta be grounds for it in some subtext - [laughs] Hugh will now disagree with me - and so it was invaluable, for me, and you know, it was called Maurice, it wasn't called Clive. [looks at Hugh]

[audience laughs]

Hugh: Still, still bitter.

James: Always have been.

BFI Flare 2021 Film Review: Sublet ★★★★

Veteran Israeli filmmaker Eytan Fox’s outstanding new feature Sublet, co-written with Itay Segal, opens with the arrival of a jetlagged and disorientated fifty something gay man, Michael (The Inheritance’s John Benjamin Hickey) to bustling Tel Aviv. He’s a travel writer for The New York Times who has come to uncover the “real” city over a five-day stay, subletting an apartment from a handsome…