"Boys Life 6" (2007)

• Directed by: Carter Smith, Etienne Kallos, Soman Chainani, and Mark Christopher
• Written by: Various
• Starring: Various

     You know, I don't mention it overtly here on this blog, but most of my readers, who are primarily made up of friends, all know that I'm gay. And being gay, I'm often drawn to any sort of media portraying homosexuality. It's a remnant from growing up in the closet. Frustration toward unfair and even hateful portrayals in the mainstream media, and an even bigger frustration once the realization hits that the indie crowd doesn't offer much better. As a young gay guy, not of a flamboyant or promiscuous caliber, this severely dampens my chances of finding anything great, anything that really deals with gays like me. But I keep searching.

I often enjoy short films because I see them as very much like the short story. You have a limited time to express your characters, your background, and your plot, and so often the filmmaker must really try to pack a punch within a very short timeframe, so that the viewer is left with a significant impression. If it isn't, your film tends to fade into the background.

So for this review I'm going to try something different. I'm going to talk about "Boys Life 6", a collection of four gay-themed short films, and I'm going to do little mini-reviews of each short. Gay themes and short films! It's a milestone for this blog! Okay, not really. Let's get into it!

The first film is entitled "Bugcrush", and is written and directed by Carter Smith. It's about 35 minutes long, and tells the story of a young, gay high school student named Ben (Josh Barclay Caras), who runs across a new, very rebellious and slightly menacing student named Grant (Donald Eric Cumming). Because of his attraction to Grant, Ben attempts to ingratiate himself into his group of equally strange and slightly creepy friends, and once he does, learns a very horrifying secret.

Yes, it's a horror film, and it's excellent, by far the best in the entire collection. The first thing that struck me about "Bugcrush" was it's incredible direction. It's very modestly budgeted, but you wouldn't know that, considering that it's beautifully shot on 35mm, and is full of extreme close-ups and atmospheric shots of dark and lonely roads. The suspense in the film is masterful as well. I found my heart racing for almost the entirety of the film, and it didn't let up. It was so nerve-wracking that I almost had to pause the film for a minute to calm down.

The reason the suspense is so well done is because the film gives you the sense that there is DEFINITELY something strange going on, but it does it without giving anything away, it implies here and suggests there, so you get the vague sense that something is wrong, but you don't know exactly what, and this keeps you glued to your seat, eager to find out.

There are a few shortcomings, however. The acting, frankly, is crap. Everyone talks in a very slow, monotone stoner drawl, and when they try to get menacing it's painful. However, the standout is Josh Caras as Ben, who is convincing as an innocent gay kid that doesn't know what he's getting into. I felt for him, as he haplessly jumps into this venture without realizing the consequences, all because of an attraction. Everyone else is horribly wooden. The climax is also slightly predictable, but appropriately harrowing, and the final scene is VERY well-shot for an independent film. I loved it. Sure, it's dark and macabre, but how often do we get a great gay horror story?

The second film is called "The Doorman", and it's directed and co-written by Etienne Kallos. It's about an attractive Hispanic doorman (Jamil Mena) who works at an apartment, and enters into a brief and painful sexually charged relationship with one of his tenants, a strange, kind of fugly college kid (Stephen Sheffer).

To make a long story short, it's crap. It's shot very amateurishly on what looks like miniDV, the camera won't stop wobbling around and the story is bland. The film mostly tries to convey it's story through the use of visuals, with very little dialogue. This would be fine if the character's actions made any sense. They constantly do very odd things, such as the doorman's liaison requesting him to beat him, and without the aid of dialogue or backstory or some other sort of visual aid to at least help the audience understand what's happening and why, it just feels like a bunch of randomly spliced scenes, and the film lays over a bunch of "oohs" and "ahhs" whenever something meaningful is supposed to be happening. It also doesn't help that the acting is unbelievably over the top and schmaltzy. I'm not even sure what the conflict is supposed to be. They imply the relationship goes to shit because the doorman won't let the college student fuck him for a change, which is just... stupid. There is literally no character development for either of them. We're not given an inkling of an idea why they've gotten into this relationship, or who they are, or how they relate to the plot, or why we should care. Skip this pretentious, artsy crap.

The third film is entitled, "Davy & Stu". It's directed by Soman Chainani and written by Anton Dudley, and it features two young Scottish boys (Nicholas Cutro & Travis Walters) meeting up and discussing their lives for a bit before revealing that they're lovers. Essentially it's a character study, as we glean information about their places in life based on their dialogue.

"Davy & Stu" is decent, but it's nothing special. The cinematography is a step-up from "Doorman", but it's nowhere near as good as "Bugcrush". It takes place in a bog though, so it's full of very nice, bright green scenery. However, I just wasn't drawn in, really. The dialogue between the two kids is interesting, but it didn't blow me away, and the dialogue itself is horrendously stilted and unrealistc. The two actors do their best with what they have, and admittedly they're not bad, but in the end the film just made me go "meh". The plot is also nothing special. It feels like the fact that they're in a gay relationship is meant to be a twist, but since I watched it in a fucking collection of gay short films, it's not much of a twist, is it? I really can't say much about this one. You might like it, you might not.

The fourth, and final film is entitled "Heartland", and it's written and directed by Mark Christopher. It's told primarily with narration and still photographs, and it's about a young man named H.G. Gudmanson (Corey Sorenson), who has to return to his hometown in Iowa to help his father on the family farm. Tensions arise once word spreads that he is gay.

Again, like "Davy & Stu", it left me with a profound feeling of indifference. The plot has been done over and over and over again, and if you don't see the big reveal coming, you're kind of stupid. Telling the story through photos and narration is slightly interesting, but the narration from Sorenson is incredibly stiff and unnatural, and the mixing isn't very well done, it's very hissy. When there are actual live-action bits to watch, Sorenson isn't bad, which makes me wonder why his narration was so terrible. But overall, it's just not that amazing. I was also slightly offended that even though H.G. has a boyfriend back in New York where he lives, he still lusts after someone else on his dad's farm. But that's another conversation for another time. "Heartland" is all right, it has potential, but is ultimately boring, predictable, and badly acted.

Overall, while it's an incredibly interesting idea to package a bunch of gay shorts together, there is a very, very high bad-to-good ratio for this specific collection. "Bugcrush" is the only really excellent one with it's taut direction, beautiful cinematography and macabre story, but the rest of the films are either badly directed crap ("Doorman") or just ineffective, slightly boring pieces that may have something interesting there, but nothing substantial enough to be compelling ("Davy & Stu", "Heartland"), which is sad, because "Bugcrush" was so great that I was really looking forward to what came next. It seems that I'll still be searching for that one great gay film. As for you, well, if you already don't like gay films then you've pretty much wasted your time, but if you're interested, check it out on Netflix Instant Watch. Don't expect anything spellbinding, though.