I recently watched the film August, made in 2011, but relevant today. I will start out by warning you that I might spoil parts of the movie while I describe how I felt watching it.
I believe films like this are important for the gay and LGBTQ community, and thankfully more have started to emerge, via streaming. But it is still too rare to find such content. I wrote this blog years ago, and I did so out of a desire to connect to audiences and try to spread awareness. I am so pleased that there are many blogs these days that do the work to do this. As a psychotherapist serving the Los Angeles (LA), Culver City, and Pasadena regions and other parts of California, as well as the states of Texas and Florida, there is a need for LGBTQ Affirmative Therapy. As a natural part of gay affirmative therapy, media is discussed.
So, an ex-lover, Troy, comes back home from Spain and gives Jonathan, his former lover, a call. Their relationship didn’t end smoothly as Troy left suddenly without much consideration for Jonathan. Now, Jonathan is in a relationship with Raul.
The movie is overall quite nice, except for the fact that the characters aren’t that likable. As Troy and Jonathan get together again behind Raul’s back, it’s unclear what Raul wants and his overall feeling towards the relationship in general isn’t that positive. Plus, Troy seems infatuated with himself and has no feelings of regret reconnecting with Jonathan. One isn’t convinced that their relationship is real or a performance by Troy to show he can win Jonathan back. If this had been written a bit differently so that Troy seemed more committed to Jonathan then perhaps it would have been more captivating.
Jonathan’s betrayal of his boyfriend is not as intense as one might expect. Instead, I became a bit bored with the premise and doesn’t care as much as for their relationship given the existing unattractive ambivalence between Jonathan and Raul.
This is definitely a film to watch, however, as it is one of the better LGBT-themed films out there. If nothing else, it does make you wonder about the intention of the characters – as this isn’t always made entirely clear. I made some assumptions, but I will give credit for the ability to make multiple interpretations as to what is happening. Not all of it is as clear cut as my review might imply. It would be nice to have an ability to watch films and discuss them. I wonder if there’s a nearby LGBT movie club.
I will say that I’m very impressed with the mainstream streaming video services, such as Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, etc. for recognizing the importance of LGBT cinema and TV shows. There are other services that are LGBT-specific and require a monthly fee, but I choose to subscribe to services that have the biggest catalogs in general. It is nice, however, to be able to have LGBT-themed evenings whenever I want to!
There are a lot of lower budget LGBT films, but that doesn’t mean they are bad. You sometimes have to sort through the bad to find the gems. I will say that in browsing gay and LGBT films, there have been overlooked films and films that despite their good reviews are not my favorites.
Thanks to all those filmmakers out there for continuing to write for LGBTQ+ people. Without you, scripts wouldn’t exist to be made into films that we relate to.
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