Inside Out: Str8 Boys

This series of shorts takes a look at the whole closeted, sexual confusion thing. There are a lot of adolescents present. Delightfully awkward and angsty - I haven't seen so many hand-jobs since I live in DC.

Arie - A quiet and visually elegant story of a dancer whose attraction to his choreographer interferes with his relationship with his girlfriend. The lovely thing about this film is how much director Gianluca Vallero relies on his actors/dancers to express everything physically - dialogue is unnecessary. The film looks beautiful, the dancing in particular is lovingly shot. Subtle, nuanced, very nice.

Homofobia - So there's this guy, who cheats on his girlfriend (in the first scene, so we know he's a jerk), and his girlfriend has arranged this shindig so her friends - including her male gay best friend - can meet her man. She has to leave her gbf and her bf alone together to take care of something at work.

And considering it's all of ten minutes long, there's a lot of coke being snorted. There's a lot of expositional dialogue ( to the extent that the gbf has to talk to himself "I'm going to do this, then this, etc etc,") and it's not the prettiest thing I've seen on video - but it's funny.

Latch Key - another antics laden comedy - two brothers are home after school, their mom is still at work. Older bros. is upstairs seducing his ex-girlfriend. Little bros. is downstairs with his friend Thomas watching porn and exchanging hand jobs. Antics ensue... until mom gets home! Cute, funny - again, a bit hobbled visually by the video stock - but entertaining. And the guy playing the older brother looks like Zach Braff.

dare - More high school confusion. 'Light-boy' drives lead actor/popular boy home, and tries to help him learn his lines for the school play. While drinking expensive wine from massive bottles, naturally. What's this? Popular boy is sick of running lines - he's going swimming! You know where this is going. The best use of video of the bunch, and it's a nicely paced script. (pic at top of entry).

Straight Boys takes the drama a little older, this time the kids are at Uni, and you know how close you get to your college roommates. Nicely shot, and well acted, the script and editing have some pacing issues - the scenes are well written and performed, but they don't quite hang together tightly as they should. Gratifyingly cute 'awww' sort of ending.

Night Swimming I loved. Two punk boys head to NYC for the night to catch a concert, and their car breaks down in the woods (it was a short cut) - the performances are subtle and nuanced and pleasantly, uncomfortably genuine (the smaller parts too - the girlfriend and the boys' gun-toting rescuer are great), the script doesn't take any easy outs, and the camera is unflinching.

All this vicarious re-living of adolescent confusion makes me wonder - is it better to have something for a moment, or not to have it at all?

Images courtesy of darethemovie.com, filmitalia.com, and martingoodman.com