This is probably his most accessible film and his most beautiful. No top 10 LGBT film list would be complete without a film by Derek Jarman – painter, poet, activist and queer cinema maverick. Seemingly an exquisitely mannered study of an elaborate lesbian sub/dom relationship, it is at its heart an achingly beautiful love story. Nominally a contemporary British film but everything about it screams 70s European, with its softly saturated colour and dreamy unspecific rural setting. Upekha Bandaranayake, DVD and Blu-ray Producer, BFI This is the very best kind of relationship drama – gay or otherwise. A wonderful antidote to the clichés of LGBT cinema. If the number of tears that I shed while watching this are any measure of its greatness, well, this is a bona fide masterpiece. I remember trying to programme this in the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, only to be told by its distributor that it wasn’t ‘a gay film’. Am extraordinary tour de force from Frears and screenwriter Hanif Kureishi.Īn intelligently complex and emotional portrait of a relationship in its final throes. Race, homophobia and marginalisation in Thatcher’s Britain – and all delivered with humour and charm.
It was also very important for star Dirk Bogarde, as evidenced in his annotated script, now held in the BFI National Archive. It helps that one of them is portrayed by lesbian actor Judith Furse.įew films have proved as politically important as this. More lesbians (or at least, characters with an air of the Sapphic about them) inhabit A Canterbury Tale than any other British film of the 1940s. OK, the elements of sexuality are more in the subtext – but what sensual and surprising subtext! And great to see lesbian poet HD (Hilda Doolittle) on screen. Lovers? Very probably not, but it’s a potent moment.Ī remarkably sympathetic early portrait of homosexuality, written by and briefly starring Magnus Hirschfeld, sexologist and campaigner for gay and trans rights.īorderline’s portrayal of race and sexuality was groundbreaking. Michael Atkinson, Criticįrom the very dawn of cinema we see two men dancing together. Special mention must also go to Fox and His Friends (1975).Įnduringly sad, this beautiful portrait of a complex love affair between two young men from Hong Kong sets the standard that most romances, gay or straight, can only hope to match. Its influence on me was immediate, and was my entry point to Fassbinder’s vast oeuvre. Paris Is Burning is an important film which raises complex questions about race, class, and gender still prescient today.Īn astounding achievement, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s adaptation of Jean Genet’s 1947 novel was also his final film. There’s no denying its power and influence. While many see this film as exploitative, its subject – New York’s vogue ball culture – is beyond unique. I cannot be objective about this movie: Gus Van Sant’s Shakespearean road movie holds a particularly special place in my heart the exact shape of Keanu Reeves holding a sleeping River Phoenix. Pasolini’s most accessible and entertaining film stars Terence Stamp as a mysterious youth who, one by one, seduces each member of a wealthy Milanese family. Jarman’s importance cannot be overstated, and this, his final film, is for me the ultimate expression of his unique voice.īy turns hilarious and horrifying, Stranger by the Lake is a fascinating study of the power of desire set entirely at a gay cruising ground in the South of France. Through the voices of his friends and a rich soundscape, Derek Jarman draws the viewer into his vision-impaired world – a vision rendered only in blue. Utterly gorgeous, and the pinnacle of cinematic art. Toshio Matsumoto’s psychedelic trans-Oedipal bloodbath is entirely insane, in the best possible way. Samuel Lange Zambrano’s stirring performance as a young boy grappling with his identity is charged with an ambiguity that leaves an open-ended question to how we determine sexuality.
There’s no social upset on sexual preference, no rib-jabbing jokes nor is it a cog in the plot, the film plays it no mind and neither should we.īitterly sad yet wincingly beautiful. The tender eroticism actually lies more in the subtle acts of the mundane – Adèle’s ravenous eating, or simply strolling across the road.īutch but blasé, Queen Latifah and her cute but mute girlfriend add a refreshing dynamic to this movie brimming with spirited women.
Although problematic in its apparent male gaze and unrealistic gay lovemaking, the performances of Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos are charged with snap-crackling chemistry.