“Just a different sex,” Tilda Swinton’s titular time-traveller blithely announces to camera, as s/he inexplicably switches genders midway through Sally Potter’s adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s landmark novel. Arguably, though, the film became a victim of its own success when co-star Jaye Davidson was Oscar-nominated as Best Supporting Actor… Orlando (1992) Tilda Swinton in Orlando. In part, because it blindsided Stephen Rea’s hangdog foot soldier and audiences alike but also because no one expected Neil Jordan’s story of a kidnapper falling for his hostage’s lover, to morph into a stealth, tender gender-bending romance. On its release, the shock twist in what seemed to be a tough thriller about a botched IRA kidnapping made The Crying Game an unexpected cultural phenomenon. Spoiler alert ahead for a 26-year-old film. And the quietly optimistic ending is perhaps the filmmakers’ most radical career statement. The tale extends beyond university to grapple with issues of politics and class too, passionately performed by its photogenic young cast including a fresh-faced Hugh Grant. Forster’s posthumous novel (deemed “unpublishable” during his lifetime) about two male Cambridge students in repressive Edwardian times struggling to reconcile their mutual love. But perhaps none was more personal than their rendering of E.M.
CLASSIC VINTAGE GAY MOVIES PROFESSIONAL
Ismail Merchant and James Ivory’s 40-year-plus professional and romantic relationship took in numerous adaptations of English literary classics. Oh, and it’s also the film where Daniel Day-Lewis first announced his chameleonic genius. Stephen Frears’s unfussy direction gets to the beautiful heart of the matter -– love as the great liberator and leveller. Hanif Kureishi’s great script pits an ambitious young Pakistani and an ex-National Front skinhead as unlikely business partners, and, eventually, lovers. With its combative protagonists who are working-class, gay, Asian or a combination of the above, it’s hard to credit a more inclusive two-fingered salute to Thatcher’s rapacious, ‘80s Britain than this feisty, funny disruptor. Ben-Hur this ain’t - and more power to it. Jarman as standard bearer for British queer, avant-garde cinema ( Caravaggio, Edward II) begins here, with his punk-aesthetic mix of Latin dialogue, anachronistic design, explicit, eroticized martyrdom and shooting gorgeous young men the way most male directors fetishized their female stars.
If you could photograph the nightmares of a homophobic hater of arthouse cinema, there’s a fair chance it might look something like this: Derek Jarman’s go-for-broke debut (co-directed with Paul Humfress) of clashing Ancient Roman, Christian and pagan beliefs and desires. Director John Schlesinger makes overt the subtext of his previous film, the Oscar-winning Midnight Cowboy and this follow-up’s relative mainstream success and awards recognition only justified its bold demands to honestly address the fluid, complex realities of modern relationships. Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971) Sunday Bloody Sunday.įorever known as the first British film to showcase a gay kiss, this love triangle drama - stars Peter Finch and Glenda Jackson knowingly share Murray Head’s much younger male lover - still seemed ahead of its time for its mature, non-judgmental look at love, loss and loneliness. Compassionate and courageous, careful yet very clear in its condemnation of bigotry, Victim is often credited with helping decriminalize British laws on homosexuality, its heartfelt objection most definitely sustained. Though never publicly acknowledging his own sexuality, he did potentially risk his career in this groundbreaking thriller, playing a lawyer who, after a young man’s untimely death, finds himself embroiled - and implicated - in a plot to out prominent gay men. Victim (1961) Dirk Bogarde in Victim.ĭirk Bogarde was a bona fide British matinee idol and, during his lifetime, a closeted gay man. In honour of this week’s London Pride festival, here are some of the films that helped fight society’s real perversions: prejudice, ignorance and intolerance.
What’s reassuring is that, even before grudging legal acceptance, British cinema had - carefully at first - pleaded the case for greater tolerance and, later, even proudly demanded it. Before then, as in the world over, being “gay” was treated as, at best, a sickness, or, worse, a perversion deserving ostracism, even physical abuse. Homosexuality was decriminalized by British law in 1967 – only in private between consenting adults aged 21 or over, and only then in England and Wales (Scotland and Northern Ireland finally came out in favour in the 1980s).