Not everybody develops their capacity to love. Stephanie Dowrick points out that people often confuse neediness with love; trust with control and self interest with interest. First step towards loving someone else is to be true to yourself.
The French film Being 17 (★★★★★) centres on the animosity between the two teenagers. Damien (Kacey Mottet Klein) lives with his mother, who is a doctor, while his father is away from home in the army. He has a privileged life but is bullied at school because he is gay, mainly by Thomas (Corentin Fila) who lives on an impoverished farm with his adoptive parents.
Damien takes self defence lessons from his ex-military neighbour but is no match for the confident Thomas. The reason for Thomas’s hostility is that he is trying to deny his sexual orientation with all the male aggression he can muster. Circumstances conspire to throw the two together when Damien’s mother Marianne (Sandrine Kiberlain) offers their spare room to Thomas so he doesn’t have the long commute to school.
Directed by André Téchiné, the film follows the seasons in the picturesque French mountains as the teenagers push each other to grow and acknowledge that they have much in common. It screens as part of the French Film Festival from 15 March to 8 April at Cinema Paradiso, Luna on SX and Windsor Cinema.
In a similar vein, Handsome Devil (★★★★★) by Irish writer/director John Butler throws two teenagers together in a boarding school. Sixteen year-old Ned (Fionn O’Shea) is comfortable with his sexuality and even has a poster of two guys kissing in his room. In a school where rugby is a religion, Ned is the ridiculed outcast.
When star rugby player Conor (Nicholas Galitzine) comes from another school and has to share Ned’s room, Ned builds a ‘Berlin Wall’ with furniture but the two become friends over their love of music. Like Thomas in Being 17, the muscled rugby player is struggling with his sexuality and it is the actions of an alienated student that helps him honour his true self.
In the background, English teacher Dan Sherry (Andrew Scott) provides great opposition to the bigoted rugby coach when he yells to the boys: “If you spend your whole life being someone else, who is going to be you?” Handsome Devil screens at Joondalup 7-12 March.
When the sequel to Fifty Shades of Grey was advertised as having “no rules, no punishments and no more secrets”, I was willing to give it a chance. Fifty Shades Darker, (★) directed by James Foley, has Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson) reconnecting with Seattle billionaire and S&M enthusiast Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan).
Alarm bells rang when Christian talks about wanting Anastasia to be his and, despite most of his life and person being “off-limits”, manages to stalk her and control every element of her life. This is not a relationship … it is ownership … and there is no love involved.
The settings are all incredibly opulent (that’s what the star is for) that the MA rating should be for luxury porn rather that the sexual content of the film. Anastasia talks about “kinky fuckery” but it is the most vanilla, boring, male-dominated sex you’ll ever see. And punishing women who look like your crack whore mother is hardly love.
Lezly Herbert
