Is Bravo The Gayest Network in Television?

Brad Gorenski, the star of It's a Brad Brad World

In a word, yes. Is it too campy is the real question, and is there a thing as 'too campy'? I would argue that there is, considering the latest addition to the superfluous roster of the network's many similar shows; It's a Brad Brad World. Nice job on the naming by the way, puns are always hilarious...or are they? If you're wondering, they gave Rachel Zoe's former assistant a show. At least at E! You have to be related somehow to a reality superstar or at least part of their personal plight, but apparently on Bravo all you need is a hot pink leisure suit, comically oversized dickie bow, and an exaggerated lisp. 

Bravo has been pandering to the gay demographic by appearing to keep them from marginalization when in truth all they are really doing is perpetuating stereotypes about the gay community (particularly the male gay community) and making them into wildly embellished caricatures of themselves. It's a skewering of culture and identity we haven't seen since the Men on Film sketch on In Living Color. Brad Goreski is so obnoxious that it's difficult to see why people would find him remotely interesting because he apparently has little to no talent as a bona fide designer, nor room for improvement. But Bravo insists on painting him out to be the next Roy Halston. 

Executive Andy Cohen has made some bold choices since he took over the network and decided to make it as fabulous as can be which started with the pivotal Real Housewives of... franchise. But it's difficult to think that Bravo could be as influential as Queer as Folk (2000 - 2005) at bringing a gay sensibility to the mainstream. Most of the network's programming is reality fluff rather than an accurate representation of anything, but then again by that definition does that make them masterpieces in camp? Are Michael Musto, D.A. Miller, and the ghost of Andy Warhol tuning in daily at the edge of their seat to see Watch What Happens Live? Is Bravo really our last bastion of camp? Or is camp dead all together and Bravo's efforts completely futile?

This season of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills introduced a new character, wedding planner Kevin Lee who is not unlike the Martin Short character from Father of the Bride (1991) in every way imaginable and in every scene seems to be doing snaps in Z formation and saying 'Beverly Hills darling, chic chic chic'. 

The answer to all of the above is 'probably'. This is assuming that camp culture and gay culture are mutually exclusive. And the thing is, that Bravo's programming would be entertaining if it wasn't so exploitive. There seems to be one kind of gay man on this network; the contemporary dandy. He always wears tailored clothing even when in bed, he makes up words, is facetiously materialistic, and is somehow asexual. He has a career in either fashion, interior design, or wedding planning and has little to no personal life to speak of. Basically he is a walking stereotype comparable to the stock character known as the 'sissy' that Hollywood used in the 1930's before being gay was truly explored in the cinema. And it's rather sad to think about how much time has gone by and how many changes in our culture have occurred since people actively misrepresented communities that they didn't understand, but it seems that Bravo is an example of just how little has truly changed in entertainment. Lifetime, a network supposedly 'by women, for women' is constantly under scrutiny because every woman on that network seems to always in the same position in life. It too, is a slated portrayal of the very demographic it claims to exalt. If Bravo really wanted to cut it's teeth on being the foremost in gay programming, it needs to move on to some new territories and explore ALL aspects of gay life and culture rather than the over-simplified and rather amateurish that it currently broadcasts.
Here is what my fellow writer and blogger and very dear friend Sean Chumley had to say on the matter:


any gay man that turns up on Real Housewives is incredibly effete, and any others that have their own shows are typically so awful at being human beings that I can't even stand watching the commercials for the show. One thing I've noticed is everyone's "favorite" Real Housewife Bethenny is shockingly homophobic. She refers to her gay best friend as her "token gay," expresses horror when visiting The Big Gay Ice Cream Truck, and was incredibly homophobic when talking with a gay PETA representative. I'd say the one glimmer of hope on the network is a lesbian. Tabatha Coffey is sassy, likable, stylish and no-nonsense. She kind of plays with stereotypes when she's working with gay men, but she does it in a way that implies she knows these people are so much more than stereotypes. 




I completely agree. While we're on the subject, here is a link to his fantastic blog

Shanaca Speaks

Lately Bravo has seen how their own methods can backfire when the star of one of their most popular shows Patti Stanger, the Millionaire Matchmaker made some incredibly offensive and homophobic comments on their other show Watch What Happens Live proving that for all of her 'worldliness' she was just was one of the most closed-minded reliant-on-stereotypes people out there that Bravo perhaps unwittingly put on the air much to their dismay. The network has since apologized for her comments and cancelled her show and rightfully so. To his credit, Andy Cohen was able to stand his ground and contradict blatant insults that Stanger was throwing out throughout the program.
Here's what happened:

Spotlight on: Swoon

The infamous thrill killers that stunned the nation. A Bergmanesque shot of Nathan Leopold (Craig Chester) and Richard Loeb (Daniel Schlachet)

I've had a slight stagnation on my Downton Abbey watching so I'm not ready to publish a third installment in the series quite yet, though I would like to instead shine some light on one of the best films of the 1990's and in my opinion, one of the most definitive of that decade; Tom Kalin's Swoon (1992). I'm seeing it at the Billy Wilder theater in Los Angeles next week and am very excited. Thought I'd blog about it to get ready.
Before college took over my life and I moved to New York, I was taking an interest in films on my own and taking my ques from odd documentaries on films that TCM and AMC would show every once in a while. There was one such doc about American Independent Film which of course was born with the work of John Cassavetes back in the 50's and 60's and reached a creative zenith and strength of integrity in the 80's with the film of someone like Jim Jarmusch, it wouldn't be long until Quentin Tarantino and the Sundance Film Festival dissimulated the whole thing but out of that collective in the late 80's and early 90's sprung a couple creative minds including the likes of Todd Haynes, Gus Van Sant and Tom Kalin who's work would be sub-categorized into what B. Ruby Rich coined as 'New Queer Cinema'.

It was unapologetic, low-budget, and brilliantly poignant, but most of all it was honest. The 'New' in its name suggested that it was a break from every cinematic cliche created to illustrate gay culture from the past and tell real stories about real people in the most sincere means possible. This is not to compare it to something like Dogme 95, because the formalistic concepts through which to achieve this sincerity were secondary to the narrative at hand.
One of the most profound films that came out of this movement was tragic yet rather snide drama Swoon (1992) starring Craig Chester and Daniel Schlatchet as Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb; two young men who, one fated night in the 1920's murdered a young boy simply for the thrill of it, believing themselves to be the physical manifestations of the Nietzschean Superman. This story and the subsequent trial that followed were so sensationalized that it actually has had many previous film adaptations of it, most notably Alfred Hitchcock's Rope (1948) and Compulsion (1959) starring Orson Welles. Yet, every film prior seemed to sidestep one big part of the story; Leopold and Loeb were lovers (although to be fair, Hitchcock's version does hint at it a great deal). Note: in 1997 Michael Haneke would loosely adapt the story for his excellent film Funny Games which could also be classified under New Queer Cinema.
Though this was common knowledge and used frequently in their infamous trial, Hollywood always seemed to sidestep this one big notion. There was a romance as timeless and devoted as we've ever seen between the these two young thrill killers that is the centerpiece of Swoon. Beyond the grizzly nature of this murder, there is a love story that motivates the shocking action that lead to both of the lovers' demise. It's bizarre, it's co-dependent, it's passionate, and it's volatile, and most of all it was doomed.  They killed because they could, and perhaps for love. But what Tom Kalin explores is the notion that we would do anything we possibly could to keep the other person interested, and to keep the other person impressed. It's the ego in us.
The visual poetry of this tragic love story is breathtaking. It is shot on grainy black & white film, with minimal and at times anachronistic set dressing and a general stylized aesthetic. It looks remarkable, but that doesn't overshadow the staunch and cynical tone with which it tells it's story. It's very stoic and seems at once detached from itself so that it does not lay on the drama heavy-handedly, which is incredibly effective in that it requires the viewer to experience the narrative objectively.

Of the two main characters, the star of the film is clearly Craig Chester (who plays Nathan Leopold) a character who felt intellectually superior but psychically inferior to most, but in particular to his lover Richard Loeb and to prove his genius incited, planned, and executed the murder (or so it was thought). He is shown as a man who is completely sexually aware and able to therefore control his impulses so that he is able to play mind games on his partner and manipulate him all the while keeping strangely calm...i think that's what we all secretly wish we could do quite honestly. We've all tried to have the upper hand in a relationship, but goddamn emotion always gets in the way.

The narrative functions highly based on the visual style in order to portray the sexual subtext through iconography. Visually, this film draws on techniques of Ingmar Bergman, Kenneth Anger, and even to a lesser extent Andy Warhol and creates a re-imagined aesthetic of sexual representation on film, and I'm going to stop right now before this begins to sound like a thesis.

To conclude, Swoon (1992) is a major important commentary on sex and the mental state. It's wholly psychoanalytical and impeccably honest. It's cinematography is stunning, and it's writing though dated is rather superb. This was a tiny film that wouldn't have had as big a legacy had it not been one of the seminal works of the New Queer Cinema movement, and now will thankfully have a rightful place in the sex-in-cinema anthology.

Here is the trailer: 

Downton Abbey - Aristocratic British Sex - The Plot Thickens

Meatloaf and Ann Veal's older sister share a moment. 

Alrighty youngsters, I'm halfway through season 2 now, and am ready to follow up on my introduction. It seems like everyone is broadening their sexual horizons. Lord and Lady Grantham apparently still fornicate enough for her to get knocked up at the ancient-by-those-standards age of somewhere north of 50; Anna and Mr. Bates have fallen in to some kind of platonic devotion love; (Note: I'm aware that they eventually get married and there is a love scene which I'm dreading to witness, but this is where I am at the moment) and Lady Sybil and the Irish chauffeur (forget his name) are slowly making their way into cheesy romance novel territory, but it's really sweet and the stuff I used to have wet dreams over. And there has been an actual love scene in a barn.
People are softening up and rigid exteriors are being broken up to reveal the fragile souls underneath yearning for some comfort and post-coitus cuddles. Even Lady Violet, Her Honorable Bitchness (oh how droll) is loosening up a bit. Though she remains a shining example of what will eventually and unquestionably happen to you if you remain sexually repressed your entire life. It's also nice that Downton doesn't seem to feed into the practice of allowing younger characters to be romantic and physical with each other, but letting the older characters kiss on the cheek and that's about it. 

But a lot of the sexual tension in Downton has been eradicated albeit as much as it can be for those times. We even saw some open mouth kissing between Lady Mary and Cousin Matthew which was pretty hot by British standards...Did I just describe cousins kissing as hot? Apparently. Anyway, words like 'slut' and 'tart' are starting to get thrown around, so on and so forth, I don't know if there's going to be an illegitimate child anywhere in there but god I really hope so.

And....vogue. 

But while I have you (too late?) I'm going to talk a little bit about the stereotype that British people are sexually repressed. It's totally true. On one level I'm kidding, on the other level, this is what I always seem to perceive from any film/television about British society I have ever seen from Brideshead Revisited to Monty Python. But repression is a blanket term which can include a lot of things. I like to think that even though there is a state of initial mental and physical repression, there is a rebellion against that which dominates and eventually reverses the very effect it is initially supposed to have. I'm not saying that things are ever going to take a drastic turn at Downton, even with the onset of the Jazz Age just around the corner (which is a categorically American institution, but still), there is the budding of a sexual revolution of sorts that will be more implied than acted upon, but a change is in the cards regardless. Sybil is wearing pants, Daughter #2 is driving tractors, and Mary is following her heart for once, all signs of women's sexual liberation on the horizon, and war only makes the tension escalate by adding a timeless romantic element to the whole equation.
All of this aside, one of the show's fundamental principles talking rather than doing, it's just the style the series maintains in order to sustain a sense of authenticity. Although it does make it rather hard to imagine any two people they decide to put together in any sexual situations of any kind, but perhaps that's just my lack of imagination. For example, during the first half of their relationship, every time Anna and Bates wanted to have a tender moment and steal some affection for each other they were subtly interrupted by a door opening, or one of the other staff members accidentally walking in. Anna would sigh, look at Bates with frustration and then walk off in a tiffy.

I hate to put this up next to a show like The Tudors which sexually speaking, works in completely the opposite direction by making every scenario as hypersexualized as possible, but it did cross my mind considering how many of the same actors are in both series. It's a question of subtly vs. blatancy. Let me simplify it; If Downton Abbey uses a feather, The Tudors uses the entire fucking chicken. Hence the former is more trustworthy as a historical reference of sexuality and an accurate portrayal of the social restrictions upon said sexuality during those times.More to come...(pun intended).

Great interview with Jessica Brown-Findlay (Lady Sybil)
'Downton Abbey' star Jessica Brown-Findlay talks war, romance

Downton Abbey - Aristocratic British Sex - An Introduction

This is the second post this month about British sex (yes, it's a thing), but I'm 4 episodes into Downton Abbey (2010 - ) and desperately want to write about it, I know, I'm very much behind but I'm catching up. Let me give you an in as to where I'm at - Mr. Pamuk the hot-blooded, Turkish, male-model/male model just died after making sweet violent passionate love to the most uptight daughter of the Crawley family and effectively dislodging that brass stick up her British ass and causing her to talk in fragmented obtuse existential statements. 

Now who would think that a show written by Julian Fellows about snooty English people sitting in drawing rooms, sipping tea, and lamenting about how common everyone else is would end up on a blog about filth? But it has. Because we all know that underneath that facade of stoic faces, upturned noses, and stiff upper lips, lie heaving, sweaty, pulsating, throbbing, titillated, erect...ok i'm going to stop, i've run out of adjectives. But you know what I mean. Where there is seeming sexual repression, there is an eruption of sorts brewing beneath the surface waiting to burst....so to speak. This is the Romantic Era after all, but the people of Downton seem to forego yearning stares and brushing touches for uptight mannerisms and overly proper social graces. 

Listen to me, a smart drama written subtly and meticulously about class structure with just a hint of satire and old-worldly wisdom as well as brilliant character study, and i'm belittling the entire thing and turning it into fetish fodder. Typical. 

But does the show have a sexual angle? Absolutely, it's silly to believe that it's just a cerebral class drama, and if I could put in my two cents...or two pence (i'm so fucking clever) I would say that sexual repression is one of the main themes of Downton Abbey. Of course it's all explained through 'feelings' and 'emotions', but that's the only way to make it appropriate for the context of it. 

The most interesting of these narratives is with Thomas Barrow (Robert James-Collier), the evil footman. He strives for domination on a sexual level because he cannot get it in his station in life, nor even amongst his co-workers. He's very aware of his prowess and appeal and uses that to build an identity. 

Another very obvious narrative that wanders into impure thoughts land is the youngest sister Lady Sybil Crawley (Jessica Brown-Findlay) who's a Jane Austen novel away from creating her own Suffrage League and burning her corsets, not to mention her older sister Lady Mary who is the most sexually frustrated woman in the world which over time has turned her into a serious bitch. I don't know what her sexual fate is next, but I'm imagining there will be some passionate mustache play involved. As I said, I haven't seen it all, so this is merely an introduction of sorts into a narrative that I'm sure will take bold leaps and bounds in terms of sexual subtext. Can't wait to see how it unfolds. 

Very interesting article from The Telegraph about sex on Downton Abbey 

Who is the historical model for Downton Abbey’s sex scandal?

BELOW: Two-part parody of the show courtesy of two of comedy legends Joanna Lumley and Jennifer Saunders.

The Tudors - Not Your Mama's Costume Drama

Jonathan Rhys Meyers sorrounded by tits. If that doesn't already give you an idea of what this show is about what will?

This might be a bit irrelevant considering the show is not on the air anymore, but how am I supposed to run a blog called Filth Screen and not post at least once about the Showtime's crossover hit The Tudors which ran for four seasons during the second half of this past decade? Basically it's a historical fiction night time soap. It's All My Children in Elizabethan costumes, and there's a lot of beheadings. 

The title is self-explanatory. It focuses mainly on the rule of Henry VIII before he got fat and all syphilis-y and was busy divorcing and executing his many wives. Now, if you ever paid attention in high school history class or read the first five sentences of a Wikipedia entry on the subject you know that this show takes major major major creative liberties. But that's the point. 

Some genius TV executive in Canada was thinking 'what if we hypersexualized the already scandalous and incendiary story of Henry VIII and his six wives? Sure everyone has heard of them but has no idea just how much sex everyone was apparently having. Make it by candle-light and throw bone corsets in and you got yourself some serious medieval pseudo-porn. On the whole it's about how sexual obsession eventually destroys a man from the inside out. Very true...very true. I think every man I know has that problem.

Let's be honest, how good could the sex have even been back then. Remember this was a time when people took a bath once a year and no one shaved anything. Also, it's Henry VIII, I just keep imagining it involved just a lot of blood and tears. But that's the price you pay for being Queen of England, sure you might get your head chopped off if god forbid you sneeze during supper but you take the good with the bad. 

Let's get things straight, apart from him executing two of his wives for infidelity, there might not be an accurate thing in this whole series, but who cares when you've cast really hot young Brits to play much older, plumper and hairier people. I don't. And I have a bit of an Elizabethan costume fetish so I dug it.. 

Cast wise, you can see that no one was beating around the bush and trying to be 'correct' about the whole thing. I mean come on, are you really going to cast Philip Seymour Hoffman as Henry and put him in graphic simulated sex scenes in every episode? Does he really have the stamina for that? No, you've got to go with someone like Jonathan Rhys Meyers and rightfully so. He's staggeringly beautiful and also, he's fanatically dangerous. His eyes are captivating but if you saw them staring at you in pitch darkness you'd freak out a little bit. Though, they could at least have given him a ginger wig, I mean come on. 

To be clear Henry VIII did not kill ALL of his wives as a lot of people misconceive, just two...which makes it totally ok. 

Anyway, back on track, let me describe the wives as I remember reading about them, yes I'm a history nerd.

1. Catherine of Aragon - Spanish, age appropriate, rather chunky and round-faced, a little too religious and prude. Mother of Mary Tudor. She's played by someone I don't recognize, she disappears after a few episodes. Appropriate. moving on. 

2. Anny Boleyn -Mother to Elizabeth and woman that fucked up Henry for life. An innocent, quite literally who got the ax because she couldn't bear sons, also the king thought that she was having an affair with her brother and pretty much just lost interest in her. I remember in a made-for-tv shitfilm she was played by Helena Bonham Carter who is like 25 years older than Anne Boleyn would have been at the time the film is set, but in the series, Natalie Dormer plays her as a frisky mean girl that plays mind games with the king and usually wins...for a while anyway. Seriously think about it, she alone determined the fate of an entire religion by causing Henry to break away from the Catholic Church when she insisted he divorce his first wife if he wanted to get into her old-timey panties.

3. Jane Seymour - Ok here we go, bore Henry his only son, who reigned for like 10 minutes before he died of some lame medieval plague-like disease like a chump. She died too, oddly and quietly. Henry was inconsolable for a couple of days.

4. Anne of Cleves - German-born well-to-do member of the gentry to whom Henry was finagled into marrying, but because he didn't find her hot enough he annulled the marriage and had the man who arranged it killed. And we think men today are shallow. Here's the thing, in the series she's played by Joss Stone, who is unbelievably sexy and charming, and I don't have any idea how the producers got her to agree to this role. 'We need a woman who is so ugly and repuslive that a person would literally kill whomever introduced them...oh Joss Stone's available, get her on the phone!' ...What?

5. Catherine Howard. Oy vey. Where do I start. Well she was 17 when she became queen, which largely had to do with her perky breasts and budding sexual awakening. It eventually steered her down the wrong path because the king couldn't keep up with her excessive need for passionate bunny sex so she found it elsewhere, except she should have known better than to look in the king's own cabinet. Off with her head! She's portrayed awfully by Tamzin Merchant who plays her like an awkward dodo-brained teenager, which in all fairness is what she was, but I'm sure she never said the words 'Oh come on, your majesty!'

6. Catherine Parr. She was one that actually made it through until the end of a marriage with Henry VIII and survived him. Holy shit is that ever an accomplishment. She was older, very religious, and pretty much boring compared to all the others. Joely Richardson plays her in the show. Next to the rest of the cast she seems like an old hag. But I guess that's the point.

Alrighty, did you make it through all that without falling asleep? good. The show is really nothing more than soft-core porn in beautiful elaborate costumes, and none of this is supposed to be stated with a negative connotation by the way. I think it's something that we universally crave. We all see the past as being more romantic than the present no matter which time period we're thinking about, lest it be the 1980's, but anyway, this show isn't trying to be anything more than it is. It's certainly not regarding itself the foremost example of a historical biopic on Henry VIII, everyone knows that 90% of its content is bullshit, but it's ok, because there are people fucking all over the place. Constantly. And it's hot. The end.

Below a behind the scenes look at the characters, basically explains itself. 

Portlandia and Hippy Sexuality

With the genius hipster-skewering snark-bomb that is Portlandia, (Season 2 premiered on IFC January 6th), I'd love to give this show some major props. Conceived by former Sleater-Kinney front-woman Carrie Brownstein and SNL heavyweight Fred Armisen with a consistent slew of high profile celebrity guests from Kyle MahLachlan to Steve Buscemi, the show is garnering some serious praise for critics and a solid cult-turning-mainstream following. The sexual texts in this sketch comedy series is pretty right on, and unwaveringly hilarious. Yes the show tends to prey on gender stereotypes and yes maybe that's the whole point. It is a satire after all, so all's fair. 

One of their most endearing sketches that is a perfect example of all of the above is the Feminist Bookstore bit. Armisen in drag and Carrie Brownstein play a couple of 'enlightened' third-wave feminists, who are incredibly rude and condescending to anyone who is 'beneath' them, i.e. all men that might come in, or a girl sporting cut-off shorts. They hate any remotely phallic symbols including pointing fingers and pretty much spend all of their time talking about non-sense and drinking trendy teas. Let's just face it, we've all met women like that. I have to deal with them all the time when I buy candles at Bodhi Tree on Melrose. Every time I'm there it's like I've stepped into a Portlandia sketch.

And it's true, Feminism has been taking some hits lately, and I'm not talking about the general degradation of women kind and attempt to eliminate most of our human rights via the Republican candidates' platform, but of the sarcastic caliber as well.
Brownstein and Armisen also often play with gender stereotypes by switching theirs up. Both are rather androgynous when playing themselves, and take big creative liberties with each playing members of the opposite sex quite often, Armisen probably more than Brownstein channeling his inner Lillith Fair goddess.

Role reversal.
Brownstein as her recurring character of a tatted up mustachioed chauvinist who's obsession with sex drives his prudish girlfriend (Armisen) away.

Everyone seems to be in on the joke, even if their themselves feminist icons like Amy Mann and Sarah Mclaughlin. Every new-wave of redundant hippie culture that came about in the 90's that people actually took seriously for a few years is lampooned in this series, quite brilliantly and without any aggressiveness. It  takes us to as Brownstein puts it that 'parallel universe' where 'hot girls wear glasses', grow their hair long, threw away their last underwire, and recite Sylvia Plath verbatim. And the men are like...enlightened, soft, and passive; hip but introverted. Unless of course if Brownstein is playing the man. They would never call a woman's breasts tits, take her from behind and ride her like a plastic carnival pony, or ask her to wear heels. Heels don't exist in Portland. Basically the men are more feminine than usual and the women are more masculine than usual so they even out into this asexual freewheelin' faux-intellectual that is hilarious in how annoying they he/she is. 

This show also exemplifies the notion that in comedy women are always going to be nastier than men and Brownstein's sexual comedy is just above Armisen's in this series. She doesn't shy from being as forward and 'out there' as possible to drive the joke home, and it never fails to follow through.
The series is very clever, impeccably written and conceived, and always pitch perfect in its satire. It's fantastic, watch it.

Albatross: Flouncy, Scattered, and Cheap...And not in the good way

Just to warn you I'm sick so I'm not in a good mood, so if this piece comes out overly snarky then just deal with it, i'm always snarky.

So I'm visiting my mommers over Russian New Years, we weren't able to sit down together on the couch and watch a film until the night of the 1st. I'm perusing through the On Demand menu and stop on Albatross (2011) the British film starring new comer Jessica Brown-Finlay and hotter than hot delightful actress Felicity Jones. It's a comedy/drama which I initially think is weird because the trailer looks like it's desperately trying to be an Andrea Arnold film. It costs 9.99$ to the usual 3.99$ but I figure it's going to be better than biting the bullet finally watching Midnight in Paris (2011) which I desperately don't feel like doing.

Jones and Finlay show up for Jones' younger sister's 'P' themed birthday party, on the left we have Peter Pan and on the right, you guessed it. Princess Leia. Shocker

Albatross is the story of a dysfunctional family who is falling apart at the seams. Enter busty, brilliant, and rebellious teenager who befriends the family's teenage daughter and begins an elicit affair with the walking mid-life crisis angsty father of the household while the shrewish horrid wife makes everyone's lives hell by pursuing her asinine selfish ambitions and putting everyone down in the process. So basically a little My Summer of Love (2004), with a little Secrets & Lies (1996) through the American Beauty (1999) filter, comes Albatross. Right off the bat you know that just like in American Beauty the sexual nuances are going to be disingenuous. Middle-aged sexually frustrated men are privy to being attracted to perky-nippled grace of youthfulness beautiful girls within close proximity to them, you don't say! Having an affair with your daughter's best friend who's underage at that is going to lead no where good. well, i'll be! a controlling stage moms is more likely to focus on that than her husband's needs leading him to awkwardly masturbate to paintings of seascapes. Well, i'll admit that last one I wasn't expecting, but how many more awkward mid-life crisis anger-hand-jobs do we have to see before we get the point? 

In the respite, the two teenage girls travel to (where else) Oxford to party and make snide comments about the plethora of WASPy students who discuss literature with the same fervor with which people usually make love. 

The back to the daily gloomy grind of being a really hot teenage girl around a lot of stupid young men, and then realizing that the 40-something intellectual bastion of truth and respect you've clung to is not actually what you thought he was and comes way too fast, thereby he's no better than any of the others who are always trying to cop a feel. 

Cut to, the girls, separately of course, walking down the beach contemplating the uselessness of it all. Then end. 

As Antonia Quirke put it: it's the coming-of-age-end-of-divorce story. If they had to give us characters we'd all seen before they could have at least thrown us a couple of sex scenarios that would keep our interest, alas for all of the cliche'd sex inside a dark hallway, or making out while drunk and dancing at a student shindig, and the gratuitous self-aggrandizing flashing of the tits to prove you're 18 was not anything we'd never seen before, nor was it particularly aesthetically pleasing. 

Also, the comedy angle was completely lost on me, maybe because I tend not to understand snide British humor, but still. It had the possibility to be a next Fish Tank (2009) but ended up picking up the pieces that film had left in its ascent, leaving itself rather scattered as a narrative, and as a sex-film, rather ineffective, in more ways than one. Watch with a box of cheap Chardonnay, otherwise skip. Trailer below.