This one falls into that darker corner of gay cinema. There was real potential buried in here, but the execution feels so flat that at points it plays out more like a filmed stage play than an actual movie. It's a dark psychological drama built around a street hustler confessing to a brutal, confusing murder of his own lover. Black and white flashback sequences do a solid job laying out the details of what happened, but the real focus stays on the dialogue and the writing itself. Right at the start, a young hustler has already killed his male lover Claude. Three days go by before he calls the police to turn himself in for the murder. But instead of just reporting it somewhere ordinary, he actually summons the police and the local press directly into a judge's private chambers. Yves has keys to the place, which tracks given what he does for a living, but having the press waiting right outside makes the whole scene look like some elaborate blackmail scheme against the judge. The ...
Whether we admit it or not, most gays have thought of stories involving prison. Some find the thought exciting, while others scary and repulsive. In fact, a lot of film makers have explored this theme to variety of degrees and I feel that this is the third film in recent times that I am seeing that explores the basic theme of sexual slavery to survive in the prison system. Young Smitty has just come to prison. His cellmates are Rocky, a "dangerous and unpredictable" 19-year-old; Mona, an 18 year-old, who is regularly abused by prison mates and Queenie, a flamboyant gay man. Rocky explains the system: Unless the kid places himself under the protection of a regular old man, in this case Rocky himself, who has a place in the power structure, he'll be the victim of gang rape by everybody else in the cell block. Queenie encourages Smitty to beat up Rocky and spread the news so he can win a better protector from amongst the "politicians" for his own benefit rather tha...