Food of Love (2002) (AKA "Manjar de
amour")
If this movie be the food of love...
then it's a bit bitter and hard to swallow. And the
dessert is just a little too small and served too
quickly.
Based on a novel called "The Page
Turner," this film is little more than yet another
glorified "coming out story." And there's a little
bit of P-FLAG propaganda thrown in for humorous and
dramatic effect. Call it "The Deep End" lite. But
that's a big problem with the film. The climax and
epilogue revolve all around the mother of the protagonist
and up until this ending this character hasn't warranted
such an important role in the proceedings.
The protagonist, Paul, is played
by Kevin Bishop, a Brit with seemingly no accent who,
up until this point, is probably best know for playing
Jim Hawkins in the Muppet "Treasure Island" film.
Bishop as Paul is supposed to be some stunning Adonis
that all the older gay men in this film swoon about.
But he is, in fact, little more than a somewhat cute
boy-next-door type who is obviously gay. Watching
all the older guys drool over him in this film is
a bit funny.
Bishop plays Paul as an annoying,
petulant child so we really don't like him, we don't
see what all the fuss is about and we really could
care less about how he turns out. He's as contrived
and as manipulative as the unsavory older gay male
leads here so there's little reason to give a fuck
about him.
As I've said before, the problem
with gay drama is that it is so full of DRAMA. And
there's plenty afoot here. I am yet to see a gay film
where an older man takes on a younger male lover which
didn't seem seedy, repulsive, creepy and wrong. Even
films with good intentions, like "Eban and Charlie"
and "The Journey of Jared Price" can't avoid this
pitfall. The same is true here.
Paul Rhys seems sympathetic as Richard,
the piano maestro who evokes hero worship and lust
from our protagonist. But even he can seem manipulative
and scarred. There is some wonderful and passionate
moments between the two but Richard is shown to be
a liar and a coward when it is revealed that he has
another lover back home. Not a nice or truthful guy.
Meanwhile, that lover, Joseph, eventually beds Paul
too. This is the creepiest of the creepy. Joseph,
as played by Alan Corduner, is gross, needy, manipulative
and weird. This is the kind of guy who buys a male
escort and then meets the young man at the door in
a half-opened robe. It's nauseating. Corduner plays
Joseph as a lisping, limp- wristed faggot and its
one of the most repulsive portrayals of a gay man
to be seen here. It's truly sad when one considers
that this is supposed to be an elegant and artsy film
made for a gay audience. Corduner plays it like Harold
Robbins for homos.
Writer/Director/Producer Ventura
Pons can never get a handle on the story here. The
pacing is all wrong and there is a six month gap in
the storytelling that leaves an incredible hole in
the film. Paul moves from virginal high school piano
student to openly gay, New York urbanite (with a much
older lover on the upper East side) without anyone
in the audience getting to see the transformation.
It ruins any chance the character might have of allowing
us to understand what his true feelings and motivations
are. Pons also glosses over Paul's true pain and angst
in a tearful nighttime scene that lasts 10 seconds
when it should last minutes. It renders the character's
feelings and motivations null and void. And it gives
his older male lover character no chance to appear
sympathetic or likeable.
Paul's mother Pamela, as played
by Juliet Stevenson - seemingly on helium and speed,
is a simple minor annoyance in the first half of the
film. Paul calls her "a bit of a hysteric" during
these expositionary moments and that comes to seem
a bit of an understatement. But her character is almost
secondary to what is going on in the story. Unwisely,
Pons tries to make her the focal point of the last
third of the film and we cannot begin to understand
why. A sort of impromptu P-FLAG-like meeting with
other mothers of gay sons is played ignorantly for
laughs. It's sad.
With nothing else to guide her,
like a script or a character, Stevenson simply cranks
it up to berserk mode in the limp climax here and
begins ranting and raving about this older man who
has turned her son into a homosexual. Sure, there
is a real opportunity here for a dialogue between
a mother and son about how he has always been gay
and how no older man "made" him gay but this too is
almost brushed aside. This is done so that Pons can
hurry to a supposedly poetic little moment between
mother and son at the end of the film that becomes
trite and ridiculous. I didn't get it. And it seems
like a sad and wasted opportunity.
Of course, much more dialogue and
angst and understanding by this point would have only
turned it into a true "coming out" film so there was
no reason to give the characters a chance to REALLY
communicate with one and other. God knows there are
really too many "coming out" films already. But at
least it would have been a "film" and not this dismal
little gay Harlequin Romance for Dummies that we get
here. What a sad waste of time. This is a film that
is little more than below average. At least Bishop
shows off his butt a couple times. That outta sell
some copies of the DVD.
Notes:
Based on the novel by David Leavitt.
This is Pons first English language
film. His others have been in his native Spanish.
Not to be confused with the 1997
Brit film of the same name.
Viewed on a VHS screener provided
by the distributor in January 2003.
