English Title: The String
Original Title: Le fil
Year: 2009
Country: France, Tunisia, Belgium
Language: French, Arabic
Genre: Drama, Romance
Director: Mehdi Ben Attia
Screenwriters: Mehdi Ben Attia, Olivier Laneurie
Music: Karol Beffa
Cinematography: Sofian El Fani
Editing: Chantal Hymans
Cast:
Antonin Stahly Viswanadhan
Claudia Cardinale
Salim Kechiouche
Ramla Ayari
Ali Mrabet
Driss Ramdi
Nejia Zemni
Hosni Khaled
Lotfi Dziri
Abir Bennani
Rihab Mejri
Rating: 6.2/10
English Title: From Beginning to End
Original Title: Do Começo ao Fim
Year: 2009
Country: Brazil
Language: Portuguese, Spanish, English
Genre: Drama, Romance
Director/Screenwriter: Aluizio Abranches
Music: André Abujamra
Cinematography: Ueli Steiger
Editing: Fábio S. Limma
Cast:
Rafael Cordoso
João Gabriel Vasconcellos
Júlia Lemmertz
Fábio Assunção
Louise Cardoso
Lucas Cotrim
Gabriel Kaufmann
Jean Pierre Noher
Mausi Martínez
Fernanda Félix
Rating: 6.7/10
Two leisure-class gay dramas from 2009, THE STRING, Mehdi Ben Attia's debut feature, is about a French-Tunisian guy returns to his homeland and struggles to come out to his bourgeois widowed mother, whereas FROM BEGINNING TO END, the third feature from Aluizio Abranches, is a controversial Brazilian erotic romance between two half-brothers.
Both films eschew the vérité method which is so aligned with the Third Cinema, and take an idealistic approach to express a ubiquitous feeling of amorous passion between two persons (they happen to be two men, or two brothers, so what?), and heartfelt communion among those around them. Even the obstructive forces are small fries compared to any homophobic usual suspect, in THE STRING, it is a none-too-obstreperous mother and in FBtE, merely long distance.
In THE STRING, a literal, visible string is sometimes seen affixed to our protagonist Malik (Viswanadhan), functioned as a simile to flog to death his indivisible attachment to his mother Sara (Cardinale), and by extension, to his estranged fatherland, where he finds difficult to fit in, a sentiment is shared by Bilal (Kechiouche, the pin-up beefcake of Gallic queer cinema), who similarly returns from France and an Arabic beginner, staying conveniently in the bungalow of Sara's sea-side villa, doing odd jobs for her. Struck by a coup de foudre, Malik is hipped on the virile and genial Bilal, and the tentative, courteous exchanges between them often smack of that awkward feeling, how soon will they engage a roll in the hay?
If Malik and Bilal's affaire de cœur swims safely without any internal or external snags, the chief drama in THE STRING is the mother-son reconciliation, and it doesn't take much for Sara to change her mind and munificently dole out her acceptance and benevolence . Although a hale Cardinale basks in Sara's unstrained gentility with ease and charm, THE STRING, as a whole, doesn't live up to her gracious standard, Attia is a clunky filmmaker, plot developments are wheeled out in a groove and subtlety is ever elusive. As a greenhorn, Viswanadhan's performance cannot frictionlessly switch from continental charisma to guilt-ridden turmoil, and Kechiouche's Bilal is too secondary to have any say besides being a supportive boyfriend.
While nothing major, socially or politically, can be educed from THE STRING, which prefers exhibiting the tourist-luring vista of Tunisia, its sweeping positiveness on sexuality and familial bonds, the same can also be pertinently attributed to FBtE, in which, half brothers Francisco and Thomás (played by Vasconcellos and Rafael Cardoso as adults, Cotrim and Kaufmann as tweens) are born in a Brazilian middle class family. Their mother Julieta (Lemmertz) adopts a liberal attitude even though she notices and is concerned by two brothers' excessive intimacy at a very young age.
If Vasconcellos and Cardoso, two dreamboats of very different types, go out of their way's to physically eroticizing the forbidden affair, Abranches has a more prickly job to present the joined-at-the-hip closeness between two tween brothers, and indeed, it is the heady affections between the two younger ones that becomes the bedrock of a very unconventional love story, their intimacy doesn't transgress the usual kid's horseplay and brotherly endearment, thanks to that, when the story abruptly jumps to the adulthood, their relationship doesn't 't necessarily feel perverse or offensive, so that Abranches could make a meal of their us-against-the-world union full of Arcadian bliss, absence only makes their hearts grow fonder.
Both films are aestheticized to grant a wishful outlook that is too good to be actual in reality, and turn a blind eye on the underside of their problematic pairings, possess neither felicity nor distinctive style to be reckoned as a breakthrough of the genderqueer cinema, but for what it is worth, they are gay escapism in top gear, sowing scintilla of hope in the bosom of a nonconformist.
referential entries: Daniel Ribeiro's THE WAY HE LOOKS (2014, 7.9/10); Stephen Durn's CLOSET MONSTER (2015, 6.2/10).
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