It sentimentalises and moralises at times, but the characters remain nicely complicated right to the end.
Boy Culture (2007)
Runtime: 88 mins
Synopsis: Boy Culture is the candid confession of “X,” a wildly successful male escort. After ten years of sex-for-pay, “X” gets romantically entangled with his two hot roommates and a reclusive elderly client, Gregory. But before Gregory will agree to sex, he tells an unsetting love story spanning... Boy Culture is the candid confession of “X,” a wildly successful male escort. After ten years of sex-for-pay, “X” gets romantically entangled with his two hot roommates and a reclusive elderly client, Gregory. But before Gregory will agree to sex, he tells an unsetting love story spanning fifty years and dares “X” to try something he hasn’t felt in years: emotion. Based on the critically-acclaimed novel by Matthew Rettenmund and directed by Q. Allan Brocka (writer of Eating Out 1 & 2), BOY CULTURE takes on issues of sexual mores and emotional risk with a witty and incisive voice, revealing the leap of faith that love demands. -- © TLA Releasing [More]
Genre: Dramas
Starring: Patrick Bauchau, Jonathon Trent
Reviews
Audiences outside gay cinema will, frankly, probably find it too callow to emotionally invest in. However, for those who do see it, they will likely be surprised, and entertained, by its arch insights and near-camp bearing.
Boy Culture is an undemanding but sufficiently engaging serving of smut and sentiment. As such, it reclaims territory that queer cinema has largely ceded to TV shows like Queer as Folk, The L Word and Six Feet Under.
Seattle locales, some spry lines and tiny soundings of depth still leave us in the conceptual grip of 'love' as a system of endless bartering and vanity, with impulsive copulation treated as consecration. Oh, boy.
Benefits from some assured helming by Q. Allan Brocka and strong performances.
BOY CULTURE is a well-made, engrossing and well acted comedy-drama. [The main character] X can easily reside alongside Jon Voight's Joe Buck in MIDNIGHT COWBOY as one of the screen's more memorable hustlers.
You know something's amiss in a movie when an omniscient narrator blathers the entire way through it.
Brocka's direction keeps things moving, and the performances he draws from Magyar, Stephens and indie-film veteran Bauchau are always up to speed.
These self-involved studs manage to make ready, anonymous sex look rather dull.
A drab, contrived drama in which men have sex and then complain about it to us.
A smarter-than-average relationship drama set in Seattle's gay scene, Boy Culture boasts a winning sense of self-awareness.
Brocka leaps into the small circle of leading queer filmmakers of our time, sculpting an unpredictable romance that is complex, sophisticated and thoughtful.
Direction and performances are not up to the task of making this convincing or moving.
As a character, X is rather reticent and buttoned-up. If he'd stayed that way as a narrator, a rather nice film would have been even better.
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