Pictured The Rock in Be Cool.
When I first saw You I Love ( it played last year as part of the gay and lesbian film festival ) it seemed a hodgepodge of the worst sort, but a second helping has given me a new appreciation of this rarity: a Russian gay/straight sex comedy. Though I think it's still a pastiche of clichés ( a comedic Sunday, Bloody Sunday ) , it's a very entertaining pastiche and the film's glimpses into Russian culture ( it's in Russian with subtitles ) and sexual mores is exotic enough to recommend it.
The film also resembles the early '80s gay/straight triangle, Making Love, albeit a wacky variation on it. Ironically, this movie reverses what was interesting and tantalizing in that well meaning but ultimately dull, early hallmark of gay cinema. Here, it's the straight relationship that's out of the ordinary while the gay coupling that supplants it seems forced and far fetched. Some of that has to do, I suppose, with cultural advances and some with the film's affection and fascination for the offbeat gay character that unwittingly puts a crimp into the straight relationship.
For me, however, it had everything to do with the breathtaking beauty of the actress Lyubov Tolkalina who plays Vera, the female of the trio ( playing the Kate Jackson part ) . Her male co-stars on the other hand, though handsome and cute in an offbeat way, will never be mistaken for Russian doubles of Michael Ontkean and Harry Hamlin, their American counterparts. When Ontkean planted a kiss on Hamlin's lips in 1982 and proceeded to make love to him, audience members, both gay and straight gasped. Straight audiences because they were shocked to see two well-known handsome actors not just playing gay but ACTING gay; gay audiences for the same reason—but also because for us here at last was the fulfillment of a long-cherished fantasy blown up 50-feet high.
Here it's the beauty of Tolkalina that's riveting.
I want to digress for a moment because once again I am discussing the physicality of actors ( I think sometimes my reviews read like lost episodes of In Living Color's 'Men on Film' ) but that's one of the appeals of movies for many people—the beautiful, sexy, glamorous, offbeat specimens Up There. I first articulated this after seeing Making Love for the first time. Ontkean and Hamlin weren't the mincing fags or murderous drag queens we usually saw onscreen—they looked like the gorgeous hunks my friends and I saw at the bars. That was revelatory for me and I immediately gave myself permission to objectify the onscreen male figures the way my straight movie critic counterparts had been openly objectifying women onscreen since movies began. I don't think this is a practice that needs a defense, but perhaps one that needs to be explained. To respond to a movie actor's looks actually seems an unspoken responsibility for the audience. To not do so might upset certain movie stars—after all, that's one of the reasons the actor's up there to begin with. Openly gay audience members also have the additional luck of being able to openly appreciate both men and women. In other words, we're equal opportunity objectifiers!
But back to You I Love. At the beginning of the film, Vera, a newscaster, accidentally meets advertising executive Tomofei ( Evgeny Koryakovsky—in the Michael Ontkean role ) . Tomofei has been fantasizing about Vera after watching her broadcasts ( more objectifying! ) but after the two begin dating, he's drawn instead to Vera's unusual characteristics. For one, Vera's a food fetishist who declares, 'I lose control of myself—I want to eat all the time' just before she and Timofei make love for the first time. Afterwards, instead of a cigarette, she takes a bite out of a big green apple.
Timofei, who seems like a convenient sponge for anything that will distract from his boring life, eagerly joins Vera in her food addiction ( who, considering her spectacular figure, must also be a closet bulimic or have a metabolic rate off the charts ) and we get a quick progression of their relationship via a quirky food montage. But fate, in the form of simpleton Uloomji ( Damir Badmaev—in the Harry Hamlin role ) bursts in on the couple's adventures in dining paradise. Tim accidentally hits Ul with his car, knocking him unconscious, and brings him home to make sure he's OK. Soon Ul, who is a free spirit, has seduced Tim.
When Vera finds out she is devastated but determined to hang in there because Tim vows that it is, 'You I love.' Ul, meanwhile, doesn't seem to have a second of guilt about busting in on the relationship between the two. When Ul's family intervenes, however, the movie staggers off in yet another obstacle to the course of true, ménage-a-trois love, though all I wanted it to do was get back to examining what made the mixed-up Vera tick and what drew her to the rather mundane Timofei in the first place.
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The Rock plays a giddy gay bodyguard who wants to be a movie star in Be Cool, the sequel to the masterly black comedy from 1995, Get Shorty, and draws big laughs in a supporting part. But it is Vince Vaughan, playing the Rock's boss, who steals the movie from him and out from underneath the nose of star John Travolta, who returns as Chili Palmer, the one-time 'shylock' turned movie producer, something that was unthinkable in the first film. That's the real problem with the movie—everyone steals scenes left and right from Travolta because the character of Chili Palmer—who never seemed out of his element in the cutthroat world of the movie business ( that was part of the joke ) —seems to be one step behind everyone else when he tries his hand as a music manager and no longer seems so 'cool.'
Though the movie entertains as it chugs along, and Uma Thurman, Cedric the Entertainer, and Robert Pastorelli ( in his last role ) offer solid support, consider that line-up and compare it with Travolta's backup from the original: Gene Hackman, Danny DeVito ( who makes a cameo here ) , Delroy Lindo, James Gandolfini, Bette Midler, and especially Rene Russo. No hot John Lurie jazz score this time either and the chemistry between Thurman and Travolta is nil while their highly touted rematch dance sequence ( after their first in Pulp Fiction ) seems rather desultory. Alternate title: Medium Cool.
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Local Screening: Bad girls are back—literally—Saturday, March 12 when the Chicago Filmmakers popular Dyke Delicious series re-screens a re-cut version of Bad Girls Behind Bars, one of their most popular entries from last year. It's a montage of four prison movies, including Pam Grier's 1971 Women in Cages and the Ione Skye-Anne Heche 1994 TV flick Girls in Prison. Special prison ID badges will be issued to all those in attendance. Sounds like a hoot. 7 p.m. social hour, screening at 8 p.m. For info see www.chicagofilmmakers.org .