Out in the dark [2012]

Some days ago (now it is June of 2014), I watched Out in the dark, film directed by Michael Mayer and premiered in 2012. I still have a kind of heavy feeling inside me (due the film), and I think it is going to spend a bit of time until I will be able to pass through the life without thinking about the small conflicts Out throwed at my arms.

Out in the dark has, as nucleus, a gay relationship (between men) in a region of traditional cultures (“Palestine/Israel”). A young psychologist student (from Palestine), Nimr, meets a young lawyer (from Israel), Roy, in a gay pub. After some days, they start dating, but, in their path, they will face some obstacles.

Although the prejudice, coercion and violence against gays in this region is an important subject to discuss to, this is not the big point of the film. It is able to see a considerable number of gay characters (not just the main) represented, and there are also scenes in which are explored the violence (physical or verbal) and the fragile condition to what the gays are subjected, but these parts of the film are not the gears that makes it keep on. I guess they are used just to explore a bigger subject: the political situation and the conflict between Palestine and Israel from the viewpoint of nuclear family life and personal dreams. Out has been categorized as a film directed for the gay public (a gay love story), after all, its nucleus is a gay relationship. However, I think the gay hillside is just a trampoline to discuss other things – and the way with what the screenplay was made and the actors worked make us have this feeling.

I do not want to say that the gay problematic addressed in the film is not important, because, indeed, that is! Nevertheless, I am back to say again, this is just an axis from what are born other discussions. Before being gays, the characters are people who live in a conflict area, where the political situation and the traditional culture prevents people to make happen their dreams (even if it seem possible). In fact, it is worse: the conflict between Palestine and Israel, that has dragged on for decades, has been draining people into illegal condition (e.g. Israelis and Palestinians cannot travel from one side to the other through the frontier as free as it should be, even if your friends, family or possibilities for job or university are in the other side; due that fact, some people has entering the countries for illegal ways).

Therefore, Out has multiples topics. It comports a more political/social side, but a gay (and beautiful) love story side too. Even, there is space for personal conflicts, as “should I give up my comfortable situation to chase a life I can say it is really mine?” (the Roy’s drama).

Out in the dark has a subtle rhythm, without variation. It has not such beautiful, dramatic and memorable scenes. Maybe this is one of the few negative points in Out. And there was space to put more strong scenes. However, I must say each scene is important. The film was well made.

The other negative point is the fact that Nicholas Jacob (Nimr) sometimes does not get a good actuation.

“Ufa!!!” (I am breathless). Perhaps I have gotten too long with this review. I am just mad, ok? "Brevity" is not my surname.

Rather than thinking of the fact that Out is a gay movie with political content, I prefer a reversal: Out is a political film whose narrative is based on a gay relationship (how the political situation can affect my private life, preventing me from living a romance?). And that is exactly what makes Out different. 

Before Midnight [2013]

Ending the trilogy started in 1995 with Before Sunrise, the ultimate movie of this history, Before Midnight, which debuted last year, came to us to say: the life is possible! Following the same language of the last two movies (I must mention Before Sunset, 2004), however, this one has particularities that are really significant.

Before I start to weave comments about the film, I would like to inform that, for not being able to disassociate the narratives of each movie among them (I really believe that, in fact, each “Before […]” is just a stage of a bigger story, that is more significant than every alone. We cannot forget that, passing through the movies, we discovered things covered in the past), to inform that I intend to meditate about Before Midnight only in association with its two last brothers.

Midnight, how was easy to predict, is about how is the relationship between Celine and Jesse past nine years after the last movie, B. Sunset (like this one, that was nine years after B. Sunrise). We find out the two characters are married and they have two daughter (twins!). They are having a holiday in Greece, in the house of a Jesse’s friend. With them, there are more two couples and two people that have had passed through a marriage experience. I guess these people, couples in different stages (lovers, marrieds, with children and widowers), are at Midnight just to makes us think about that each kind of relation (I mean, from the most opened to the most serious) have his problems and advantages. Midnight is about an more mature stage of relation (and this does not need to say an marriage).

Richard Linklater (director), this time, catch me at all. Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, who interprets the central characters, had never transited between drama and comedy in such a lot of times and with such an elegancy and divestiture that, until in the more relaxed scenes, we are not able to not to recognize a serious atmosphere. There is always a feeling that something is going to break, to explode – and, when this comes to happen, with a strong agitation, we, spectators (now not the own characters), find out reasons to fall in laughers. I think is easy to find ourselves realizing us analyzing the scenes with distance, thinking: “they (Jesse and Celine, the central characters) are not discussing due that fact, aren’t they? Oh, really?!”.

Like in the other two films from the trilogy, Midnight has important and beautiful dialogues. However, it is not always Celine or Jesse who speaks to us (and not the camera too [laughers]!). This movie give us more characters. And they gain space in the story, what did not happened in the last Before’s. This fact, adding to the camera takes more scenes in what Celine and Jesse are not together, say to us that the life is not so romantic, like Before Sunrise (the first from the trilogy) made us think. But Midnight either shows us the things are not so bad like in Before Sunset [two significant titles, don’t you think?]. This last movie of the trilogy is more realistic, with moments that are more possible. When I say possible, I mean moments that we are able to pass in our life (the places where the scenes happen is an example; I think is more easy finding myself discussing in a market than meeting a stranger in an train, talking to, falling in love and walking with him). Midnight make us thinking about the life is not so bad that we cannot be happy, but not so good too, because we are going to find stones in our road. The big center is that are exactly we who put this stones and, furthermore, throw them away.

Midnight is the most beautiful and matured film from the trilogy, and we go out from him holding a comfortable feeling that say to us: yes, although we had discovered, in our path, the life is harder than we have thought,  it still can make us happy, still can be pleasant: “if there’s any kind of magic in this world”…