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After getting burned out on Outfest several years ago by seeing six heartfelt coming-out movies in a row, I returned to see two... heartfelt coming-out movies.
Luckily the passage of time had burned out my burn-out and made heartfelt coming-out stories more interesting to me. Also, one was set in Thailand and one is Glasgow. When you're dealing with a very old story, an unusual setting can help a lot to make it seem fresh and new.
Right By Me was a Thai movie about gay high school boys, shot on a budget of what looked like about eight dollars. Nat is an out and proud queen who's not-so-secretly in love with his best friend, the semi-closeted semi-jock and full-on-romantic Tat... who is madly in love with the completely closeted and conflicted Ek, a popular jock with a girlfriend. Luckily for Tat, who is very smart, Ek needs a tutor...
In addition to being graced by one of the most attractive and charming screen presences ever, playing the bespectacled "good boy" Tat, this was sweet, funny, engaging, and just a whole lot of fun. I don't think it has a regular US release, but it might appear on DVD.
Nina's Heavenly Delights is an English/Scottish co-production (I think) about a young Scottish-Indian woman who fled Glasgow on the eve of her arranged marriage, ostensibly because she didn't love her fiance but really because she's a lesbian. She returns to Glasgow when her father, who owned an Indian restaurant, dies, only to find the restaurant about to be sold. With the help of a lovely young woman who conveniently is the part-owner of the restaurant, Nina must enter a televised curry contest to save it!
This one looks like a million bucks despite its low budget. Unfortunately, the script is even more predictable than the plot outline suggests-- I could predict a lot of the dialogue word-for-word. It's saved by its sweetness and sincerity, and by a fantastic Bollywood number at the end, in which every characters participates in a huge dance number, in character. Regent will release this in the USA in early October.
Luckily the passage of time had burned out my burn-out and made heartfelt coming-out stories more interesting to me. Also, one was set in Thailand and one is Glasgow. When you're dealing with a very old story, an unusual setting can help a lot to make it seem fresh and new.
Right By Me was a Thai movie about gay high school boys, shot on a budget of what looked like about eight dollars. Nat is an out and proud queen who's not-so-secretly in love with his best friend, the semi-closeted semi-jock and full-on-romantic Tat... who is madly in love with the completely closeted and conflicted Ek, a popular jock with a girlfriend. Luckily for Tat, who is very smart, Ek needs a tutor...
In addition to being graced by one of the most attractive and charming screen presences ever, playing the bespectacled "good boy" Tat, this was sweet, funny, engaging, and just a whole lot of fun. I don't think it has a regular US release, but it might appear on DVD.
Nina's Heavenly Delights is an English/Scottish co-production (I think) about a young Scottish-Indian woman who fled Glasgow on the eve of her arranged marriage, ostensibly because she didn't love her fiance but really because she's a lesbian. She returns to Glasgow when her father, who owned an Indian restaurant, dies, only to find the restaurant about to be sold. With the help of a lovely young woman who conveniently is the part-owner of the restaurant, Nina must enter a televised curry contest to save it!
This one looks like a million bucks despite its low budget. Unfortunately, the script is even more predictable than the plot outline suggests-- I could predict a lot of the dialogue word-for-word. It's saved by its sweetness and sincerity, and by a fantastic Bollywood number at the end, in which every characters participates in a huge dance number, in character. Regent will release this in the USA in early October.
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