Two new gay movies aimed at a crossover audience have recently been released on DVD.

Both of them posit the idea that it’s easy for a gay man to get an erection over a heterosexual woman – perhaps a truism that makes some heterosexuals feel secure but it also plays into the hands of fundamentalists that gay sex is a choice not a birthright. This may seem a petty criticism but it’s rare to find a film in which a hetero male gets a woody over a gay guy.

C. Jay Cox’s Kiss the Bride (Regent/here! Films) is a reworking of the successful Julia Roberts/Rupert Everett starrer, My Best Friend’s Wedding. Written by Tyler Lieberman, whose only other film credit seems to be as a production assistant on TransGeneration, explores that old cliché of a disengaged young man, in this case gay journalist Matt (Philipp Karner), returning to his sleepy home town for the first time in a decade to attend the wedding of his former lover, Ryan (James O’Shea), to the surprisingly modern Alex (a great performance from Tori Spelling) who gives Matt an erection by snogging him.

Writer Lieberman manages to wring a few truths out of the quicksand of unoriginality he mines including the obvious moral: you can’t go back. This is a gay movie aimed at a straight audience and apart from the loving photography of O’Shea’s torso and arse, and a little kissing, it all feels unrelentingly heterosexual even though director Cox is the man behind (the vastly over-rated) Latter Days. The film’s piss weak climax, prompted by an ultimatum by Alex is fudged by writer and director again giving the impression that the whole thing is breeder slanted. The limp end scene in which Matt suddenly rings a boyfriend he has rejected smacks of an attempt to impose a happy ending so the gay guy doesn’t miss out.

Much more interesting is an attempt at a new gay spy franchise Kiss Me Deadly: A Jacob Keane Assignment directed by Ron Oliver who has helmed the superior gay detective series based around the character of Donald Strachey by novelist Richard Stevenson.

Deadly was filmed in New Zealand based on a script almost 20 years old that was reshaped by George Schenck and Frank Cardea to account for modern political permutations. It’s a non-stop action adventure in the manner of the Bourne series except that former NIA (yes, NIA) spy, Jacob Keane (Queer as Folk’s Robert Gant), is as gay as glitter. He’s given up the spy game for fashion photography in Milan as a result of the end of the cold war and a botched Russian defection but 17 years later is called upon to help former operative and friend, Marta (Shannen Doherty in fine form), when she turns up in Milan minus her memory.

Shot in two weeks on location in Auckland, the film also stars Fraser Brown and John Rhys-Davies plus a bevy of gorgeous NZ men clothed and un. The scene, for those interested in such matters, in the gay bathhouse includes dick shots. Oliver’s direction hurtles the storyline along as such a breathtaking pace it covers a few of the cracks in the script and successfully disguises the limited budget. It’s a great step up for gay-themed cinema even if the plot fails to explore in any depth the concept of sexual immorality in espionage: Keane sleeps with a woman to recruit her even though he’s gay and sends a young man to his death without a qualm to throw the villains off his trail. One of the bad guys is played by Ian Roberts, erroneously described as a soccer player on the director’s commentary.

I want more Jacob Keane. And, please, more of the beefy Gant without his shirt.

http://www.kissthebridemovie.com/

http://www.kissmedeadly-themovie.com/

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