Yan England's GLBT movie -- 1:54 -- explores the question of coming out vs being outed

Yan England's first full-length feature -- the actor-turned-filmmaker, shown below, both wrote and directed 1:54 -- has as its leading character a young fellow who, though cute enough to look at, is anything but an attractive guy personality- or character-wise. Though pretty obviously gay, as an early scene between him and his best friend around an outside fire makes clear, when that friend gets outed at school, our non-hero not only does not take his friend's side but instead renounces him and his gay status.

This very problemed fellow is played by Antoine-Olivier Pilon (shown on poster, above, and below), who made his mark in Xavier Dolan's semi-moving camp fest Mommy and is a good-looking and usually capable performer, but with a perhaps rather limited range. In this film Pilon has either chosen or been directed to remain fairly one-note in terms of facial expression (as the stills here reveal) -- which, while it may very well be the right accompaniment to his closeted, unhappy and severely limited character, still has one wishing for more.

For all the GLBT movies we currently have gracing (or thudding into) our theaters and home video, being gay or lesbian within one's school venue seems not a whole lot easier to deal with now than it was in my day. It is simply more talked about and maybe perceived as somewhat closer to (but still one hell of a long way from) that so-wished-for but probably non-existent condition known as "normal."

In any case, our would-be hero, Tim, enjoys chemistry class and is very good at track, but is still recovering from the untimely death of his mom, as well as constantly struggling with his sexuality. His peers, with the exception of a single friendly girl (Sophie Nélisse, above, left, of the wonderful film, Monsieur Lazhar), are little help and mostly hindrance. His nemesis -- another track team member, played by just the right degree of ferocious stupidty by Lou-Pascal Tremblay, below, right -- makes everything particularly dire and difficult.

And so, as events pile up -- including suicide, pretending to be straight, a return to running for the track team, a drunken sexual encounter, blackmail and a whole lot worse -- the movie, which has been fairly sure-footed for awhile, eventually then all too quickly descends into melodrama, even as our Tim goes from not-so-hot to a whole lot worse.

1:54 (which is the record time that our would-be track star must break) can most easily and understandably be seen as a kind of cautionary tale. I just wish that it had been a better one. In it, family, faculty, administration, coaches, peers all fail our boy. And he himself simply does not have the strength or stamina to see much of anything through on his own, which makes rooting for him a bit difficult. Until he decides to finally do something, which then makes that rooting utterly impossible.

You may be able to manage this move better than did TrustMovies, and you'll have your chance to find out in Los Angeles, when the film -- from Breaking Glass Pictures -- opens theatrically this Friday, March 9, at the Laemmle Music Hall 3. It will then hit home video (via DVD and VOD) the following week on Tuesday, March 13, for purchase or rental.

Sundance On-Demand debuts with grizzly but intelligent, French-Canadian 7 DAYS

If you could catch and then torture for a week the man who raped and killed your little girl, how would you spend those  
7 DAYS? That's the not-necessarily-provocative ques-
tion asked by the French-Canadian film of the same name, directed by Daniel Grou and adapted from his own novel by Patrick Senécal.   The answer provi-
ded by Messieurs Grou and Senécal, while bringing to mind the phrase "torture porn," manages a good deal more than that -- though there are couple of scenes that demand a strong stomach. (If you're a doctor/surgeon, you probably know well the ways to make your victim suffer, and that is what happens here.)

Director Grou (here billed as Podz) keeps his camera quietly roving
(there's little jump cutting and flashy editing) and his color palette drained of anything bright: It's mostly gray, dark green and blue, with a little brown
now and then.

The father of the kidnap victim (Claude Legault below, left) is strong, silent, taciturn -- until he explodes via phone to his wife. His victim (Martin Dubreuil below, right) lies, defies, begs, confes-
ses, whimpers, pleads and tries all the tricks in the book but remains mostly a victim for whom we can feel little.

As the detective in charge, well-known Quebec actor Rémy Girard (shown below) does wonders with his highly constricted role (making him a victim of a killer -- he lost his wife that way -- is a bit too neat, but we'll let that pass). The two major female roles are aptly handled by Fanny Mallette (shown at bottom, left) and Pascale Delhaes, with Rose-Marie Coallier properly sweet and fragile as the victim.

If 7 Days dealt only or mostly with the inflicting of pain, justified or not, we could indeed wave it away as torture porn. But that is not the case. For one thing, the film doubles as a pretty good police procedural; for another, it probes -- under the most trying circumstances -- love, guilt, retribution, penance, and sheer unending frustration. This easily lifts it above most others in the genre, which, for all their occasional dialog babble about morality, etc., end up being nothing more than sleazy entertainment.

7 Days manages to hold out interest and our concern -- without demeaning us in the process. It's an intelligent, difficult film. Sure, it could be better. But it could also be a hell of a lot worse.

So, how does one get to view it? The movie made its debut last Friday at the Sundance Film Festival as part of the Park City at Midnight program.  It is also part of the new Sundance Selects theatrical and video-on-demand film label, in which three films of very different style and content from this year's festival are making their debut simultaneously On-Demand from most major cable systems, including Comcast, Cablevision, Cox, Time Warner and satellite provider Direct TV.

Each film will be available for 30 days on the cable systems' main movies-on-demand channel. TrustMovies hopes to cover the other two soon: the Michael Winterbottom/Mat Whitecross version of Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine and the Safdie Brothers' Daddy Longlegs.