Jayro Bustamante's TEMBLORES (Tremors): Guatemalan horror tale for homosexuals

At this point in time and in most "western" countries, gay lives (as well as gay-themed movies) are most often feel-good affairs set out to prove how wonderful, encompassing and accepted the gay lifestyle can be. And why not, since these days, those lives are for the most part, and especially for the elite, pleasant and productive. Which is why something as unusual as Jayro Bustamante's TEMBLORES is cause for celebration. Temblores translates as tremors, the likes of which figure quite importantly, literally and symbolically, into this new film, co-produced by Guatemala (where it is set), France and Luxembourg. By celebration, TrustMovies means that of excellent filmmaking but certainly not of what happens to the poor guy at the center of this story.

In the film, Señor Bustamante (shown at left), who both wrote and directed, shows us how Pablo, an attractive, middle-aged man from a very wealthy family who has decided to leave his wife to settle in with his male lover is blocked from his desire by family, church, community, the law and just about everything else that could possibly stand in his way. This proves a quietly increasing horror show, the likes of which most of us in the GLBT community will not have heretofore encountered. It certainly will not increase the Guatemalan tourist trade -- except perhaps for that of right wing fundamentalists.

Bustamante gives us three generations in this uber-rich group, with a welcome and thoughtful concentration on the younger set, personified by Pablo's two children, the younger of whom is wetting his bed due to family tensions, even as the slightly older daughter is trying to come to terms with what is going on and what this means.   

This is a highly religious family, highly hypocritical, too -- elite and quite used to getting its way as the only expected and rightful course of action. That's the pastor's powerful wife, above (played with steely intelligence by Sabrina De La Hoz), as she leads a group of errant males back to the fold via means that are jaw-droppingly nasty and obtuse.

What happens to Pablo -- Juan Pablo Olyslager (above and below, left) giving a fine performance that moves from dread mixed with hope to complete capitulation -- becomes increasingly shocking due to the closing off to him of each level of society with which he had formerly interacted. Little wonder, then, that his lover (Mauricio Armas Zebadúa, above and below, right) has well adapted to the gay sub-culture of this country, becoming so much wiser and abler than is the clearly pampered Pablo.

That the two men care about and are attracted to each other is presented clearly enough via their verbal, emotional and sexual encounters. They also make a good pairing, given how one's character, class and abilities (or inabilities) so well complements the other's.

But as one circumstance after another -- too often attributed to "god's will" -- serves to undercut their relationship, our anger begins to grow exponentially. Yet Bustamante's quiet control and refusal to give in to melodramatics makes all this seem not simply believable but finally inexorable.

You'll imagine you know the final scene when you see it, but no. The filmmaker takes us one step further, and this is brilliant -- opening up the merest possibility of hope, if only via the next generation. Temblores is a film for the ages.

From Film Movement, in Spanish with English subtitles and running 107 minutes, the movie opens on Friday, November 29, at the Quad Cinema in New York City and at the Coral Gables Art Cinema here in Miami, and on Friday, December 6 at the Laemmle Royal in Los Angeles, the Landmark Opera Plaza in San Francisco and also in South Florida at the Movies and Delray and Lake Worth.

These screenings will be followed by openings in other U.S. cities, including Chicago, Washington D.C. and elsewhere. Click here and scroll way down to see currently scheduled playdates, cities and venues.

Is Ken Russell's CRIMES OF PASSION (now on Blu-ray/director's cut) as bad as we thought?

Yes, yes, a thousand times, yes! But you know what? With time -- 32 years -- the movie seems to have become a lot more fun. Not nearly as much fun as, say, Russ Meyer's Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, though the two films have things in common. Both want to get us all bigtime hot-and-bothered, while simultaneously teaching us the right pathway to pursue. Meyer's is the much better of the two films, though Ken Russell's over-the-top movie (the filmmaker is shown below) has its own special charm -- and a couple of very hot actors in the leading roles.

We forget how incredibly gorgeous and sexy (and talented) was its leading lady Kathleen Turner, just three years off Body Heat when CRIMES OF PASSION was released (1984). Co-star John Laughlin was in his prime at the time, too, and he makes one hot hunk of beefcake in the role of a horny husband whose wife (Annie Potts) wants nothing to do with him in the sack. Mr. Russell made a number of good movies in his time (his bio films for the BBC about artists constitute his best work), but this one is not among them.

Ms Turner plays a smart and sexy young woman who goes by the name of Joanna Crane at her day job in the garment industry; by night she's China Blue (above), a hot-looking whore with a rather low-end clientele who is menaced (though she does not seem to realize this for quite some time) by a Bible-toting nutcase, played in his best-though-much-overused nutcase fashion by Anthony Perkins (below).

Into the mix comes Mr. Laughlin (below), hired to trail Turner due to some supposed industrial espionage, who falls prey to her charms and is soon banging her every which way, and at the same time, of course, falling in love with the gal.

And therein lies the biggest problem with Crimes of Passion. Every time Russell (along with the script, penned by Barry Sandler) gets serious, the movie goes south. Scenes evidently designed to comment on societal hypocrisy play like something written by and for Boy Scouts (granted, these Scouts have very dirty mouths), but then we get back to the sex-and-sin and come-on-in, and things get enjoyably hot-and-heavy once again. (Russell was always pretty good at giving us "shock value".)

Along the way, we see various of China Blue's clients in multitudinous positions -- most of which may have seemed shocking in their time but today seem more recherché than anything else.  By the time we get to the suspense-thriller finale, it's all so been-there/done-that, you'll see the "big surprise" coming a mile away.

Still, there is fun to be had in watching Turner strut her stuff and noting once again that Mr. Russell's would-be shocks can sometimes prove less transgressive than merely tired. The director's true home was either in those long-ago black-and-white biography films (his Savage Messiah is also pretty good) or in the fun-and-frolicsome genre of The Lair of the White Worm.

From Arrow Video (via MVD Entertainment Group) Crimes of Passion , running 107 minutes, hits the street on Blu-ray + DVD this coming Tuesday, July 19 (or maybe on July 26: I've been told two different street dates on this one), with a huge load of bonus materials, plus both the director's cut and the unrated version of the film included.
Click here for further details. 

Lucas & Hamm star in Anders Anderson's moving missing-child movie, STOLEN

Threat and danger hover over STOLEN like a curse. Then the deaths start piling up: one, two... The third takes longer to appear, which makes waiting for it all the more difficult to endure (not to worry: there is practically no blood or gore here). Anders Anderson's sorrowful and moving film about parental responsibility, love, sexual need, grief and guilt travels back and forth in time to tell a tale of loss and odd connections that dispenses with much of the "thriller" aspects that might have given it more standard pizzazz and chills -- probably at the expense of the deeper-than-usual feelings that surface from time to time.

Directed by Anderson (shown at left, whose first film this is) and written by Glenn Taranto, Stolen is a quieter movie than most in this genre, and fortunately it has two leading men who can handle the emotional aspects well. Jon Hamm plays the small-town policeman in the present-day plot, and it's good to see this actor in something other than Mad Men (or the uselessly standard role he had in the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still). Even better is Josh Lucas, who has been proving his mettle over the past decade in film after interesting film: The Deep End to Undertow, Poseidon to Death in Love.

Lucas (above) has by far the most layered role, and as usual, he gives it his all, making us feel his loss and guilt, his need for both sex and religion, and his insistence on doing what he imagines is the right thing. Hamm (below) is saddled with the lesser role, in which his grief and guilt overshadow all else, and this does begin to grow tiresome, which is less the actor's fault that that of the director and writer.

Yet the graceful weaving of past and present, with its occasional surprise (not the villain's identity, which is given away midstream) plus the romantic interludes provided by several women (who later appear as their older selves) make this story memorable in unex-
pected ways, leaving the viewer freighted with a deeper under-
standing and appreciation of all that has transpired than is usually achieved in films about kidnapping and murder. (In fact, Stolen manages this better than does a much higher-profile movie The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, about which I'll have more to say soon.)

Also in the cast is James Van Der Beek (at right, above, whose very square head and sturdy body is put to good use in the past portion and made to age relatively well for the present-day) and Jessica Chastain, Rhona Mitra and Morena Baccarin (the latter shown below) as some of the women in the lives of these two men.

Stolen (formerly known as Stolen Lives), from IFC FIlms, opens Friday, March 12, at the Clearview Chelsea in New York City and at the Laemmle Sunset 5 in L.A. on March 19.  Already available from IFC On-Demand, you can click the previous link to learn if your TV-reception-provider offers it, and if so, how to get it.