One of the very best in gay cinema | Beautiful Thing

Documenting real life? | Beautiful Thing | Glen Berry, Linda Henry

DVDs:


	• Beautiful Thing Glen Berry, Linda Henry Sony Pictures, 2003 average customer review:based on 324 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Needs subtitles for Americans

This is an excellent story of gay "first love." The selection of the song "Make Your Own Kind of Music" by Cass Elliot (Mama Cass) for the film was brilliant. This is a sweet gay romantic film well worth many viewings. There is always something new I see with each viewing.

I purchased the video tape many years ago and I have watched it several times. I recently purchased the DVD to make sure I would always have a copy I could watch. However, for an American audience, the lack of subtitles is a deficiency. The characters use a great deal of British slang and, to an American, the dialog is often unclear. The film *is* closed captioned but before purchasing the DVD you should make sure your DVD/TV setup supports closed captioning.

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One of the very best in gay cinema

`Beautiful Thing' is a masterpiece of cinema, deserving of many an accolade. Young Jamie is atypical in his need for direction and identity. Like most boys his age he is desperately trying to find some peace, although his own realisations seem to force him out of the naivety that is youth and into the stark reality of adult experience. His mother being a single mum (Sandra Gangel), played by Linda Henry (an undervalued and often unappreciated actress) battles to both liberate and protect her son from the world she knows to be inherently cruel. The fact that they live amongst a community of individuals each as eccentric as each other, and whom are more involved in the lives of others than their own, makes this task all the more difficult. Jamie's coming-out is at first hidden from his mother, although she having protected him all her life knows there is something that he is hiding from her. When the truth finally comes out, the dialogue between her and her son, is an emotionally uplifting and revealing scene, worthy of one of the cinematic scenes that inspire movies within themselves.

Comic relief is provided by Tameka Empson who is as delightful as she is grass and annoying. You can't help but love her character in all its eccentric madness, as she mimics the community in which she lives. He attitude to Jamie is conflicting at first, as she moves from her own opinions to that of the world around her, until she like Sandra realise that Jamie and his relationship with Ste is truly a `Beautiful Thing'. The pervasive irony however, is that whilst the community is prepared to tolerate domestic violence, drug usage, pervasive decay and poverty, they cannot accept homosexuality. Ultimately, this raw hypocrisy is made self-evident as Sandra, Jamie and Ste find solace, strength and vision in each other.
One of the very best in gay cinema.

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Documenting real life?

At parts of the movie, in fact for the majority of the movie, I felt as if actually witnessing real life events. I felt that the characters in the movie had no idea there were cameras there watching them and they were really going about their daily lives. Great movie, highly recommended. I guess the key thing to keep in mind if you're American is that there are no subtitles and at times the characters speak in difficult-to-understand English, using phrases and idioms that you might not be accustomed to.

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Beautiful Thing (1996)

This is the second oldest movie I feature and I still remember all the mediatic storm it arised, at least in Italy. Seeing it now, you really wonder why: it's a tender movie, with barely two or three kisses, and the most daring scene is the one above. It's essentially the coming of age story both of Jamie and Ste, with their conflictual relationship with their parents, both single parents, and the different approach they have with their sons.

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Sweetest gay movie ever?

Just fantastic. Seeing the live play in SF Dec, 2009 brought up so many great memories of this that I had to pick it up. Just sweet, and a gay movie with a very happy ending - who'd have thought? If you haven't seen this yet you should already be buying it and if you're not you're really missing out on something... beautiful.

A pair of teenage boys growing up in a working-class neighborhood become aware of their homosexuality. While both were vaguely aware they might be gay, neither had ever acted on their impulses. Once they decide that they're attracted to each other, neither is sure just what to do. Winner of 4 International Film Festival Awards.

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