A very tender and moving film because it brings together two young men, one gay and the other not, who are best friends in their late teenage at high school, who bring together two worlds together, two worlds that are so apart in this small community that it may bring the whole sky down.
The gay boy, or should I say young man, is a pianist and he plans on having a real career in music, a music that is full of feeling and not power and yet is strong and inspiring because full of feeling. The other young man is in football and by his father is expected to get into West Point. Both of them are also on the football team of their school on the very first year when the team wins the championship.
How can football and music come together in one young man as a dual daily practice and in the other young man as a daily practice and a pleasure to listen to his friend's performing. How can a football team accept one gay member when you know this sport has a reputation of extreme anti-gay spirit from plain straight and discreet to gay-basher, from drinking to prove your maleness, after the games of course and as a celebration of victory, to domineering sexual dominance and domination over women, after the games of course as a prize for the victories or before the games as a sweetener to make you stronger for the coming games.
And what about fathers? Note the film does not, or hardly, mention and show mothers. The father of the musician accepts him the way he is even if he is surprised at first. The military and uniformed father of the other refuses his son to have a gay friend, to have any contact with a gay person, no matter what that contact may be. It is hard for the gay young man to lose a friend because of this difference between their fathers, and a good share of the rest of the world. It is hard for the other young man to lose a friend from the diktat of his own father.
And yet it is getting better and the two will win the championship together and the pianist will be encored by his own friend on the night of his recital.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
The gay boy, or should I say young man, is a pianist and he plans on having a real career in music, a music that is full of feeling and not power and yet is strong and inspiring because full of feeling. The other young man is in football and by his father is expected to get into West Point. Both of them are also on the football team of their school on the very first year when the team wins the championship.
How can football and music come together in one young man as a dual daily practice and in the other young man as a daily practice and a pleasure to listen to his friend's performing. How can a football team accept one gay member when you know this sport has a reputation of extreme anti-gay spirit from plain straight and discreet to gay-basher, from drinking to prove your maleness, after the games of course and as a celebration of victory, to domineering sexual dominance and domination over women, after the games of course as a prize for the victories or before the games as a sweetener to make you stronger for the coming games.
And what about fathers? Note the film does not, or hardly, mention and show mothers. The father of the musician accepts him the way he is even if he is surprised at first. The military and uniformed father of the other refuses his son to have a gay friend, to have any contact with a gay person, no matter what that contact may be. It is hard for the gay young man to lose a friend because of this difference between their fathers, and a good share of the rest of the world. It is hard for the other young man to lose a friend from the diktat of his own father.
And yet it is getting better and the two will win the championship together and the pianist will be encored by his own friend on the night of his recital.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU