Vanilla (2004) User Reviews

Two Short Films on One DVD

[gradyharp · 5/10 · 28 May 2006]

Joseph Graham both wrote and directed the first of the two short films on this DVD. He has some interesting ideas both textually and visually and manages to condense into 47 minutes a film that packs a wallop.

'VANILLA' is anything but vanilla, if the term refers to the dichotomies between vanilla and kinky in the usual sense. A young lad Jeff (Ryan A. Allen) is a highschool photographer who happens upon the kneeling suicide victim body of a beefy serial killer in the Bay Area. Questioned by the police and his father, he becomes obsessed with the string of murders linked to sexual encounters with young men, and his curiosity contributes to an art project as well as his own drive to experience how the murders took place. Just how far his curiosity leads him is the fairly dramatic conclusion to this short film. The acting is pretty 'basic' cum weak, and the acting out of the trysts is heavy, but Graham does use his story as a romance with the camera: the film is appropriately shot in both black and white and color with the uses of each more important than they first appear.

'A LITTLE COMFORT' ('Just un pea de recon fort...') is a brief 36 minute French film by director Armand Lamellose that employs better actors and better cinematography, and actually a better story. Arnaud (Arthur Moncla) is a young teenager coping with his attraction to the popular hunk Guillaume (Remi Bresson) who has a steady girlfriend. Arnaud imitates his idol trying cigarettes, alcohol and sex, finds a girlfriend but when both girls leave their beaus, Guillaume (whose mother is dying and who has no family) seeks refuge with Arnaud, whose mother is more than happy to have Arnaud's 'best friend' stay with them rather than in a foster home. At last, in the comfort zone, away from the outside world, Arnaud and Guillaume bond, fall in love, and actually fit into the society that they feared would ostracize them. OR is this little tale merely the acting out of a dream for the tender little Arnaud....it is up to the audience to decide.

Films such as these, though each feel like works in progress, at least serve the intelligence of the film audience well. It has not been very long since such films would have never made it to the shelves of Amazon.com or the video stores. The success of 'Brokeback Mountain' has opened a lot of windows, and for that we should be grateful. Now let's see the polished films of similar content that languish in the darker interstices. Grady Harp, May 06

A pretty, wistful French postcard of a rueful boy-on-boy crush (film 2 only, not film 1)

[Chris Knipp · 20 July 2009]

How to explain the pairing of these two completely opposite long-short films? The amateurishly overwrought American one and the cool, polished French one? Yes, Vanilla is best avoided, unless you're making a study of badness in movie-making. Just a Little Comfort isn't to be confused with the moving 2000 made-for-TV French gay coming out film Just a Question of Love (dir. Christian Faure, with Cyrille Thouvenin, Stéphan Guérin-Tillié, Eva Darlan). This short has a lazier quality. But that goes with the summer mood and the teenage boys' casual facade, though cute bi Guillaume and his passionate admirer Arnaud are both seething inside. Just a Little Comfort has a typical French elegance. Everybody looks good. Nothing is pushed too hard. For a gay film, it is provocative in beginning with straight sex, Guillaume making love with his girlfriend Van. Is there an element of gay movie-maker wish-fulfillment in the way the perfect, bee-sting-lipped Guillaume eventually consents to a brief sexual affair with the reedy, needy Arnaud? No, why? It could happen, and the film establishes that G. and A. are best buds to begin with, plus Guillaume's family life is non-existent, with his mom in a perpetual state of clinical meltdown and his dad dead. The adults are sketched in nicely, and the boys' P.O.V. justifies the sketchiness. The way Arnaud, then briefly Guillaume, softly sing along with a French song CD suggests Armand Lameloise has watched Christophe Honoré's Dans Paris and Chansons d'amour, except that this came before those films, and Lameloise's focus on a slowly blossoming gay boy's world is his own. Just a Little Comfort is just a pretty, wistful French postcard of a rueful crush, but it's the kind you might want to tack on your fridge and glance back at now and then. Why isn't there apparently anything else out since by Lamboise except an anti-discrimination piece, one 2008 episode in a TV series? As another viewer said: Vanilla, 2, Just a Little Comfort, 8. Watched on Netflix DVD that somehow got into my queue. The first short is as bad as any gay shorts anthology film (and there are lots of bad ones); the second is better than almost any.

Just dreadful

[laduqesa · 1/10 · 25 March 2023]

I wasn't fortunate enough to have had the French accompanying film and saw the American short "Vanilla" as a standalone. How I wish I hadn't. This could have been so good as a trip through delusions of madness and paranoia involving a serial killer alongside his victims and the lad who found the body of the perp.

Instead we got a disjointed mush of foolish dreams and bad acting. I'm sure we weren't meant to get a connected narrative as the director presumably wanted to be "thought provoking" and edgy. He utterly failed. I've mentioned before in reviews that I loathe artiness for its own sake. Artiness is fine if it is witty or puts over points and ideas in an original manner. This lamentable effort did no such thing.

Inspired by a true story?

[Tippy9 · 6/10 · 8 October 2007]

I was really struck by this film's similarities to the true story of serial killer Herbert Baumeister. Baumeister used erotic asphyxiation to commit his murders. As the police were closing in on him as a suspect, having found many burned human remains on his property, he drove to Canada and shot himself in the head. The use of fire imagery evoked that part of the story. He found several victims at a leather bar called the 501 in Indianapolis which bears more than a passing resemblance to the bar in the film. A&E DID DO a special on the story called "Secret Life of a Serial Killer" in the 90s. Finally, a pinball game in the bar in the film has a racing theme and "Indianapolis 500" is seen on it.

Two diametrically different shorts

[larapha · 8/10 · 11 January 2016]

I wouldn't say that Vanilla is the worst gay film I've seen last years, but it isn't far from it. The problem stays mainly with the project's actual filming. With a great story at hand, the producing and directing resulted very poor, barely touching the thriller it could have been. The plot revolves around a man with homicide potential. Starting by killing an almost willing victim, for which he seemed deeply concerned, he evolves into a frenzy of killing people by hands while making sex. This is poorly developed, until he himself commits suicide. There comes the second part of the story, where the dead maniac is spotted by a sightseeing person, who becomes obsessed with the murdered and the maniac himself. This tale could have been absorbing, but it's just boring. The poor film making spoils all, not helped by bad acting. To avoid (note 3) The medium length is joined by another - "A Little comfort" to whom it bears no resemblance at all. This is a small French film dealing with the luring a guy has for another, who presently has a girlfriend. It's about the tortures of love not well corresponded, which leads little Arnaud (Arthur Moncla) to do things we don't whether are good or not for him, like smoking, finding a girlfriend… All for the love of Guillaume (Remi Bresson), whom, as we have seen in the opening scenes of the film, is easily attired to girls. But the story has some changes and Guillaume, to avoid going to a foster house, finishes by living in Arnaud's house. There, he'll give him 'a little comfort' which we never know for sure if it's a retribution for living with him. Near the end, hopes again flame on Arnaud, in the person of a bright charming chevalier on this bright bicycle, when he finds Arnaud alone in a camp where he was supposed to be with Guillaume, who left he alone there. Maybe a new chance on love for Arnaud? The film is very tender, and deserves an 8 for the feelings it aroused on me.

Vanilla's Guys

[NoDakTatum · 6/10 · 28 October 2023]

Joseph Graham, the mind behind the excellent film "Strapped," started with this very short piece full of vivid imagery but some odd ideas. In San Francisco, Mike (Matt Klein)- I swear someone in the film called him Mark- is a buff gay man enjoying some casual sex. His partner makes Mike choke him, and in the heat of the moment the man dies. Mike takes a hankering to the whole choking angle, and is soon picking up other men in gay bars and killing them, earning the nickname "The Bay City Strangler." He then goes out to a local park infamous for cruising, and puts a bullet in his head. Onto the scene comes high school student/photographer/artist Jeff (Ryan A. Allen). Jeff seems to be struggling with his sexual identity, finds Mike's body, and takes some photographs of it before falling in the water and losing his camera. He reports what he found, and becomes a bit of a local celebrity. The problem is Jeff is becoming obsessed with the strangling case. Nightmares begin involving the killer, and soon Jeff is conversing with a ghost of one of the victims. His artwork begins to change, and he catches the eye of one of his father's coworkers, David (Michael McAllister).

The film is only forty-six minutes, and Graham wisely uses the first dialogue-free ten minutes to set up the killer's character. This is the best part of the film, shot in black and white, and very reminiscent of David Lynch. The scenes are intense and scary, with nice optical effects enhancing the mood. I also liked the character Jeff, but I thought Graham went a bit off the rails as Jeff's obsession deepened. Because the film is so short, we are never privy to what Jeff was like before the body's discovery, so I was not sure if he really changed at all, or if the murderer was changing him from beyond the grave. Jeff's sexual fantasies involving the murderer are very uncomfortable, but the climax of the film tries to do too much, with the viewer at a loss. The musical score by Patrick Bowsher and the songs by Reza are outstanding, setting the mood whenever they are used. "Vanilla" is not a complete wreck; I did recognize some ingredients here that made "Strapped" one of the best films of 2010, so we'll split the difference with the rating.

Someone deserves more comfort..............A lot more....

[arizona-philm-phan · 16 July 2006]

(EIGHT STARS for "A Little Comfort" / TWO STARS for "Vanilla")

Don't waste your time on the "Vanilla" portion of this DVD.......unless you're into the weird and surreal. The director presumably is projecting a "message" in this work, but this viewer is not at all sure it's worth discovering. (2-Stars awarded for filming technique and not-the-world's-worst acting levels).

On the other hand, for all you romantics out there, take comfort in the great little second feature on this disc. It's one that can make us all feel young again (oh, gosh, do we really want that?).

Poor little Arnaud, he's a real sweetie. He pretty much knows, sexually, who he is and what he wants, but it's the desire for the who-he-wants that's giving him problems. And, unfortunately for his peace of mind, the "hotness" of that desire manifests itself.....even during sleep (though Mom is very sympathetic at a time like that, does she actually realize the problem's cause........hmm, perhaps more than we know).

Arnaud, of course, must make one of life's big mistakes, one which so many of us make: choosing the wrong object of desire, the wrong person to fixate on. And, here, this reviewer's interpretation of Guillaume's role in Arnaud's life is at polar opposites from the opinion expressed by another viewer/writer on this site. In my eyes, G. is the epitome of the "mixed-up kid" (and, perhaps with good reason, considering his family/home situation). He's a tease, concerned primarily with his own gratification and, in the end, is someone who can relate to our sweet little hero only if pretense is involved (the nature of that pretense you'll easily discover with your own eyes.....er.....uh.....I mean, ears).

In concluding this little reflection of mine on teen life (a life-period which often needs more than the title's little comfort), let me say we can only hope that the angel of a bicyclist who appears at film's end is there to provide much more than just 'a little comfort' to our Arnaud. He deserves it.

PS--Pulling us right into the scenes with him, Arthur Moncla does a great job with his character of Arnaud.......especially considering he was only about 17 at the time (yeah, more like 17 going on 40).

****