The stereotypes and clichés fly thick and fast in CUT SLEEVE BOYS, yet another gay indie that has been a "featured film" at my favorite place for new discoveries, TLAVideo.com. If it were any other movie, I would have to consider it to be nothing more than another cotton-candy coated piece of cinematic fluff, yet more "junk-food"-type gay melodrama where young, handsome guys have lots of sex, do lots of drugs and continually pine for "Mr. Right" instead of "Mr. Right Now."
What makes BOYS so different from all those other films - in spite of the fact that it has exactly everything the others have - is it's point of view: the lead characters are all Asian, a minority-within-a-minority that has been woefully underrepresented in gay cinema in the past (and no, I'm NOT counting such high-art house flicks as FAREWELL, MY CONCUBINE, HAPPY TOGETHER or even Ang Lee's excellent THE WEDDING BANQUET.)
Besides the cultural references and differences that give it such a fascinatingly different flavor, it's also absorbing in the way it portrays the universal similarities of gay men from all ethnic backgrounds, as well as its choice to portray different aspects of the story in a way that smartly avoids a dangerous descent into maudlin histrionics, from which many films in this genre have never recovered once they've gone there.
Take the opening, for example. We meet Gavin Chan (Mark Hampton), whose name we don't learn until about five minutes or so after he's dead. That's right - the character who you think the movie is going to be about expires in a men's loo while receiving a little pre-night- on-the-town service from a stranger who also gives Gavin his first - and LAST - hit of poppers. At the funeral that follows, we meet all the interested parties whom the story will really feature: Gavin's best friends Ash (BOYS co-writer Chowee Leow), a devotee of camp who is waiting for his strong, hunky Prince Charming to sweep him off his feet, and Mel (Steven Lim), the Asian answer to QUEER AS FOLK'S Brian Kinney - a muscle hunk obsessed with keeping his bed full of hunks and his medicine chest full of the latest creams, dyes and gadgets to help keep advancing age at bay - along with anything like a meaningful relationship, of course.
Besides dealing with Mel's demise, the two friends encounter new complications in the form of - what else? - men who enter their lives. For Mel, it's a casual fling, the good-looking and naive Todd (Gareth Rhys-Davies), who has suddenly decided to come out to his parents, thanks to a past suggestion from his former 'boyfriend-for-a-night), while Ash finds himself getting involved with the ultra-masculine tranny-chaser Ross (Neil Collie), the soon-to-be- ex-beau of homely drag diva Diana (John "Ebon-Knee' Campbell), a former "fashion muse" of Gavin's.
Yes, it does trot out just about every single cliché you can possibly imagine and stir-fries them as thoroughly as twice-cooked pork. But the actors do it with such commitment and even a sense of charm (with Leow getting a makeover as possibly one of the best-looking Chinese drag queens in gay movie history - second to B.D. Wong, of course!), that it's hard to be mad at them for giving it the old college try. Plus (as other reviews I've read blissfully point out), co-stars Rhys-Davies and Collie are extremely easy on the eyes.
And thankfully, when it reaches its conclusion, BOYS is a tad more realistic about how its characters wind up, as not everybody lives 'happily ever after'. (But at least they do LIVE - thank God!)
Just look at it this way - watch CUT SLEEVE BOYS when you want something just a little bit different - but nothing TOO taxing - and you'll have a relatively good time for an hour and a half.
What makes BOYS so different from all those other films - in spite of the fact that it has exactly everything the others have - is it's point of view: the lead characters are all Asian, a minority-within-a-minority that has been woefully underrepresented in gay cinema in the past (and no, I'm NOT counting such high-art house flicks as FAREWELL, MY CONCUBINE, HAPPY TOGETHER or even Ang Lee's excellent THE WEDDING BANQUET.)
Besides the cultural references and differences that give it such a fascinatingly different flavor, it's also absorbing in the way it portrays the universal similarities of gay men from all ethnic backgrounds, as well as its choice to portray different aspects of the story in a way that smartly avoids a dangerous descent into maudlin histrionics, from which many films in this genre have never recovered once they've gone there.
Take the opening, for example. We meet Gavin Chan (Mark Hampton), whose name we don't learn until about five minutes or so after he's dead. That's right - the character who you think the movie is going to be about expires in a men's loo while receiving a little pre-night- on-the-town service from a stranger who also gives Gavin his first - and LAST - hit of poppers. At the funeral that follows, we meet all the interested parties whom the story will really feature: Gavin's best friends Ash (BOYS co-writer Chowee Leow), a devotee of camp who is waiting for his strong, hunky Prince Charming to sweep him off his feet, and Mel (Steven Lim), the Asian answer to QUEER AS FOLK'S Brian Kinney - a muscle hunk obsessed with keeping his bed full of hunks and his medicine chest full of the latest creams, dyes and gadgets to help keep advancing age at bay - along with anything like a meaningful relationship, of course.
Besides dealing with Mel's demise, the two friends encounter new complications in the form of - what else? - men who enter their lives. For Mel, it's a casual fling, the good-looking and naive Todd (Gareth Rhys-Davies), who has suddenly decided to come out to his parents, thanks to a past suggestion from his former 'boyfriend-for-a-night), while Ash finds himself getting involved with the ultra-masculine tranny-chaser Ross (Neil Collie), the soon-to-be- ex-beau of homely drag diva Diana (John "Ebon-Knee' Campbell), a former "fashion muse" of Gavin's.
Yes, it does trot out just about every single cliché you can possibly imagine and stir-fries them as thoroughly as twice-cooked pork. But the actors do it with such commitment and even a sense of charm (with Leow getting a makeover as possibly one of the best-looking Chinese drag queens in gay movie history - second to B.D. Wong, of course!), that it's hard to be mad at them for giving it the old college try. Plus (as other reviews I've read blissfully point out), co-stars Rhys-Davies and Collie are extremely easy on the eyes.
And thankfully, when it reaches its conclusion, BOYS is a tad more realistic about how its characters wind up, as not everybody lives 'happily ever after'. (But at least they do LIVE - thank God!)
Just look at it this way - watch CUT SLEEVE BOYS when you want something just a little bit different - but nothing TOO taxing - and you'll have a relatively good time for an hour and a half.
