belhuepress

I have seen "In from the Side" four times and could watch it again. I am not a rugby fan in fact I have never watched a rugby game, although to tell the truth, I do have several rugby shirts.

This is a wonderful, compelling, beautifully directed movie, done on a shoestring budget. It is not a movie about homosexuality as much as it is about the challenges and limitations of romantic love. Alexander Hamilton is the "ingenue" in this; Alexander King is the more aggressive and experienced player in all forms of the word. There is also a very good supporting cast including the actor who plays the trecherous, scheming "Iago" role who is jealous of both of them and their passion for each other.

What comes off is the intensity of passion in this film, and that love in any form requires a lot of courage. This is the thing that Warren Hunt does not hsve, but wants. Terribly.

It's a great film, and I congratulat the director/writer for pulling it off. You've done very good. Perry Brass.

I agree with most of the user reviews here: I did not see, in any way, the coming of the ending of this movie, and the way the director pushes it us, it seemed so ambiguous that I had to view it twice to figure out what had actually happened. I have long known that in extremely Catholic, conservative Hungary, homophobia is an arm of the state religion, but here there are moments that seem too contradictory for me to process them. Like why do the two central characters keep coming back to one another, and what real role does the father of the main character play: he is both ugly, manipulative, homophobic as hell, and still shows genuine love for his son?

The movie though is very beautiful, and for a long time I was just mesmerized by it. The director has a superb sense of pacing, and also of using the landscape as part of the character of the action. I just wish that things were a bit more spelled out.

I really enjoyed this movie-the main character's actions are extremely believable, having grown up in a very repressed environment in the American South, pre-Stonewall, when most gay men were expected either to commit suicide or "convert." Times have changed, but not for the Turkish community in Switzerland who come from rural Turkey, in an extremely homophobic culture where carryinig on the family name asnd mores is mandatory.

One of the great roles in the movie is Beyto's mother, who is warm, caring, but essentially clueless. In effect she tries to control her son through the typical emotional blackmail that conservative parents use, but she also shields Beyto from his father who goes into violent rages over Beyto's gay feelings. In some situations, these parents and their friends would have resorted to "honor killings" to preserve family pride. That Beyto will resist his parents, especially his pig-headed father, shows how much Western culture and gay liberation, which has a role in the film through a Gay Pride parade in Berne, has affected the world.

I did not find the ending at all "tacked on," but it shows the development of the lead characters-and how far they will go for personal happiness, and a chance that most people in their own world will not give them. This is a really good film, and I hope others will discover it.