Rock Hudson: Beau ténébreux

Irrelevant abstract cuts. Incessant film clips. Boring interviews with friends. Nothing new here and almost nothing about his childhood. Should have been called everything you already knew about Rock and absolutely didn't care about. The cuts to his films throughout this documentary are constantly annoying.

This is a sad, touching and sweet film about a sad, touching sweet man. He had a very unhappy childhood, and his mean father belittled him. He always wanted to be an actor and became, of course, very successful, but those times demanded that he wear 2 masks: himself and a bland, heterosexual Everyman.

His agent persuaded him to change his name, a decision he always regretted as yet another way he lived a lie.

It was interesting to see Elizabeth Taylor in the film too. A child actor, she also had a demanding childhood. She had many young, gay and otherwise marginalized friends. Also an animal lover, the love she is permeated with shone out. I felt glad that she was there for Roy. (Rock).

Roy says much the same thing in the film: she loves everyone.

The story and the info presented was indeed interesting, but omg... there are so many annoying things that almost make this thing unwatchable. We see footage of a surfer in slow motion...probably a dozen times. Why? I have no idea. Scenes of driving down roads in California, focusing on palm trees for no reason. Birds. Out of focus snapshots and pictures. None of which have anything to do with Rock. Oh, and music that is too loud to the point that you can't hear what the people are saying about Rock.

In the end, I was more annoyed by the presentation and production than anything. This was supposedly produced on 2010, but it looks like it was made in the 60's. Simply terrible.

I did have a greater appreciation for Rock and felt so bad for what he lived through. But again, that was undermined by the horrible production.

So much repetitively blurred content and camera jump cuts made me feel the need for a vision test after the first half hour of this mess. I stopped watching altogether in the middle after seeing more of that narrator Tom Santopietro with the horrid bottom teeth shaped like fangs than of the subject of the film. I couldn't hear what he was saying because I couldn't stop looking at the horror of his teeth.

Documentary about the life of the man who was the most popular actor in the United States for almost two decades, and who hid his homosexuality, with a routine structure very close to a television reportage, or one of those "extras" in DVDs and Blu-Rays. However, there is affection in the approach to Rock Hudson's dramatic childhood and compassion as it narrates his final days, adding reflections on the role models of the 20th century, the cannibalistic film industry of Los Angeles, and the first years of the HIV plague, with prejudices and bad practices of health professionals that Hudson suffered. The film narrative is also helped by the graphic design that plays with gay icons from the 50s to the 70s, from comics, magazines and films of nude bodybuilders to disco singing group Village People; and by some interesting interviews offered by people who knew Hudson: actress Salome Jens, who narrates some kind of epiphany that the actor experienced during the shooting of «Seconds»; Yanou Collart, the woman who helped Hudson in his last visit to France, in search for help for his health condition; his secretary Mark Miller, Rona Barrett and stage director Stockton Briggle, who remembers the rainbow that was formed in the place where he and Hudson's friends scattered his ashes into the Pacific ocean. A hard to find movie, but worth watching.