Dream Boy

Wow! What a nice surprise. Saw this gem at Newfest film festival in NYC June 12-08. Was drawn in from the very first moment. The film takes place in rural Louisiana in the mid 20th century. The film has a quiet intensity and power, is beautifully paced with excellent attention to detail, which gives it a very genuine feel. There is a simplicity and sparsity to the film that makes it feel like classic Americana, like the Last Picture Show, Hud or East of Eden or a Eudora Welty story. The two actors Stephan Bender and Maximillian Roeg that play the teenage boys are outstanding and should have very fruitful careers after this film. They give beautifully controlled nuanced performances that give the characters an honesty and depth. Diana Scarwid plays one of the boy's mother and is amazing. This actress is really underused in films and her performance here is a powerhouse and should be nominated for a best supporting Oscar. The singer Rickie Lee Jones plays the other boys mother and in a small part creates a memorable and touching character.Don't want to give too much away about the plot but the center of the story is about two teenage boys. One who just moves into town and the friendship that develops as they gravitate to one another. Keep an eye out for this film, it is a sleeper and true jewel.

Shy teenager Nathan (Stephen Bender) moves into the deep South with his parents. Right next door to him is teenager Roy (Max Roeg) who is out-going and friendly. They form a friendship which quickly turns into a physical relationship. Naturally they can't tell anybody. Half way through things about Nathan become clearer--and more disturbing--and the movie gets dark.

I read the book years ago and loved it but I hated the ending cause it's so ambiguous. I bought this movie cautiously because I didn't think it could be as good as the book and I was curious HOW they would end it. Well the movie IS as good as the book. It's low-key but the book was too. Bender and Roeg perfectly play two teenage boys in love--you can see the confusion and passion in their faces. The sex scenes are very tastefully done (nothing remotely graphic) and these two are so obviously not teens it's not disturbing to watch. I also like how their kissing and having sex is treated so casually--as it should. It (sort of) retains the ambiguous ending of the book. Like I said I hated that ending but I'm glad the movie didn't change it. All the acting is good--Roeg especially. He has the wonderful actress Theresa Russell as his mom and obviously inherited her acting abilities. There's some beautiful cinematography and a good music score too. Low-key and somewhat disturbing but effective. I give it a 7.

The direction was exquisite in portraying the allure of the initial phases of attraction. With the skillful editing and the above-average to beautiful cinematography, the movie had a well-paced, rich, atmospheric delivery.

The director, James Bolton, handled the actors deftly. Bolton carefully spent enough time on the characters to let us know the possible layers of meaning of the way they gaze at each other. The two leads were quite effective. Stephen Bender especially provided an intriguing aura to the character. Diana Scarwid and Thomas Jay Ryan were remarkable in their few scenes. Even Randy Wayne, Owen Beckman, and Rooney Mara delivered.

The soundtrack was good but had mixed applications. At the music's best, it delivered subtle meaningful tonal contrasts. At its worst, it was obtrusive and distracting.

I haven't read the book, so I'm judging the screenplay on its own. A gay growing-up story has been told over and over again ad nauseam. This movie had all the clichés. What was interesting was the surreal shift with the potential for multilayered interpretations. Not everyone will like this. Personally, this makes me want to read the book. I was satisfied enough with the delivery of this aspect, but I agree it could have been better. The ending was a unique and thought-provoking way of escaping gay media triteness.

Unfortunately, just before I watched this movie, I read a review here stating that the story was based on a "thin-as-paper, muddled plot." With that in mind and the somewhat awkward, uncomfortable interactions between the actors at the start, I almost gave it up. The timid, brittle interactions, however, were very true to the decidedly dysfunctional family of the main character rather than tentative acting.

Yes, the plot may have been overly ambitious in all that it attempted to include. Some of what takes place was a bit formulaic and stereotypical, but the events were still integral to the story development and it felt totally realistic if not ground-breaking. There is, after all, a fair amount of shared common experience in the coming-of-age saga of most young gay men. In fact, many of us are drawn to films like this because reliving some of those common experiences, distressing as they may have been when we were young, now contribute to a comforting feeling of connection to others.

The distant, confused, tender-brutal, hateful-loving relationship between father and son, I suspect, drove a great deal of this story although it wasn't the central focus. That tension and force was very effectively accomplished without belaboring the obvious.

The movie has its rough edges as quite often happens when a complex plot is carried from book to movie. Still, I found it well worth watching.

I enjoyed the atmospheric, thoughtful and sensitive slow pace of this movie, but the dialog in important parts, and especially during the climax, was drowned out by some of the worst, most inappropriate, extremely annoying, repetitive, cloying and very loud music I've ever heard in a movie soundtrack.

The dialog volume should have been turned up and the music _way_ down in this movie, and absent altogether in parts where the dialog was of utmost importance for revealing the plot. As it was, there were parts in which I could only guess what was being murmured because the music was deafening by comparison. I almost stopped watching this movie, despite liking the story and characters, specifically because of the awful "background" music that was much too often in the close foreground. Extremely poor choices regarding the music. Everything else was fine.