NewYorkCity_Guy

Filmmakers invest a great deal of creativity and inspiration into their work, so I hesitate to write a negative review, but I'm compelled to make an exception here.

What a pretentious, self-indulgent waste of time. It steadily succumbs to self-conscious artiness, drunk on its own sense of contrived poetry.

It's sumptuously filmed, but ultimately shallow, empty, and a little boring. There's a good story waiting to be told that gets lost in useless side plots, languorous panoramas, and tedious conversations.

There's a germ of a very good idea in the screenplay, but I just don't feel that the writers fully grasped what they were undertaking.

Don't waste your time.

What at first appears to be a story of secret lives and betrayal destined for a tragic end becomes a nuanced portrait of unconditional love and acceptance at its most radical.

This is such a tender, achingly beautiful film whose silences speak volumes, and glances communicate deep feelings.

All three actors are superb, especially Lubna Azabal as Mina, but Saleh Bakri as Halim pognantly conveys his pain, isolation, longing, and desire with just his face.

This film is about the quiet love and tenderness people have for each other. A profoundly moving and uplifting experience. Highly recommended.

I saw this on an IMDB Gay Films With Happy Endings list that felt it didn't deserve the low ratings. I thought maybe it did deserve better, so I watched it. Boy, was I wrong. It's AWFUL! Terrible. None of them can act, and some of them, especially Billy's father and Thomas, the drag queen, are so over the top and cringe-inducing that I had to fast forward a bit. Everyone else speaks as if they're reading off cue cards.

And the continuity is breakneck. One second, Billy's kicked out of the house, a second later, he's in LA, and he instantly gets a job. Mark, James' father, who's had a stroke, apparently super-glued his lips together and learned how to say his lines with one eye shut, and his son hired him on the spot. Everything happens so quickly with no development.

I like to give films a chance and watch them through to the end, but this one was rough. The person who put together the IMDB list was right about it having a happy ending, though. I was happy it ended.