Food of Love

`Food Of Love' marks the debut of Ventura Pons first English language film and is based on the novel, `The Page Turner' by David Leavitt. As the film began I thought to myself, `This is going to be one of the best gay films I've seen in recent memory', and although I really enjoyed it, what began as a really good coming of age love story, midway through it took a completely different direction and became an after school special, centered around a mother dealing with her son's homosexuality. Having not read the book I can't say how it compares, but as a movie, it left me hungry for more. All the performances are great although the mother (Juliet Stevenson) at times seemed too over the top and almost cartoonish. Kevin Bishop who plays Paul, is a cute, blue-eyed, blonde that showed a wide range of emotions throughout the film, from his first sexual encounter, to his disappointments with school, and frustrations with his mom, and so forth. Paul Rhys also gives a wonderful performance and appears sensitive, intimate and charming towards towards the boy and his mom.

It begins in San Francisco as 18 year old Paul Portfield (Kevin Bishop), an aspiring piano player and soon to be Juliard student, gets a job as a page turner for his idol Richard Kennington (Paul Rhys), a renowned concert pianist. During the concert as Paul reaches to turn the pages as Richard plays feverishly, you get the beginning glimpses of the sexual sparks between them. After the concert, Richard invites Paul out for a drink only to be interrupted and taken home by his overprotective and at times manic mother (Juliet Stevenson).

After finding out his dad has left his mother for another woman, Paul and his mom venture off to Spain on vacation. While wandering the streets Paul spots a concert poster featuring Richard and he sets out to find him. Paul tracks him down and drops by his hotel room where he's soon seduced by the pianist in an intimate and gentle way. Paul becomes totally infatuated with Richard and after a week long fling Paul and his mom are off to Granada while Richard, unbeknownst to Paul, returns home to New York and his manager/lover Joseph Mansourian (Allan Corduner). Months go by and Paul is now attending Juliard, seeing an older man, and trying to get over Richard. It's a rollercoaster of a ride especially when a classmate of Paul's gets signed by Mansourian while Mansourian wants Paul to be a page turner yet again at a dinner party. In the midst off all this Paul's mom is trying to cope with divorce and, after finding a porn magazine in Paul's suitcase, her son's homosexuality. This is where the story takes a turn that was not completely satisfying. The mother attends a `mom's with gay sons' meeting and it just seemed totally misplaced and campy. Also, while attending school Paul seems to always be in the company of older men. I considered maybe that was his way of looking to a father figure or something but why wasn't he going out with guys his own age? His roommate looked cute enough. Also the portrayal of the older guys seemed to suggest they preyed on younger men. Those are just a couple of the issues I had with the story and I was a bit disappointed that it didn't stay focused on his relationship with Richard.

Events unfold and secrets are revealed, but many questions are still left unanswered at the end. Overall I would recommend it but still wish the story had centered more around Paul and his relationships than that of his mother and her issues. I'd love to see a sequel that's for sure! The acting is fine and the locales and direction I thought were great. There are a number of scenes with brief nudity and homoerotic touches that give this picture an `R' rating. The picture quality of the DVD is crisp and clear and so is the audio. It also features extras that include interviews with the cast members, the director Ventura Pons and even David Leavitt, author of the novel. Numerous trailers of other features from TLA Releasing as well.

Maybe it's because this Spanish director never did an English-language movie before, or maybe it's just a superficial screenplay that does this film in--no matter, it just doesn't work. Kevin Bishop (Paul) has the great looks and body to become a successful actor, but his acting in this movie is often wooden, and his manner later in the film is very unappealing, not a likeable hero at all, who sleeps around evidently to improve his lot in life. His mother, Juliet Stevenson (again maybe because of the poor direction) is annoying...we have little sympathy for her either. Paul Rhys and Allan Corduner are quite good in their roles. But the film just bogs down, changing its focus from Paul to his mother in mid-stream, and therefore the film changes from the coming-out strains of the hero to the angst of the mother who has to handle her son's sexual identity. We lose our interest in Paul because of this unwise change of focus in the story.

I just saw this movie at the San Francisco International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival. It was a sold out screening and the director was present. While the performances were good (though sometimes overboard) and the production qualities were excellent (the style reminded me of Whit Stillman which was odd since some of this movie was shot in Barcelona and Stillman made a movie called "Barcelona"), this film was hampered by a terrible script. The first few scenes establishing the characters were passable but about 15 minutes into the movie, when Paul and Richard meet again in Richard's hotel room and Richard gives Paul a "massage", the dialogue started turning laughable. For the rest of the film, the audience was in a uproar, laughing during serious and sometimes sexual moments. In the end, the movie was fairly enjoyable as in "I don't believe what I'm seeing or hearing". That was too bad since the story itself is a compelling one.

I wanted so much to like this film, and I tried very hard to do so. But it is so inept, and has so many flaws, it is hard to know where to begin.

The basic story is simple enough: piano student Paul is seduced by and falls in love with his idol, fortyish concert pianist Richard; he gets dumped inexplicably and spends the rest of the film trying to make sense of it. But add these extra ingredients -- Paul's neurotic mother also falling for the pianist, Richard's lover/manager seducing Paul while the boy is being kept by yet another older man -- and you have a rather heady Freudian stew, indeed.

What these noxious, self-absorbed characters have in common, keeping the handsome 18-year-old confused and depressed, is their duplicity. Nobody tells Paul the truth, rendering him unable to make a decision in his own interest. His beauty makes him desirable. His ingenuous nature makes him an easy mark.

The dialogue is oddly disjointed though lifted directly from David Leavitt's well-written novel, The Page Turner. For some reason, about half of Mr. Leavitt's lines have been deleted, making those that remain a crazy-quilt of non-sequiturs. Adding to the confusion are British actors playing American refracted through the eyes and ears of a Spanish director. Then there are the Spanish actors who have learned their lines phonetically, wildly inflecting words incorrectly. Finally, a classical music consultant could have insured the proper pronunciation of composers' names, or pointed out that most of the pieces Paul plays are embarrassingly inappropriate.

What the film does do well is to depict the haute-gay classical music demi-monde of New York, and the predatory older men who rule from lofty Central Park West enclaves. This exclusive oligarchy devours the seemingly unlimited supply of hopeful young artists, like Paul, who want to succeed but cannot due to inexperience and inaptitude for the game. A 'civilized' veneer covers, but never quite hides, the self-serving artistic Darwinism.

Exquisite Kevin Bishop, who plays Paul so perfectly, is a real find. He has a low-key style, lovely body, and astonishing blue eyes. Barcelona is exotic, the photography is beautiful, and the original score is well done, but the DVD itself has problems. The dialogue is somewhat out of sync, is overly loud in some places (mainly due to Juliet Stevenson's histrionics), and nearly inaudible in others.

Here is a story with obvious first and second acts, but no conclusion. Act I: the development of the relationship between Paul and Richard. Act II: Paul's move to NYC and his disillusionment (he also becomes a jerk). Act III: oh, wait it's not there. Right when the story begins to reach a climax, it ends. No resolution of any plot threads. A disappointment in an otherwise adequate feature.

Unlike the previous reviewer, I thought Juliet Stevenson and Paul Bishop did a great job with their American accents. I was surprised, since I knew Ms Stevenson was British -- I thought for a while that I was mistaken in that.

The sad thing is that none of the characters really learned anything about themselves. They simply learned that people lie and life sucks. I guess that's how life really goes, but I don't watch movies to see real life. Movies should transcend real life. There's not much to take away from the story without the glaringly missing third act.