Clapham Junction

This film is about the events that happen to several gay men around Clapham Common in 36 hours.

Due to the enormous number of characters involved, the beginning of the film is a little slow. Once the scene is set, a lot of action kicks in. It touches upon a lot of aspects of gay culture, some of the unpleasant aspects are portrayed in a raw and almost disturbing manner. As others have commented, the scene where the 14 year old boy and the loner encounter at home is dramatic, tense and well acted. It is easily the most memorable scene of the whole film.

This film is raw, brutal and depressing. It can certainly help to raise debates over anonymous sex, and raise awareness over the tragedy of gay bashing.

While I do agree with many of the comments and criticisms of fellow reviewers on this site that there is much cliché,a narrow, outdated and perplexing depiction of the gay experience today, and some offensiveness.I have to say that the interaction of the 14 year old boy with an older man is one of the most powerful, intense, moving and poetic moments I have seen on film in a very long time. Those scenes are well worth the price of admission. Even though their interaction is between two gay characters and two characters far apart in age it transcends those particulars to capture emotional human truths and longings relevant and recognizable to everyone. I was so moved by those scenes that it took my breath away and left me stunned and fulfilled . I do not say this lightly, see for yourself. Rarely do we get to glimpse a depiction of the inner workings of human desire, longing,loss, repression, redemption, salvation , inner struggle, despair, loneliness, joy and fear crammed into one spectacular moment. The two actors were incredibly focused, present and controlled. It was like watching a very intense dance number, with the pacing and movement timed just right to impart the perfect punch. Do not miss this. This is art.

The problem with Kevin Elyot's (writer) and Adrian Shergold's (director) boldly ambitious "Clapham Junction" is that it attempts to bite off so much more than it can possibly chew in just under two hours. Elyot goes for an epic structure in an intimate setting. At times it looks like he's trying to cram in forty years of gay sexual history into a night and day and it just doesn't work. I wish I could have liked it more because there is so much here to admire and spread over, maybe six weekly episodes, he might have got away with it but as it stands it just doesn't ring true. This may well be down to Elyot's reliance on coincidence. All the characters seem to be inter-related. Nothing wrong with that, you might say; it has worked as a backdrop to many splendid dramas in the past but you have to suspend quite a lot of disbelief when in a city the size of London with a sizeable gay population, all the gay characters keep bumping into each other in clubs, public toilets, on Clapham Common itself or at dinner parties or just in living across the street from each other. It's a banal plot device and you can't help feeling Elyot would have made his point a lot better if the stories hadn't been connected.

Nor is Elyot particularly good at serving up dialogue that sounds believable or naturalistic. The characters either talk in sound-bites or are reduced to double-entendres. If he can get in a crass joke, he does and nobody comes out of it well. But at least he tries. There is hardly an aspect of gay life, (or of 'straight' society's reaction to it), that he leaves unexplored. He even gives us the self-loathing bit of gay trade who beats up his pick-up for the night, (and later gets beaten up himself), and the film's most successful story is the one between the pedophile and the fourteen year old boy who worships him, (this only let down by casting a twenty-three year old actor as the boy).

It is also very unevenly acted. There may be an in-joke of sorts in casting James Wilby and Rupert Graves, (the lovers from "Maurice"), Wilby as a closeted married man and Graves as an out and aging queen he eyes up in a toilet and later meets at a dinner party. Perhaps if these parts had been better written neither actor would have looked so foolish. The best performances come from Jospeh Mawle and Luke Tredaway as the pedophile and the boy and it's very much to their credit that they lift a very difficult subject and make it moving and oddly romantic. Detractors will, of course, find this story the most objectionable for obvious reasons although the producers have cushioned the blow by casting the obviously older Tredaway as the boy.

The film itself takes as its basis the real-life murder of Jody Dobrowski on Clapham Common in 2005 but the impact is weakened by the episodic structure. Ultimately "Clapham Junction" is neither fish nor fowl but an unwieldy hybrid. Its heart may be in the right place but you can't help but feel it does its subject, (whatever you take its subject to be), something of an injustice.

When I watch a film I normally try to ignore what the critics have said and just focus on what the film does (or doesn't) do for me. However it was more a problem for me with Clapham Junction when it was shown as part of the Channel 4 series of films and programmes to mark the 40th anniversary since male homosexuality was legalised. Unwittingly I watched the panel discussion 40 Years Out before I saw this film, and the first part of the former was a group of commentators laying into the producer of the latter. I remember being quite entertained by this match-up but was wary to make up my mind for myself rather than just repeating what the likes of Matthew Parris et al had said.

Problem is though, they were bang on the money in what they said because Clapham Junction is a poor film and a very strange choice to show as part of this series of films. As a narrative it is basically an interweaving set of characters all of whom has some comment on the nature of being a male homosexual in this day and age. However, as a piece of writing it is surprisingly lacking. The characters are connected by coincidence and convenience, without any degree of respect for the viewer. This is a minor issue though because my main one was how negative the entire film was. I have no gay friends and have not a part to play in the modern gay experience but this film seemed to be harking back to the 1980's rather than the noughties. Nobody is cast in a good light – the film opens with the groom of a civil partnership couple cheating with a waiter during the reception before following on with queer bashing, cottaging, a 14 year old seducing (then f***ing) an older man etc etc. It is tiresome after a while and has little to say about what it means to be gay today. What little it does say of value is interesting (eg the loss of the thrill of being "dangerous" that modern acceptance has brought) but it is scattered far and wide across the film.

The cast do little with what little material they have. They deliver the characters asked of them but none can find the people inside – instead they are horny, camp, in the closet, in denial, on cocaine etc etc, whatever simple classification the script has given them. Shergold's direction is OK in terms of the shots he gets but in terms of helping the material or the actors, he doesn't seem able – although Elyot's script offers him little support either.

Overall then a poor film that wallows in negativity while presenting the modern gay experience. There is little debate or discussion – just endless "shocking" scenes (yeah – shocking 10 years ago) and negative images of homosexuality with no real justification. A sense of balance would have been welcome but a less simplistic script would have been a great starting point – sadly it had neither.

Comparing it to the other European heterosexual crap we get to see on TV, I would rate this gay one into the top league of good movies. As a gay man, I wonder why I like it. The message of this movie is that gays have ONLY bitchy sex, on public toilets and all of that in a violent way. To put this straight, gay life isn't that way! I'm not a fan of conspiracy theories but somehow, I hear all my alarm bells ringing. To make it short, the movie is good for people who are gay or who have at least experience with it. To all the newbies to that subject it's an anti gay movie. Please remember this story is fiction. 'Not a documentary!