gay movie recs?

[kindkit]

Tonight I have been gravely disappointed by the two gay-themed movies I rented with my roommate. I'd seen Forgive and Forget before, but I'd forgotten the ending was so utterly grim, making gayness look like a guarantee of loveless isolation and coming out look like the worst mistake a person can make.


Regular Guys (Echte Kerle) started out funny and enjoyable, but it ended with a tedious reiteration of the main character's heterosexuality that negated the emotional bond, not to mention the sexual tension, he'd developed with another man. The film also tried to pull a happy ending out of a hat by having another character come out as gay (and claim to be the rejected gay guy's new boyfriend) in the last two minutes. What is this emotional coherence you speak of?


Why is it so damn difficult to find gay movies that (a) end happily, (b) don't end in Surprise Heterosexuality, (c) are well-written and well-acted?

Anybody have recs for gay (male) non-documentary movies that meet those criteria? I have a horrible feeling I've already seen all the ones that exist. Films I have seen include: The Adventures of Felix, The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert (the gay characters are tangential, as I recall, with the focus on the straight trans woman), Beautiful Thing, Big Eden, Edge of Seventeen, Get Real (not actually very happy anyway), Jeffrey, Like It Is, Maurice, My Beautiful Laundrette, The Sum of Us, and Wild Reeds (also not very happy). [ETA: also The Wedding Banquet.]

Your help is appreciated.

Comments

[svollga]

I have the same problem, and though I have a huge collection of gay-themed movies, I haven't seen a lot of them because I checked the plot via Wikipedia and know that the ending is not happy. (And I'm rarely in the mood for not happy.)

Things I can recommend:
4 movies about Donald Strachey (Third Man Out, Shock to the System, Ice Blues, On the Other Hand Death) - mysteries about a gay private investigator who is open in his sexuality and happily partnered. (I also recommend the books these are based on.)
Friends and Family - gay comedy for straights, full of stereotypes, but rare because it shows a happy stable gay couple and centers on entirely different issues than their sexuality.
Latter Days
Gone But Not Forgotten - a typical love story with amnesia as a plot point.
Imagine Me and You (lesbian)
To Wong Foo With Love - US adaptation of Priscilla that differs a lot from the original into the 'mundane fairy tale' realm, but I still like it (and Patrick Swayze looks gorgeous in dress). Though characters are almost devoid of their sexuality through the story, there are some lines that imply heavily that they are gay.

Movies that are not very happy (or very not happy) but still left me with a good feeling or a feeling that the story was good but sad:
Love and Human Remains
Urbania

I usually add the original (British) version of Queer as Folk to the list of movies because it feels like a movie to me, not the soap opera of the US version.

[ten]

Adding my voice to the Strachey recs. I've only seen two movies (Third Man Out and Shock To The System), but I really liked how homosexuality, while certainly a strong topic, is not treated as the Source Of Tragedy nor Something Exotic. (Strachey has a somewhat tragic backstory because of his homosexuality, but it's a rather realistic one, and he is shown to be able to deal with the emotional damage it left in him with the help of his husband/partner in the end.)

[svollga]

This! They are stories about gays without being about Teh Gays.
I find two latter movies a tad weaker than the former two, but they are still good. And I like how they rework the storylines from the books (set in 80s and 90s) into 00s reality.

[kindkit]

Thanks! I've seen some of these (Gone But Not Forgotten, which I'm afraid I didn't care for, and Urbania), but there are a number that I haven't.

And I am in total agreement with your later comment about wanting "stories about gays without being about Teh Gays." I'm not really all that into the established genres of Gay Movies (e.g. the coming-out story, the indie rom-com, the AIDS tragedy) and I wish there were more films that just featured gay characters and same-sex relationships centrally and normally within the context of bigger stories. One of the few films I can think of that does this is My Beautiful Laundrette, and what a sad commentary it is that MBL was made in 1982 and there's been little like it since.