JUNE 12, 1998 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE 15
EVENINGS OUT
Love, denial, revenge and scandal flow in two films
Romance blossoms as Simon (Jason Cadieux, right) and Vallier (Danny Gilmore) rehearse for the school play, in which Simon is St. Sebastian.
by Doreen Cudnik Cleveland-Two notable gay films will make their debut beginning the weekend of June 12.
There are only two opportunities to see the most honored film of the past year, Lilies, which will be shown at the Cleveland Cinematheque June 12 at 9:45 pm and June 13 at 7:30 pm.
Directed by the openly gay John Greyson, Lilies is billed as "the love story no one ever told you." In addition to winning the audience award at the 1997 San Francisco International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival and the Grand Jury Prize at Outfest '97 in Los Angeles, Lilies was lavished with mainstream praise, winning four 1996 Genie Awardsthe Canadian equivalent to the Oscar-including Best Motion Picture.
The film is a highly stylized tragic tale of love, betrayal and revenge.
A Catholic bishop named Bilodeau makes a visit to a penitentiary to hear the last confession of a dying inmate, who also happens to be his childhood friend, Simon. When he arrives and is ushered into the prison chapel by the chaplain, the bishop is surprised to find several other inmates there, praying.
Once inside the confessional with Simon, the other inmates lock the door and transform the chapel into a makeshift theater. The bishop now held hostage is forced to watch as Simon and his friends act out the events that led to Simon's incarceration, and to re-live his own part in the drama.
As the film moves back and forth between the events in the prison in 1952 and events in their village of Roberval, Quebec in 1912, we learn that before going off to seminary and eventually rising to the rank of bishop, the young Bilodeau had a painful crush on the then 18-year-old Simon, and was becom-
ing increasingly jealous of Simon's romantic attachment to fellow student Vallier de Tilly.
Armed with his Catholic beliefs which enabled him to suppress the true nature of his desire, Bilodeau convinces himself that his beloved Simon will surely burn in hell if he continues down the path of same-sex affection, and sets out to save him by fixing him up with women.
Bilodeau encourages Simon to forget about Vallier and spend time with the exotic LydieAnne, who arrived in Roberval from France via hot air balloon. When Simon and LydieAnne announce their engagement by the end of the summer, both Bilodeau and Vallier are heartbroken.
As the film unfolds, coming back to the present, the bishop is forced to remember events that he has kept buried for forty years. Although he came to hear Simon's confession, bishop Bilodeau now becomes the confessor, revealing truths and providing the ending to Simon's bittersweet love story.
Director Greyson said the script was not meant to be sacrilegious, but romantic.
"I remember seeing the play (Les Fleurettes, on which the script is based) in Toronto and finding this poetic, romantic vision of teenage love that we should all have experienced but never did."
One fascinating aspect of the film is that all of the female parts in the 1912 Roberval scenes are played by three men who also play 1952 prison inmates.
"It was easy with all three of the actors who play women," Greyson said. "How touching it is to see these men play these
women. They each tell us something new.”
Adding to the visually stunning look of the film, the two leads, Jason Cadieux as Simon and Danny Gilmore as Vallier are two of the most beautiful men ever to grace the screen, and their romantic scenes are believable and moving.
The Cleveland Cinematheque is located at 11141 East Blvd. in University Circle. Oscar Wilde's story opens
Opening at the Cedar-Lee Theater on Friday, June 12 is Wilde, starring Stephen Fry, Jude Law and Vanessa Redgrave. Fry portrays the Irish writer and bon vivant Oscar Wilde and Law plays his lover Lord Alfred Douglas, known as "Bosie." Academy Award winner Redgrave plays Wilde's mother, Lady Speranza Wilde.
Shot in such diverse locations as London's Athenaeum Club, the forbidding confines of the recently vacated Oxford Prison, and Granada, Spain, the film follows Wilde's exuberant return to London after a successful year-long lecture tour of the United States and Canada.
Widely-regarded for his wit, creative genius, and flamboyance, Wilde at first denied his homosexuality amid the anti-gay conventions of late Victorian England and married Constance Lloyd, fathering two sons with her.
When a young Canadian houseguest named Robert Ross seduces Wilde and forces him to confront the desire he has felt since childhood, the chances for scandal are greatly increased.
While it was Ross who first convinced Wilde to confront his homosexuality, it was the handsome, 22-yearold Oxford undergraduate Bosie who eventually captivated Wilde.
The author entered into a passionate and stormy relationship with Bosie that consumed, and ultimately destroyed him.
note calling him a “somdomite." (The Marquis misspelled the insult.)
Bosie convinced Wilde to sue his father for libel, but since homosexuality itself was illegal, the Marquis was able to destroy Wilde's case by calling several of the rent boys as witnesses, who described their sexual exploits with Wilde in vivid detail.
Wilde was eventually arrested, and sentenced to two years hard labor in a prison with such awful conditions that he began to suffer from a series of life-threatening ill-
nesses.
Wilde's wife Constance fled England with their sons Cyril and Vyvyan, and changed the family name. But she held out hope that her husband would give up Bosie and return to the family. Wilde made an attempt to do so after he was released from prison in 1897, but loneliness and his love, passion, and obsession for Bosie ultimately won out, defeating prudence and discretion.
As Wilde himself said, "In this world there are two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it." The Cedar-Lee Theater is located at 2163 Lee Rd. in Cleveland Heights. Wilde LIAM DANIEL
Oscar Wilde (Stephen Fry, left) walks with his lover Bosie (Jude Law).
When Bosie's father, the Marquis of Queensberry, discovered that the man his son was cavorting around town and picking up rent boys with was London's most celebrated playwright, he delivered Wilde a
also opens at the New Neon Theater, 130 East 5th St. in Dayton, on June 19. The Drexel Theaters in Columbus will also be screening the film, but dates had not been set at press time.
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