Filmes de Interés Gay

Highly Recommended and Powerful Film That Examines Prejudice, Bigotry and Homophobia Through the Eyes of Color-blind Love.
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'Parallel Sons' is a very fine piece of work, a film ahead of its time, a film that may yet surface in the theaters since the success of 'Brokeback Mountain'. It deserves that kind of attention. Writer Director John G. Young (The Reception) takes on razor-sharp issues, molds them in a natural, non-exploitative way, and finishes his message with a calm clap of thunder. This little film contains more food for thought and hopefully for discussion than most of the last ten years since it was first released.

Seth Carlson (Gabriel Mann) lives in the Adirondacks in a little town closed off form progressive society. He is a gentle soul, a closeted gay out of necessity, a budding artist and a young man infatuated with African American culture, so much so that he wears his blond hair in dread locks and paints muscular Black men and African American symbols. His father barely tolerates his oddities, his little sister shares his secrets, and Seth longs to leave the choking little town for New York City. At the same time, Seth is fending off the advances of Kristen (Heather Gottlieb), who doesn’t seem to notice that all the magazine photos that decorate Seth’s bedroom are of good-looking black men, not women. True love is blind. Seth kicks her out of bed — literally.

Seth briefly views a Black man in custody in the sheriff's car: an eye to eye connect occurs. That night in the diner in which Seth works the Black man Knowledge Johnson (Laurence Mason) sneaks into the diner and robs Seth at gunpoint, only to collapse from a wound inflicted during his escape from a correctional facility. Seth is drawn to Knowledge, and when Knowledge faints, Seth sequesters him in a little cabin where he nurses him back to health. In the process of the healing the two men bond and become sexually committed to each other. Knowledge sees his only hope for survival as an outlaw being an escape across the Canadian border and the two plan for this adventure.

Once Kristen figures out what’s going on, her jealousy and incipient psychosis puts Seth and Knowledge, who are quickly falling hard for each other, into serious danger. Seth suffers setbacks from a town turned against him, and it races along toward an inevitable tragedy that’s positively Shakespearean in its misery. The escape attempt and the tragedies that occur leave the story with many subtexts. You want these two good-hearted strivers to run away together, to make it to the Canadian border and build a new life in Toronto or something, but director/writer Young is realistic enough to know that such an ending wouldn’t work in a movie that’s very nicely grounded in its scenic, if oppressive, environs.

The film is beautifully shot by Matthew M. Howe and scored by Emile Menasche, but it is the acting skills of Mann and Mason that allow director Young to make this understated film work so well. The supporting cast is also very good, each underplaying roles to the benefit of the progression toward the devastating ending. By remaining to a sensitive story, economically written for the screen, Young is able to bring the audience to face some frighteningly real issues about bigotry and prejudice that tangentially includes color and sexuality. Highly recommended. ~ Grady Harp
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Film Information: 'Parallel Sons'
Web: Additional Cast, Details and Bios at IMDb
Director: John G. Young
Writer: John G. Young
Cast: Full Cast and Crew
Genre: Drama | Romance
Awards: 1 wins and 1 nomination
Runtime: 93 minutes
Spoken Language: English
Subtitles: None.
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Download & Extract Film Files: 'Parallel Sons'
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