Fridae

The Singapore International Film Festival is back, with two (count: one, two!) token gay movies this year! Last Saturday, Prince Cinema Hall 2 was filled with a host of gay movie buffs, gathered to catch a one-time screening of Stewart Main's 50 Ways of Saying Fabulous (2005), based on Graeme Aitken's novel of the same title. Thanks for a year of freaky gay movies, Hollywood; now it's time to see what the rest of the world's been up to.

But first off, do not check out this gay film as porno. Yes, sex happens on screen, between two fully clothed 12-year-olds, but you don't see skin, and if you're the kind of guy who lusts after preteens and doesn't feel bad about it, I'd rather not know you. Yes, there is one hunkalicious male character of legal age: the farmhand, Jamie, who spends an awful lot of the show topless (and occasionally bottomless). He's played by the 23 year-old Michael Dorman, and resembles a young Brad Pitt from Fight Club, but his character really isn't the focus of the piece.

You see, 50 Ways of Saying Fabulous is really less of a gay film than a movie about growing up - and not in the namby-pamby, sepia-toned, Steven Lim on Channel Five way either; I'm talking about going through a nasty, messy, clueless time of your life where you'd rather forget what a rotten kid you were. Billy (Andrew Patterson), the hero of our story, is overweight, fey, fickle, treacherous to his friends, unfaithful to his lover, and cursed with an EQ low enough to assume he can seduce aforesaid farmhand by jumping on him. In other words, he's the selfish, brainless brat most of us once were. He's a wonderful character because he's so realistically imperfect.

Let's run over the plot: Billy's the only son of a rugby-loving farmer in the breathtakingly beautiful expanse of Central Otago, New Zealand, in the dry summer of 1975. He spends most of his time with his fantastically dykey cousin Lou (Harriet Beattie), who's strong, confident, captain of the rugby team, and just starting to menstruate.

Billy's unpopular at school, and so when an awkward new kid, Rob (Jay Collins), arrives from the city, he joins in on bullying him, trying to gain favour as an insider of his mob. This strategy doesn't work too well - Billy and Rob get branded "poofters," even though it's apparent that no-one's completely sure what poofters are. Billy's loyalties are further tested when Rob makes it clear that he likes him - in ways beyond ordinary friendship. And despite the danger that his friends will discover he's fraternising with the class freak, Billy caves in to his native instincts.

The other kids suspect something's up, and Lou, already under stress from having to buy her first bra, goes ballistic on Billy and breaks off their friendship. And Billy can live with that - until Jamie, the studly twentysomething hired help, comes driving in with his truck. From then on, Billy has only eyes for Jamie, and Lou, to the disappointment of all you lesbian film geeks, also turns out to be in love with this lump of New Zealand beefcake.

There's nowhere left for lonely old Rob after this. I won't summarise from here on in (except to say viewers might find the remainder a tad melodramatic), but it suffices to say that things get much worse for Rob, while Jamie and Lou don't come out too well either. But it's not a sad ending - in many ways, it's an inspiring one, about Billy gaining new confidence and understanding the true value of his friends.

Director Stewart Main's done a remarkable job adapting a screenplay that's intelligent yet believable in the mouths of children, and his child actors are remarkably talented, though Billy's character could have stood to be played with a wider range of expression.

More interestingly, he's chosen an unusual plot for a gay movie, because the wellspring of desire doesn't run deep in our hero. Billy's more obviously gay from his utterances of "fabulous!" and his love for his clip-on ponytail than from his barnhouse frottage or his na�ve crushes on hero-figures.

The great love in this story is Rob's obsession with Billy, but it's a feeling that Billy doesn't repay in full. Have any of us been here before? First love, whatever the showtunes tell us, is often imbalanced, unreciprocated, hurtful. But while our hearts are bleeding for poor Rob (who is by far the handsomer of the two), we realise that it's Billy, the little brat, whose journey is truly worth following.

Billy's story is about how friendship lasts longer than love or squabbles or name-calling. And when you're 12 - and older - you usually need a friend more than you need a boyfriend.

It's not the grand moral of unconquerable love that you'd expect from a gay movie. But that doesn't make it any less true. And let's face it - in the everyday world of fag drama, most of us are still bratty kids. We're still learning how to grow up.