Man of My Life
Directed by Zabou Breitman
For The Bible Tell Me So
Directed by Daniel Karslake
By lucky coincidence, Zabou Breitman’s drama, The Man of My Life, has opened alongside the documentary, The Bible Tells Me So. These two movies, one French the other American, deal with the same subject—sexual identity—in different ways: a rare opportunity for cinematic discourse. In Breitman’s film, an urbane gay artist seduces a married man vacationing with his wife, children and extended family in Provençal. Daniel Karslake’s documentary shows five religious families’ thoughts and feelings about having gay children.
A dialectic emerges between these films, pushing a viewer past received notions about sex, politics and religion that dominate popular culture. Brietman comes from the romantic extreme, letting Hugo (Charles Berling), a painter versed in all the post-structuralist artspeak about patriarchy and sexual freedom, preach privilege and prerogative to Frédéric (Bernard Campan), a hospitable, inarticulate man living and copulating according to traditional “common sense.” Old-fashioned Frédéric begins questioning his own Homo Erectus status. He gets seduced not so much by physical attraction as by modernity—Hugo’s powerfully fashionable disquisition combining cynicism with liberal politics.
Conversely, The Bible Tells Me So must be the first liberal documentary to resist Bible-bashing for Bible-thumping. It humanistically asserts, “We have to be clear that [the Bible’s] about compassion and love, or else it will wreak havoc.”
Faith-based families from Kentucky (The Robinsons), North Carolina (The Poteats), Arkansas (The Wallners), Minnesota (The Reitans) and Washington, D.C. (The Gephardts) weigh their teachings against the reality of living with homosexuality.
Being gay is neither a demonized nor sanctified abstraction but a fact of character represented by offspring they love yet
don’t understand—a complex view that recalls the movie Loggerheads.
Director Karslake takes an anti-Borat, truly intellectual middle ground. (This may explain why the biased media virtually ignores The Bible Tells Me So, despite the supposed fad for political docs). Karslake finds evidence of cultural ambivalence from Willie Nelson singing “Family Bible” to Sportin’ Life’s Porgy & Bess Bible challenge. He interviews lay Christians and theologians, plus the adult gay children still alive, respectively, Gene, Tonia, Jake and Chrissy, to portray how family structures are disturbed or reconfigured according to whether their scriptural interpretations are rigid or agile. The Poteats still struggle: “But yeah I accept my child, if you know what I’m saying,” the father memorably insists.
These family stories eventually come together at a rally protesting the anti-gay James Dobson organization Focus on the Family, yet Karslake’s narrative spreads too thin; it loses cohesion even while admirably capturing unique perspectives on gay and religious acceptance—lifestyles usually dismissed in favor of “transgression,” that horribly misused excuse for gay movie guilefulness such as made My Summer of Love so offensive.
Man of My Life’s guilefulness is extraordinary; it conceals understanding of sexual identity (Frédéric’s infatuation with Hugo) inside the obviously favored radicalism of Hugo’s rants—and Breitman’s truly innovative formal designs. Her varied visual gambits combine erotic portraiture with spiritual portents, radiant nature studies that put Andrew Dominik to shame and sequences of pure art spectacle. She somehow mixes the lush sexual awakening of Renoir’s A Day in the Country with postmodern anti-family skepticism. Her argument arrives in the most visually resplendent movie so far this year (photographed by Michel Amathieu), yet it lacks the rich balance of sex and intellect that makes an André Téchiné film great.
Flawed, insightful and expressive, these movies wrestle with sexual identity as personal and political concerns. When Congressman Dick Gephardt says, “It’s tough but parents just have to feel their hearts and know their children need their love,” it contrasts Hugo’s story of being cast out of the family by his alpha male father. Hugo’s eventual reconciliation with his Dad sentimentalizes the kind of rift that Karslake can’t ignore (the devastating Arkansas story of Anna Wallner’s suicide).
Yet Breitman wishes away how tragically dogma and sexual identity can clash (Frederic’s jilted wife becomes a hysterical rag doll). Heroizing Hugo’s arrogance (his conceitedness ironically matches the doc footage of Andrew Sullivan’s haughty insistence) cheapens human experience and underestimates liberal argument. Breitman has an undeniably creative eye, but Karslake proves that integrating sex with life requires fresh thinking.
Directed by Zabou Breitman
For The Bible Tell Me So
Directed by Daniel Karslake
By lucky coincidence, Zabou Breitman’s drama, The Man of My Life, has opened alongside the documentary, The Bible Tells Me So. These two movies, one French the other American, deal with the same subject—sexual identity—in different ways: a rare opportunity for cinematic discourse. In Breitman’s film, an urbane gay artist seduces a married man vacationing with his wife, children and extended family in Provençal. Daniel Karslake’s documentary shows five religious families’ thoughts and feelings about having gay children.
A dialectic emerges between these films, pushing a viewer past received notions about sex, politics and religion that dominate popular culture. Brietman comes from the romantic extreme, letting Hugo (Charles Berling), a painter versed in all the post-structuralist artspeak about patriarchy and sexual freedom, preach privilege and prerogative to Frédéric (Bernard Campan), a hospitable, inarticulate man living and copulating according to traditional “common sense.” Old-fashioned Frédéric begins questioning his own Homo Erectus status. He gets seduced not so much by physical attraction as by modernity—Hugo’s powerfully fashionable disquisition combining cynicism with liberal politics.
Conversely, The Bible Tells Me So must be the first liberal documentary to resist Bible-bashing for Bible-thumping. It humanistically asserts, “We have to be clear that [the Bible’s] about compassion and love, or else it will wreak havoc.”
Faith-based families from Kentucky (The Robinsons), North Carolina (The Poteats), Arkansas (The Wallners), Minnesota (The Reitans) and Washington, D.C. (The Gephardts) weigh their teachings against the reality of living with homosexuality.
Being gay is neither a demonized nor sanctified abstraction but a fact of character represented by offspring they love yet
don’t understand—a complex view that recalls the movie Loggerheads.
Director Karslake takes an anti-Borat, truly intellectual middle ground. (This may explain why the biased media virtually ignores The Bible Tells Me So, despite the supposed fad for political docs). Karslake finds evidence of cultural ambivalence from Willie Nelson singing “Family Bible” to Sportin’ Life’s Porgy & Bess Bible challenge. He interviews lay Christians and theologians, plus the adult gay children still alive, respectively, Gene, Tonia, Jake and Chrissy, to portray how family structures are disturbed or reconfigured according to whether their scriptural interpretations are rigid or agile. The Poteats still struggle: “But yeah I accept my child, if you know what I’m saying,” the father memorably insists.
These family stories eventually come together at a rally protesting the anti-gay James Dobson organization Focus on the Family, yet Karslake’s narrative spreads too thin; it loses cohesion even while admirably capturing unique perspectives on gay and religious acceptance—lifestyles usually dismissed in favor of “transgression,” that horribly misused excuse for gay movie guilefulness such as made My Summer of Love so offensive.
Man of My Life’s guilefulness is extraordinary; it conceals understanding of sexual identity (Frédéric’s infatuation with Hugo) inside the obviously favored radicalism of Hugo’s rants—and Breitman’s truly innovative formal designs. Her varied visual gambits combine erotic portraiture with spiritual portents, radiant nature studies that put Andrew Dominik to shame and sequences of pure art spectacle. She somehow mixes the lush sexual awakening of Renoir’s A Day in the Country with postmodern anti-family skepticism. Her argument arrives in the most visually resplendent movie so far this year (photographed by Michel Amathieu), yet it lacks the rich balance of sex and intellect that makes an André Téchiné film great.
Flawed, insightful and expressive, these movies wrestle with sexual identity as personal and political concerns. When Congressman Dick Gephardt says, “It’s tough but parents just have to feel their hearts and know their children need their love,” it contrasts Hugo’s story of being cast out of the family by his alpha male father. Hugo’s eventual reconciliation with his Dad sentimentalizes the kind of rift that Karslake can’t ignore (the devastating Arkansas story of Anna Wallner’s suicide).
Yet Breitman wishes away how tragically dogma and sexual identity can clash (Frederic’s jilted wife becomes a hysterical rag doll). Heroizing Hugo’s arrogance (his conceitedness ironically matches the doc footage of Andrew Sullivan’s haughty insistence) cheapens human experience and underestimates liberal argument. Breitman has an undeniably creative eye, but Karslake proves that integrating sex with life requires fresh thinking.
