The Male Gaze: Nocturnal Instincts

In the first film in this collection of shorts there is a spiral. I like short films but this selection seemed to me to be a spiral into despair, sexual violence, and in their way too many of the characters bordered on self-hatred. Is this the way Gay/Queer film is going I wondered ? The first two I found garish, and relentlessly disturbing. Things settled down with the British film, but the acting was poor and the ending negative and full of loneliness. It could have been made decades earlier, and despite the fact that a young man cannot face his homosexuality and ends up huddled and alone can be real, I like to think things have got better for a lot of people. The Belgium film was well made but the all pervasive pessimism was overwhelming. I believe the world of poverty is sadly realistic, but I could not stomach the attempted killing induced by self-loathing and rejection. The film from Israel again was well acted, but the premise of the orgy depicted is not for all, and yet it was somehow the best of the lot. Having just watched Demy's ' Lola ' I felt impatient with the sheer darkness of these films. There is a distinction between a love of life, despite its inevitable losses and this wallowing in a despair that would have startled Samuel Beckett, for the utterly hopeless depiction of certain mindsets bent on self-destruction, and futile risk. I give it a 4 overall for the acting in the Belgian film and the film from Israel. I also found in the Israeli film a final scene of heartbreaking tenderness, in a collection which lacked this except for this last scene. The irony of it is that it was between a young man and an older woman.