The Hours and Times (Christopher Munch, 1991)

Ian Hart and David Angus in The Hours and Times

Cast: David Angus, Ian Hart, Stephanie Pack, Robin McDonald, Sergio Moreno, Unity Grimwood. Screenplay: Christopher Munch. Cinematography: Christopher Munch. Film editing: Christopher Munch.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about Christopher Munch's The Hours and Times is that it feels right. Nothing we know about what happened to John Lennon and Brian Epstein afterward feels inconsistent with what's shown in the film: a brief visit to Barcelona by the self-assured Beatle and his repressed manager in which they test the limits of their intimacy with each other. Munch at one point considered making the film's two central characters "just two guys," but it gains immeasurably from our awareness of the sad history that followed in the two men's lives and deaths. The film is just under 60 minutes of sexual tension, as Lennon (Ian Hart) teases and taunts Epstein (David Angus) about his experiences as a gay man. They share a bathtub and a bed in the film, but without apparent consummation, and the ending leaves us to ponder the nature of sexual attraction. Is Lennon sadistically inflicting cruelty on Epstein? Why does Epstein want to go on a trip with a man he knows he can't have? The Hours and Times is a film that ramifies in the mind the more you ponder it, each incident shown -- Lennon's flirtation with the flight attendant and Epstein's with a hotel worker, the meeting with the man in the bar, the phone conversations of Lennon with Cynthia and Epstein with his mother -- casting light on another.  

God's Own Country (Francis Lee, 2017)

Alec Secareanu and Josh O'Connor in God's Own Country

Johnny Saxby: Josh O'Connor
Gheorghe Ionescu: Alec Secareanu
Deirdre Saxby: Gemma Jones
Martin Saxby: Ian Hart

Director: Francis Lee
Screenplay: Francis Lee
Cinematography: Joshua James Richards
Production design: Stéphane Collonge
Film editing: Chris Wyatt
Music: Dustin O'Halloran, Adam Wiltzie

Inevitably called "a Yorkshire Brokeback Mountain," Francis Lee's debut feature, God's Own Country has a forthrightness about gay sex that Ang Lee's more celebrated 2005 film lacked, and which, I recently noted, is also missing from the more popular Call Me by Your Name (Luca Guadagnino, 2017). There's no shyness about the mechanics of sex or about frontal male nudity -- one scene, of Johnny and Gheorghe talking together, plays out with both actors casually showing their privates. To my mind, this acceptance of the body defuses the sensationalism that "discreet" treatments, like the pan to the window in Call Me by Your Name, actually tend to heighten. It also brings the outsider status of the two men more clearly into focus -- if we can observe and accept  the fact of their relationship, then why can't others? God's Own Country is otherwise a familiar -- slightly over-familiar -- story of the course of a love affair: meeting, attraction, consummation, discord, separation, resolution. Johnny is a surly lout in a bleak, unloving milieu until Gheorghe comes into his life and teaches him tenderness and self-respect. It's enough to make us want to see the other side of the story: What about Gheorghe's life in post-Ceausescu Romania made him a stronger and better person than Johnny? That said, it's a well-made film, with superlative performances from Josh O'Connor and Alec Secareanu, and beautiful support from old pros Gemma Jones and Ian Hart as Johnny's worn and weary but always crabby parents.