Word: joslin
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Black Star, by Tom Joslin, is one such independent film, and I'm going to tell you something about it which will ruin it for you. I'm not telling you this because I want to put the film down as an independent work, but because it's the main issue of the movie, and I can't avoid it. It's about a homosexual. That, in itself, should not ruin the film for you, but the fact that you could have watched this movie for half an hour and not known it was about a homosexual could make...
...Black Star gets off to a mundane start (liketoomany other independent films), with family history and photo albums. Tom Joslin's family is very ordinary. His mother comes from a prominent Boston lawyer's family; his father still revels in his college football glories; together they run a tennis club and a summer camp. One brother is a tennis pro and the other races motorcycles. Then, all of a sudden, Joslin's lover appears on the screen, describing how a friend who later jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge married him and Tom. Who would have guessed that a homosexual...
...Joslin no doubt intended the film to be a strong gay liberation statement, and if the strength of the statement had rested on that element of surprise. I would have failed as a reviewer. But it is Joslin himself who sold the audience short on a gay lib statement by letting his movie become self-indulgent. Those endless photo albums, those lengthy shots of everyday existence, like driving in a car or sitting on the porch, those over-used cinemaverite sequences which Joslin admits he hates, are not meaty enough for the viewer, who feels he is being led toward...
...Joslin could have preserved his statement, "Gay is the revolution--Oh yes!" despite the aforementioned gobbledy-gook, if only he and his lover had actually made love in the movie. But they never quite bring themselves to it. Instead they end up making love to the movie itself...
Center Screen. George Griffin films at the Carpenter Center, Friday at 8. Rom Joslin films Saturday and Sunday...