From the lightness of summer love told in ‘Call Me by Your Name’ to the harsh reality of prison in ‘Great Freedom’, 7 films that deal with the complexity of the LGBT+ galaxy from different perspectives and with different narratives.
1) CALL ME BY YOUR NAME – DIRECTED BY LUCA GUADAGNINO (2017)
Breaking the summer boredom of young Elio (Timothée Chalamet) is a series of misunderstandings, sentences left unsaid, glances and silences, interwoven with the charming American (Armie Hammer) hosted by his family in their country house.
Told with elegance and with a certain amarcord flavour by director Luca Guadagnino, the film’s true protagonist is a pure love full of passion, born and ended in the instant of one summer, that of 1985.
2) LA VIE D’ADÈLE – DIRECTED BY ABDELLATIF KECHICHE (2013)
Adele’s (Adèle Exarchopoulos) certainties about love fall one by one on the day she meets Emma (Léa Seydoux), a young blue-haired woman who will lead her to discover a world unknown to her. the friendship between the two girls turns into an intense love that will accompany them into adulthood. But it is here that their love collides with reality: if Adele stops chasing her dreams, Emma does the same; confusion and change will bring a point of no return to their story.
3) CAROL – DIRECTED BY TODD HAYNES (2015)
Therese (Rooney Mara) is wearily dragging her feet in a relationship with Richard and, in order to scrape together some money, she gets a job in a Manhattan department store over Christmas. There she meets Carol (Cate Blanchett), a charming and beautiful woman who is also unfulfilled by her relationship. The meeting between the two will be the beginning of an understanding that will go far beyond the limits set by the norms and customs of American society in the 1950s. The feeling between the two, which at first seems to remain on a plane of innocence, grows deeper and deeper as their relationship deepens.
4) QUERELLE – DIRECTED BY RAINER WERNER FASSBENDER (1982)
Querelle (Brad Davis), subordinate to Lieutenant Seblon (Franco Nero) who secretly loves him, is embarked on the ship ‘Vengeur’, anchored in the port of Brest. In the city’s most famous brothel, he meets Nono and his wife Lysiane (Jeannne Moraeu), the lover of Querelle’s brother. She sells opium to Nono and dice a sexual relationship with him, which she seems to want to lose deliberately. She steals her brother’s lover; she weaves a sordid tryst with the violent policeman Mario, to whom she denounces Gil, a murderer with whom she has fallen in love. At the culmination of this nefarious and cathartic journey he begs Lieutenant Seblon to vent his perverse desires on him, in order to achieve through this the identity he so desperately seeks.
5) GREAT FREEDOM – DIRECTED BY SEBASTIAN MEISE (2021)
Hans Hoffmann’s (Franz Rogowski) life is punctuated by detentions. His only crime? Being homosexual. In fact, paragraph 175 of the German penal code prohibits same-sex sexual acts and will not change in the transition from Nazi Germany to a democratic state. The film accompanies the protagonist’s life, laying bare his frailties and recounting life in prison without rhetoric. Even within those narrow walls Hans manages not to lose his dignity, to love, to be a man. Although the axe of a society that considers him an abomination has fallen on him.
6) AND THEN WE DANCED – DIRECTED BY LEVAN AKIN (2019)
Young Merab (Levan Gelbakhiani) is a member of the Georgian national dance troupe and everything seems to run smoothly, even though his life is one of intense sacrifice. Everything changes with the arrival of Irakli, a charming dancer who destabilises Merab’s life first on the dance level and then on the level of feelings. The two in fact, if at first they rival, soon turn into lovers. But in a strongly conservative atmosphere, although Merab lets himself go in love and discovers himself, he will have to come up against reality and make choices in spite of himself.
7) STRANGER BY THE LAKE – DIRECTED BY ALAIN GUIRAUDIE (2013)
Franck (Pierre Deladonchamps) habitually frequents a naturist beach at the edge of a lake, frequented exclusively by homosexual men. One day he meets two very different men: Henri, a fat, elderly man, gay and not yet accepted, the only one not completely unclothed, and Michel (Christophe Paou), a mysterious man who imposes himself on the scene with his charm and to whom Franck is fatally attracted. The plot takes an unexpected turn and is tinged with black when Franck witnesses a heinous crime.