Amazon user on the DVD: This film is best appreciated if you take time to recognize what it is NOT. It is not an exposé of the dark side of gay life in the 60s (think Dirk Bogarde in "The Victim," 1961); it is not a frivolous or slick Hollywood "coming out" story (à la "In and Out"); nor is it painfully earnest like so many independent films by gay directors. The film is simply a look into the life of a gay school teacher (Jim) in London in the mid-seventies (though I suspect it could have been shot in New York, San Francisco, or Sydney and been just as credible). Jim's days consist of making reasonable efforts to manage a classroom of unruly teens; his evenings are spent going to bars and discotheques where he connects (with varying degrees of success) with other gay men. There is a redundancy to this scenario that modern movie-goers may have little patience for ("Okay, we get it!" I can hear them screaming at their TV screens), but I found the repetition to be important. The teacher continues Sisyphus-like to make the daily efforts to meet someone. There are scenes in bars that seem to go on forever. Like Jim, we see nothing but a wall of men dancing together to endless dance club music. There are shots that last three or more minutes where the camera focuses solely on the Jim's eyes as they scan the room. Is this desperation? or patience and optimism? Viewers will clearly interpret such scenes based on their own histories and perspectives. Another recurring scene is of Jim driving his previous night's guest to the tube or their place of work. These scenes, too, can be seen as either depressingly repetitive or satirically comical. ("Oh, the things we tell one another the morning after," I said to myself. "Who do we think we are fooling?) The writer-director Ron Peck is clearly in command of his subject material. This is not Warhol's "Chelsea Girls" where the camera was kept running for no particular reason. As a viewer, you are confident that something is going on in this quiet and highly textured film. Those who can surrender to the film's rhythms will get something out of it. There are at least three stories unfolding here. There's the story of a gay man looking for a relationship; the story of a teacher willing to expose his personal life to his students if it will make a difference in their lives; and there is the story of a man's relationship with a needy fellow teacher (who happens to be a woman who probably has a crush on him, but clearly is uncertain how to process what she is learning about her colleague's lifestyle). In the end, the teacher seems to be a valiant soul, keeping it together and struggling, as all souls must, to play the hand he has been dealt. Although there are no DVD extras, Peck did do a follow-up film that is also worth looking at ("Strip Jack Naked," 1991).
bfi screenonline
NYTimes 27.7.1979
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