MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Boys’ Shorts’: 6 Mature Views of Gay Life

“Boys’ Shorts: The New Queer Cinema” (at the Sunset 5) might better have been called “Men’s Briefs” because there’s nothing adolescent about the six decidedly mature films that compose this absorbing two-hour program presented by Frameline, which sponsors the San Francisco International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival.

Indeed, what the six highly varied works have most in common is that they view the gay experience not as something hermetically sealed-off from the rest of society but as being very much a part of the world at large. As a result, this collection is virtually as accessible to straights as it is to the gays to whom it is specifically addressed. Inevitably, AIDS is a central issue in several of the shorts, yet the filmmakers have brought fresh perspectives to the subject.

With images and interior monologues rather than dialogue, Australian filmmaker Stephen Cummins’ lyrical “Resonance” tells the love story of two young men--they meet when one of them, a martial arts instructor, rescues the other from a gay bashing--largely in mime and dance, highlighted by a boxing match between the two men that becomes a dance, transforming aggression into affection.

In “R.S.V.P.,” the most impressive of all the offerings, Canadian filmmaker Laurie Lind reveals the impact of the loss of a young man, Andrew (Ross Manson) to AIDS. His lover (Daniel MacIvor) returns home from Andrew’s funeral just in time to hear on the radio program “R.S.V.P.” Jessye Norman singing Berlioz’s “La Spectre de la Rose,” which several weeks earlier Andrew had requested; Lind then cuts to Andrew’s parents and his sister as they are listening to the same recording on the same program. This link becomes Lind’s point of departure for exploring what Andrew meant to his loved ones, and the result is an acutely perceptive film, at once detached and impassioned.

Marlon Riggs’ “Anthem” recalls his earlier “Tongues Untied” in its use of poetry and dance to celebrate gay love between black men, but “Anthem” is less lyrical, more like a chant and rap, declaring that such love is revolutionary in its impact and implications. The British filmmaker’s ironically titled “Relax” evokes in powerful, surreal fashion the agonizing uncertainty with which a young gay man anxiously awaits the result of his HIV test.

Michael Mayson’s “Billy Turner’s Secret” is the one film among the six to suggest that it could be a student film--which it is--in the lack of coherence and clarity in its narrative. It is moving anyway, capturing an authentic sense of fear and pain, for it deals with the difficulties facing a young black man (Mark D. Kennerly) in revealing his homosexuality to his homophobic straight roommate (played by Mayson himself).

“Boys Shorts” (Times-rated Mature for adult themes) concludes with Mark Christopher’s “The Dead Boys’ Club,” in which a young man (Nat DeWolf), once he puts on a pair of shoes that had belonged to a man who has just died of AIDS, finds himself experiencing the giddy disco years of gay life in the flush of the liberated ‘70s. In this way Christopher is able to suggest the loss of a substantial portion of an entire generation to AIDS while symbolizing the need to practice safe sex.