House of Boys (2009)
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House of Boys Movie Review
House of Boys is a 2009 Luxembourgish drama film directed by Jean-Claude Schlim and starring Layke Anderson. It’s a messy, but moving flick.
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“Oh, my god! You guys didn’t have sex.
You made love“
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In 1984 a gay teen runs away to Amsterdam and finds a home and a lover at an all-male cabaret. He then finds love, but eventually his boyfriend contracts AIDS. This is a very disconnected movie. It’s one of those flicks where you feel that you have just seen two movies instead of one, and two very different films at that.
The first movie is this highly entertaining gay coming-of-age flick about raving, partying, sex and hanging out. The second one changed all of that by introducing the AIDS storyline, which to me felt overly dramatic and tragic, though clearly some moments were tough to sit through, especially the ending.
However, it needed more sophistication in that handling of the pandemic. It was overly unsubtle, not to mention too intense and thriller-like in the initial hospital scenes. And it was somewhat not earned in terms of character growth and emotional investment to introduce it at the half point, but still I came to like all of these characters, so I ultimately did care and I was moved, but the tonal shift was not handled well at all and was simply too abrupt.
Layke Anderson is terrific as Frank. I liked this character as he felt grounded in reality as this twink full of life and energy, but Benn Northover as Jake was also strong and the two were such a great couple, thus all of the drama in the second half was quite heartbreaking. I liked Angelo a lot as this transgender character who was so full of understanding and empathy. The characterization and acting are uniformly strong.
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House of Boys has solid direction from the Luxembourgish director Jean-Claude Schlim, but otherwise most of the movie is in the English language. The script is a mess, it lacks thematic relevance and nuance and the pacing and structure are all over the place. However, it proved to be a moving watch, which was at first also quite endearing and entertaining, so I liked it overall quite a bit despite its obvious flaws.
