Cinema
Montreal Main
Frank Vitale · 1974
Synopsis
Montreal, in the early seventies, around Saint-Laurent Boulevard, among artists and misfits. Frank, a shy photographer in his late twenties, shares a loft with his best friend, Bozo; their friendship is very close and ambiguous. At a party at the Sutherlands', he meets their son Johnny, twelve, whom a photo session on the mountain brings closer to him. While Bozo courts Jackie, who is staying with the Sutherlands, this friendship worries the parents and the gay milieu that Frank frequents.
Context
The film was written and performed collectively, in a style close to improvisation, by friends who play under their own first names; Vitale stated in 2017 that it was indeed written, first tried out on video. The attachment of a man in his twenties to a twelve-year-old boy is neither condemned nor justified in it, and his motivations remain ambiguous. The film was released in Montreal on 18 October 1974, with French subtitles. Thomas Waugh and Jason Garrison devoted a volume of the Queer Film Classics series to it in 2010, and a disc brought it back into circulation in 2009.
Who it is for
Eighty-eight minutes in English, with spontaneous and rough acting; the unease is constant and intended, nothing in it is settled.
Prizes and reception
Long hard to see, it is now studied in research on Canadian queer cinema.
Sources for this page 11
The pages consulted to check this page.