Please welcome new contributor Seán McGovern to TFE
LGBT titles on Netflix are tricky – how to see cute boys, feel all fuzzy and yet be artistic? Enter last year's critically acclaimed LOEV, which breezed its way onto Netflix everywhere last week. LOEV, Sudhanshu Saria's dreamy and offbeat romance from India was both a critical and audience favorite of the festival circuit in 2016.
Western viewers may take for granted the quality and significance of some LGBT film out there, but having gay central characters in Indian cinema is still greatly taboo and faces serious challenges by the cencors – upbeat Bollywood films such as Kapoor & Sons take on an extra sense of daring when viewed by different sets of eyes (and yep, still make boffo box office).
Navigating romance was only part of it for Saria who I spoke with earlier today...
He says:
Watching men struggle with communication and machismo and intimacy is a beautiful thing and I had a lot of fun with that.
The most radical thing about LOEV is its combination of the elegiac mundanety of being in love and the challenges of life getting in the way: you walk away from the film with your heart warmed but also with serious questions about the conduct of some characters.
I was trying to focus on this fragile, hard to describe feeling between [the characters]. It's actually a film about consent masquerading as a gay film... It makes the consent issue easier to talk about because a character's actions can not be attributed to their gender.
As for Saria's trashy favorite on the 'flix at the moment:
I just saw King Cobra with James Franco in it. Got me super disturbed and turned on and repulsed and I couldn't even finish it.
What's your favourite Netflix LGBT gold/dross at the moment? This author left it too late to ever find out what Mulligans was about!