The story of Joe Orton and his partner, Kenneth Halliwell, tracks the latter’s relationship with the former’s burgeoning success. It is, of course, tragic, but the tragedy is less a reflection on being gay than an attempt to understand the symbiotic relationship between two men when that unanimity becomes encumbered. Personally, I’ve come to see the mainstream Hollywood takes on homosexuality as a little tiring, insistent as they are on kowtowing to the tragic proportions of your typical grecian ode which is to say, a death at the end that levels all of the surrounding characters’ humanity and causes them to cry in closets clutching clothes (which is unfair, because Brokeback Mountain was good, all things considered, for its otherness and at least the humanity on display was not a grieving straight person).

Prick Up Your Ears, which was Halliwell’s suggested title for the film for the Beatles that Orton came under contract to pen, is an intelligent and ruminative look at a married couple and their difficulties, and how the instability of one both caused loyalty and dissolution (oh so often it does). The film contains a somewhat awkward structure, framed as an investigation into the biography the film is based upon, which allows the literary agent (a fantastic Vanessa Redgrave) to provide some slippery meta-commentary on the action we’re seeing her participate in (for example, when Joe Orton takes her, Peggy, to receive an award instead of Halliwell, who must continue to pretend to be the ever-more successful Orton’s personal assistant). The author of the biography, John Lahr, is portrayed as an absorbed writer with his own “personal assistant” suffering some burgeoning animosity of her own (his wife, who may or not be a construct of the screenplay — all biographies that I can find note that he was married in 2000, with no prior marriages — which suggests more about Lahr than it does the subject of his book).

Should have seen it coming.

It’s also a great showcase as to how a complexly layered series of timelines (before Orton and Halliwell met, after they met, before & after success, before & after their deaths, etc) can be jumbled together in a coherent way without obvious and pandering title cards to orient the audience(!). Small physical details that just exist are enough to signify change, for example, take note of the scene split across the beginning and the end of the film, where the only acknowledgement of this is Orton’s jacket, and yet you know and feel plenty comfortable with this, or the varying degrees of completion to which Halliwell’s collage covers their bedroom wall (filmed in Halliwell and Orton’s actual flat, barring the death scene).

The performances are also fantastic, with Gary Oldman once again disappearing almost completely, and the warmth of Alfred Molina’s most recent performances (such as in An Education) giving his performance here an even greater sense of desperation to foster his connection to his lover as Orton slips away into success.

Attempting to corner the market on reviews for awful gay movies available via Netflix streaming, Mulligans is but another conquest deserving of the addition of three sub-categories and a new major category. I must admit: the quest is not mine, rather: Eugene’s. And it is he who is on the quest to find a decent, non-insulting gay movie that isn’t half-stupid. I am merely the dutiful reporter, press card tucked in my whimsical fedora, trailing behind with my scratch pad attempting to take it all in.

There's no such thing as a free mulligan.

Seriously: marvel at all the pained attempts to equate a hole in one and golfing positions with gay sex. Sure, one maybe, but again and and again and again. This movie is so tone deaf that I assumed the two boys were gay lovers at the beginning.* Yet, alas, college homostud Chase is just going home with his straight-strapping bud Tyler. The plot scrub says “two friends from college go home for the summer and one of them makes a mistake that may tear a family apart.” And yet it’s the father that makes the mistake, right? Oh so many years ago. Chip Hale stars in an upcoming short called BBQ; scrub says: “Friends. Grill. Meat. Secrets.”

But okay okay, it’s the dad that makes this ultimately not a virulent spastic self-hatred-encouraging bile fest like Eating Out 2: Sloppy Seconds. Or was that the first one we watched? His character is decently fleshed out and tragic, and the film’s ultimate prognosis is that sometimes in life there are no mulligans. I don’t remember an overwrought golfing scene with father and son talking about 9 woods (aw yeah) and 3 irons (aw yeah) and sand wedg(i)es or putting clubs (come again?), or the explanation of what a mulligan actually is*, so it should be commended on the level of not driving its central metaphor into a sandtrap. Sometimes, little Birdie, there are no mulligans.

* Eugene points out that I wasn’t watching or paying attention during the first 15 minutes, so obviously I didn’t know they were just friends. Apparently I also missed the explanation of what a mulligan is. C’est la vie.