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.

Humpday is a film about straight dudes for straight dudes and its topic is the anxiety straight dudes feel about gay dudes. Two college buddies reunite – one has been a drifter, an artist, has hip hats that have cooler stories than anything he’s done; the other has built a life, has a home, a family. One envies the freedom. The other envies the security and stability. At a pretentious party (really, no other word for it), they get caught up in a discussion about an upcoming art-film low-budget porn festival coming up called Humpday. They come upon the idea of that two straight dudes doing full on gay sex in front of a camera will not only be an incredible Art Project, but will redefine their own respective selves in important ways. Drifter dude will finish something, instead of just giving up like he always does. Stable dude will prove he still has spontaneity in his life, and he also seems to be acting out on a hint of bisexuality in his past, where he rented a bunch of videos that a cute guy at the rental store suggested (a 12 part series on architecture, or some such – he hated the first, but kept returning!) – so is he gay, and he’s just gone down this road to stability and family because it was the easiest, instead of examining what he really feels he needs and wants? They get a seedy hotel room, and the funniest scene is when they kiss and then it all falls apart. They ask themselves: What is it we’re really doing here? And for what purpose? They don’t have any answers, other than that it wasn’t what it should have been to begin with. It gives the film a kind of deflated feeling in the end, and it’s partially due to the fact that there’s no gay perspective. Their take on masculinity seems to come down to: dudes don’t do dudes. And do they really decide they’re failures because they can’t go through with it? Drifter dude re-drifts, but we don’t know what happens to stable dude. Does he return home to his wife, who has confided to cheating on him when he insists on going through with the straight-gay porn? A lot of reviews have suggested that this film offers a good perspective of masculinity, but to me it offers a measured take on homophobia. Very little of what these two gents encounter in the lame scene that caps this film is about sexuality. They can talk about being raw and carnal all they want, but when you’re watching them clutch their pillows and talk about failure, they’re not talking about Art anymore.

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.