Mannen som elsket Yngve 2008
1h 30min | Comedy, Drama, Music | 15 February 2008 (Norway)
Storyline:
It’s November 1989, and the Berlin Wall is falling. In Stavanger, Norway, teenage boy Jarle has a great new girlfriend and is starting a rock band with his buddies. But when a new boy, the synth pop-listening Yngve, joins his class, Jarle is more fascinated than he wants to be, and the world as he knows it starts to crumble.
Joey’s life is turned upside down after his parents discover his secret relationship with another boy and send him to reparative therapy to address the ‘unnatural’ feelings that threaten their image of a happy life. In a forty-minute hypnotherapy session, Joey’s mind is explored by a therapist who is confident that his influence over Joey’s thoughts can set him on the right path. At an age with little autonomy or voice in the matters of his own life, Joey struggles to find a way to choose for himself what will lead him to happiness.
An artistic, action-packed pre-condom classic in which a bunch of big dicked, smooth, college-aged, lanky boys study each other’s anatomy more than textbooks. A cutesy narrator frames the vignettes, but with a soundtrack featuring the likes of Pink Floyd (unlicensed, to be sure), trippiness is more the order of the day.
Set one evening in present day Moscow, 16 year-old Pyotr is baited by an ultranationalist group known for their violent abductions and anti-gay attacks bolstered by Russia’s LGBT propaganda law, but Pyotr has a dangerous secret his attackers could never have accounted for.
CLOSETS is an interesting, unusual film with a sci-fi twist. It features a tormented 16 year old boy called Henry who, on 12 March 1986, time travels through his bedroom closet and meets up with a similar present day teenager, Ben, occupying his same bedroom 30 years later. Ben and Henry’s developing friendship highlights past and present-day issues facing young gay teenagers. While our society’s attitudes towards LGBTs has improved dramatically over the past three decades, Ben and Henry’s story shows that confusion about sexual identity and homophobic bullying, can still result in self harming and suicidal intentions. These two teenagers from different time zones develop a deep friendship offering each support and optimism for the future. This is an unusual, compassionate and ultimately uplifting story, peppered with sorrow, humour and hope.