USA, 1973
Director: Christopher Larkin
Stars: Robert Joel, Curt Gareth, Bo White
Given the ethos of this site, we would normally be wary of any film championed by Vito Russo, let alone one that he actually appears in. Roped in as an extra, Russo plays in a crowd scene somewhere, so watch closely in the bustling Fire Island beach-cruising and disco scenes, and you may be able to make his wiry homophobia-seeking form out.
Apparently intended as a "gay version" of Love Story, a huge hetero hit released in 1970, A Very Natural Thing is actually nothing more than a dramatised discussion about the shape gay life, then in its infancy, should take. Should it mimic the male-female model and aim for monogamy and domesticity, or should it acknowledge that such a model doesn't exactly fit male-male partnerships and forge new territory based on the polymorphous freedoms of the Sexual Revolution?
The New York Post was correct in dismissing the film as "an argument rather than entertainment". The film is bookended with lengthy documentary footage of gay pride marches, where actual gays speak directly to the camera about the legitimacy and wonderment of being gay and being proud of it, for all the standard 1970s reasons. In between these non-fiction bookends is a dramatisation of two men attempting a romantic relationship. This relationship fails, according to the story, because one of them wants to stay at home and the other wants to wander, but mainly, I think it dies because they do little with each other but argue incessantly for seventy minutes about which of them has the right idea about what a gay relationship, and why.
David (Robert Joel, who was credited in other films as Robert McLane) gives up his life as a monk in a monastery (true) because the the brothers expect him to be celibate and of course, certainly not homo. Defrocked, he heads for the downtown gay bars, where he shimmies around amid a sea of checkered cardigans and paisley neck scarves before being beckoned by Mark (Curt Gareth) to share a dance. They begin an affair and both show their cards immediately, with romantic David wanting to caress and cuddle after the first night's fucking, and Mark shooing him away on the grounds that "affection went out in the 50s". Scene by scene we get more of the same, with David somehow getting Mark to agree to move in together and for a while, there's verbose domestic bliss.
Amid the endless monologue about what form a gay relationship should take and how it can be valid and noble etc., there are at least two thigh-slapping one liners. The first is a nod to Love Story with Mark playfully shrugging off David with "well thank you, Miss Ali MacGraw" and, my favorite, "you're a pretty good fuck for a former monk you know". Additionally, there's a side-splitting sequence where the happy pair stroll through a park in the Autumn and visit a fun fair where they ride carousels and roller coasters. Needless to say, you can still hear them arguing about the form of their relationship even when they're on the roller coaster.
It all comes unstuck at Fire Island (a phrase which could apply to gay history in general) where David wants to lie by the ocean happily in love, but Mark can't keep his bum on his beach towel for more than three seconds at a time while ever there's cruising going on in the bushes up the back. A drugged-out orgy follows, and when the pair return to the city, things disintegrate fairly quickly. At the 1973 Gay Pride March, David meets Jason (Bo White), and they embark on what seems to be a much more equitable and enterprising love affair.
Now, first of all, this film has absolutely no point of connection whatsoever with Love Story which was a justly-mocked overwrought tearjerker about a young couple who fall in love and get married and then she ups and dies of leukemia. A Very Natural Thing was made too early for an AIDS death to enter the story at any point and there's no tragedy or melodrama in the film. It is, as mentioned, a dreary dramatised debate about whether gay men should pursue committed domestic partnerships or not, and is a filmed precursor to Larry Kramer's novel "Faggots", which came out several years later. Can you draw a line between Ali MacGraw and "Faggots"? I can't.
Secondly, though the film seems to be obsessed with its main theme - which is, interestingly, as pertinent today as it was in the early 1970s - it doesn't develop any kind of argument or suggestion of any kind. The opposing positions are simply stated, and restated, and we see the limitations and examples of each. The film does little but chronicle the fact that "gay men" existed by the early 1970s, and that their nascent culture had many things to work out. In other words, everything in between the documentary parentheses is unnecessary, as the content doesn't take the initial idea anywhere at all.
On the other hand, A Very Natural Thing has a retro-fabulous aura that records the mood and air of the times. As a post-AIDS Gen-Xer, I found it compelling to see gay men going about the whole Fire Island routine when it still looked fun and innocent. The hardcore, clone era was in the near-future when this film was made, and so it can be appraised as a precious visual record of a time gone by. There's drugs, orgies and discos at Fire Island here, but that routine hasn't hit fifth gear yet. Everyone seems to dress fairly low-key and the cruising in the bushes scenes look almost bucolic.
I guess there is one ironic, and rather moving, connection to Love Story in A Very Natural Thing. For me, a sense of melancholy hung over the film as despite its simplicity, it does chronicle a time when gay culture did glisten with numerous threads and possibilities, all of which would be swept away by the tsunami of the AIDS Crisis which made calibrated internal criticisms seem frivolous and ushered in the tow-the-party-line gay culture that still lingers around today like a really bad smell. This film is as old as I am, yet the dialogue remains frozen: should we get married, or not get married? Crystal meth or not? Safe sex or barebacking?
Robert Joel/McLane, whose David called for monogamy and domesticity, went on to die of AIDS in 1993. Russo, also in the film, died of AIDS in 1990. I wonder how many more of the guys talking in excited expectation of their futures are no longer with us?
