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Sadly Over-hyped

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Indeed, the subject promised a lot of food for thought:how can a gay and talented young musician fit in the world of dogmatic clichés of his mother's? Quite a common and, alas,dangerous situation. Indeed,the cast promised a lot:British actors usually present a much more sophisticated and profound performance than their famous Hollywood counterparts.Also, they usually speak better English ! Indeed,the characters involved promised a serious and uncompromising drama , because they differed from the traditional gay films stereotypes . Well,it might have been a real masterpiece, but...it failed.Why?What is the reason? I believe the main culprit is the script that ,probably, is a little vague in its message.What is the idea of the film?The liberation of a gay spirit from the chains of traditions and old values?The sudden (and absolutely unbelievable) "awakening " of the boy's mother, who is the type that brings their sons to a suicide and then cries for them for the rest of her life?The cruelty and deceit of the gay world?The ruined dreams and ambitions (again, never properly explained)of a young musician? Unfortunately, these questions have never been answered, and the only reaction of a viewer after watching the film is the disappointed shrug of his/her shoulders.

I'm giving it two stars, one for Juliet Stevenson because she got suckered into this mess, and another for the Barcelona scenery. That's it. I practically laughed out loud from the very beginning. I think I could have told you the entire plot after watching 6 minutes of this movie, it was that predictable.My mother used to make these "tsk" sounds when she would see something vulgar on television. To my horror, I heard myself do the same thing repeatedly, an unstoppable involuntary response to the constant barrage of cringe-making dialog.I hate to say this, but this is one movie where if we'd had super buff soap opera actors in the lead roles, it might have made the movie tolerable. Instead we have actors with "real" bodies. That's fine, if you're making a "real" movie. This wasn't. It was soap opera quality from start to finish, and not even a good one.

Forgive me, but I'm a retired proofreader, and Juilliard is almost never spelled correctly except by people directly connected with the school.More to the point, I quite liked the film. Everything worked for me -- acting, direction, story, production. Not that I thought it a great film -- I did think there could have been more attention paid to motivation in several instances, such as Kennington's not answering Mansourian's many messages, Paul's involvement with Alden, and Paul's leaving Juilliard. Not to mention how Paul went from being good enough to get into the highly competitive Juilliard to not being good enough for a career as a musician in just a few years. Another 20 minutes could have fleshed out many aspects of the sometimes sketchy narrative.While the wide range of opinion expressed by others above is not unusual in film commentary, the diametrically opposed views on so many points is fascinating to me. Perhaps hot-button subjects such as homosexuality, abortion, etc. inspire hyper-sensitive, if not hyper-critical responses -- pro and con.What concerns me is how little or how narrowly most of the commentators -- gay as well as straight -- seem to understand the uniqueness of everyone's gayness, everyone's coming-of-age, everyone's taste and attractions. Of course, the same is no doubt true of heterosexuals.For many, experimenting and/or interacting with peers is the "right" or "best" way to come to terms with one's sexuality. For others, far older or younger people are more appropriate partners, whether for short-term liaisons or for longer relationships. While some of this no doubt derives from our individual (sometimes twisted) psychological underpinnings, I'm convinced that such variations often are merely part of the great breadth of human nature.Regardless of gender, many older people do gravitate to the younger for intimacy, but it's also true that many younger people gravitate to the older. Of course, some are manipulative, even predatory, but by no means is it always the older taking advantage of the younger. Regrettably, I think only one of the commentators above noted that Paul was using the older men, just as they were using him. Often, such "unequal" relationships are mutually beneficial.Speaking of my own non-sexual experience, as a child and well into adolescence, I felt (and others observed) that I related more comfortably with adults than with my peers. In adulthood, it's been just the opposite -- I've been more comfortable with people 10, then 20, now 30 years and more younger. The only period when I was in-sync with my peers was my college years and shortly thereafter.Frankly, my development as a gay person might have been much less difficult had someone 25 or 35 or 45 initiated an intimate relationship (sexual or not) with me in my adolescence. My few halting attempts to find intimacy with adult men were met with abject terror of even being suspected of pedophilia. Left to my own devices, I didn't really figure it out until I was about 30. Not that I ever thought I was, or tried to be, straight; I simply didn't have a sexual or emotional life. It's been rich and rewarding since, but I can't help wondering how much I might have missed. But enough about me.It strikes me as troubling that so many, perhaps most people lack the certain instinctual knowledge that everyone's experience, everyone's psyche, is different. They may know it intellectually, but not viscerally. And so they can't help judging other people, as well as art and literature, as if everyone's life experience were much the same.We're all entitled to our own thoughts, reactions, opinions. But to judge the characters, situations, motivations in a piece of fiction as unrealistic because they don't match one's own life experience is simply off the mark. Virtually everything in the novel as well as the film is familiar to me, so I guess that mean's it's realistic...no?

stellarust, You seem to have missed the point of the movie. Its not about the young man's art (his love and study of the piano) nor is it even about his romance with his idol (the piano player he looks up to.) It is, in fact, a fable, or fairy tale, (very much like the many attributed to Grimm). This is why, I believe, you found it heavy-handed. The story is about a mother who learns her son is gay, and learns it while he is still a child (albeit he is 18 and not, technically, a child, yet as most 18 year olds, they still require wise parenting from time-to-time for a few more years yet, when appropriate) and so he needs some guidance. Yet he doesn't realize he does, and fights it for a variety of reasons, most of which are somewhat characteristic of this point in time (the beginning of the 21st century). What this fable does is demonstrate a woman with problems of her own, realizing she her son still needs guidance even if she's not sure what it should be yet. The fable is two-fold: 1) it shows how an enlightened parent should react once they become aware and become educated, and 2) shows that there are still big bad wolves in the forest just waiting to huff and puff and blow your house down. It says to parents: here is how to respond to a gay child/young adult. And it says to gay young adults: beware the wolves of the forest, but, if you notice your parent responding like the mother in this film, trust them.Its about where to place trust, which is always the core of any fable, parable, or fairy tale.Lighten up. Stories cannot be alike. A variety of food is required to fill all your needs. Man cannot live on bread alone.