Dorian Blues   ★★★★★
Dir: Tennyson Bardwell
Cert: 15 • US: 88 min • TLA Releasing • DVD
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Coming-of-age movies are often over-indulgent, cloyingly sentimental and for these very reasons fall into the Lifetime, Hallmark and Public Broadcast channels’ “one of a five a day”. However, occasionally, one comes along with such a resonance of truth that stirs something in one’s own history that raises it above the usual mid-afternoon schedule fodder, and Dorian Blues is one such movie.

Completed and released in 2004 it was received favourably by critics and audiences alike, making it a very welcome debut from director Tennyson Bardwell. The film charts the passage of Dorian Lagatos, brought to life on screen by Michael McMillian, from teenager to young man, a process which is full of the usual land-mines of adolescence but is further complicated by his realization that he is gay.

It is very much a film of two halves, in terms of style, characters and of location. The film opens with Dorian on the torturous end of the jokes, jibes and inevitable bullying of someone in the hapless role of resident outcast. This half of the film plays out with the humour and charm of a film like Napoleon Dynamite though it never descends into parody or goes beyond a point where the characters or story are no longer believable. Bardwell allows Dorian’s struggle with his internalized homophobia to be funny as well as moving and deftly moves between the humour and pathos of the situations created by Dorian’s dilemma with effortless ease. He is also able to tell Dorian’s story, without allowing him to descend into the self-pity abandonment of the role of victim, which so often comes with the territory.

Throughout this process, Dorian’s star football playing brother is an integral character. Through Nicky (Lea Coco), we are offered an insight to how Dorian’s revelation will and does affect the people around him. Bardwell constantly uses all the players at his disposal to reveal to the audience the multiple sides of any one story lending a weight of truth to the film, which is often misplaced in favour of manipulating the audience’s pathos for the lead character.

When Dorian takes control of his situation the film shifts into a different gear as we are relocated to New York where Dorian relishes his freedom, in both his independence from his family and the ability to be open about his sexuality in this new and more welcoming environment. However, he quickly discovers that not all of New York smells of roses and that with adulthood comes a new set of experiences that can be as equally painful as the ones experienced in high school.

Dorian Blues has won to date fourteen Film Festival Awards, and deservedly so. It is a beautifully scripted and shot movie. Every beat of the dialogue rings with a truth, which often leads the story and characters in a direction that other directors wouldn’t have the courage to go. Dorian is without doubt the central character of the film, but Bardwell is not so blinded by his story that he is unable to empathize with his other characters, for it is in the telling of their stories that Dorian is really revealed to us and some of it isn’t pretty, but it carries the weight of truth which is affecting and ultimately extremely satisfying.

Nicky:
Just keep denying it! Remember what Hitler said; you tell a lie long enough and loud enough eventually they’ll believe it.

Dorian:
So your advice is… be more like Hitler?!