Gay movies that go beyond

An interrogative glossary of queer films that buck "coming out" trends

Last week, I offered up some narrativized insight into my own coming out: via scolding email, more administrative than cinematic really. There’s a natural part in every queer person’s brain, pre-coming out, that sifts through all cinematic world knowledge of how it could possibly go wrong, or if you’ve lived a charmed enough life to befriend another, if not several queer folk in your coming of age, that knowledge might come from the personal world.

But when you’ve seen enough of them on screen, as I have, a certain apathy sets in. It comes from watching the same event, time after time, character after character carrying the burden of their family and friends’ shock, crisis, and varying degrees of acceptance. It’s an exhaustion thoroughly steeped in the function-first narrative machinery these scenes tend to become. Because they prioritize resolving the emotional arcs of the surrounding straight characters over interrogating the queer experience, the protagonist becomes a vessel for various inflections of trauma. Their joy, banality, and simple existence suppressed in service of a grand lesson. That lesson often comes at the cost of most, if not all, of their interior complexity. I’m not saying this moment isn’t important or shouldn’t be framed as such. It’s an inflection point in any case, even in the rare “gay utopia” movie (honorable mention below). The best films that buck this reductive trend, or don’t feature a coming out at all don’t absolve the queer character of that truth. They just don’t make that moment the currency of their existence. They get to the juicier stuff: the much more interesting living beyond the confession.

Scarfing down these kinds of films, not just as a pre-pubescent lesbian but, now, a cinephile with a point to prove, has taught me there is a gaping distinction between the hollow and the visceral. Today, I’ve done you the courtesy of unpacking some of the best, through the lens of their climactic moments, each traversing their queer emotional terrain with a novel approach and refreshing honesty unbeknownst to movies like Love Simon, The Prom or Danish Girl. And all with one common quality. Consider it a pride gift from me to you.

«Spoilers ahead»

Pariah (Dee Rees, 2011)

Alike, a seventeen-year-old poet in Brooklyn, spends her days code-switching between the feminine armor her mother Audrey demands and the butch reality she lives with her friends. She’s a totally different person inside and outside. An AWESOME conceit. Her attraction to Bina, a reckless and sexually confident classmate, forces Alike to shed that armor, layer by layer, until there is nothing left to hide behind. Not to mention, her poetry serves as the raw, unfiltered outlet for the self she can’t speak aloud. The physical toll of the disguise she maintains daily, stacked atop the emotional burden, makes her eventual breaking point inevitable. And as comes naturally with intense social masking, the moment of climax is eruptive, Alike’s first true opportunity to put it all on the line for #realness.

Happy Together (Wong Kar-wai, 1997)

Lai Yiu-fai and Ho Po-wing, a gay couple, travel to Buenos Aires hoping to reset their troubled relationship, but the city only amplifies their disconnect. Lai Yiu-fai masks his insecurity with aggression, picking petty, vicious fights. Po-wing retreats into silence, vanishing for nights at a time, leaving Yiu-fai to spiral into jealousy and rage. Through the gradual erosion of intimacy between them, the emotional peak occurs when Lai Yiu-fai, stripped of his performative toughness, collapses on the floor sobbing after a devastating, silent reckoning in their cramped apartment. The connection he values is out of reach, but not for lack of trying. The fixing and breaking buttons in his mind are just homologous, triggered by the same desperate need to be held.

Big Boys (Corey Sherman, 2023)

Jamie, a loquacious and guileless young boy goes on a camping trip with his classically homo-averse straight teen brother, warmhearted adult cousin and her pulchritudinous boyfriend. While his brother tries to impress girls and maintain his nonchalant facade, Jamie remains on the sidelines, quietly observing Dan. The dynamic shifts when Jamie and Dan get separated from the group on a hike, where his new, developing feelings toward him unravel to a point of no return (particularly when his friend down under betrays his composure during a handsy encounter.) The moment of self-confrontation at the end of the movie, sees young Jamie tell pulchritudinous hunk that he thinks he’s handsome. This is a refreshing ending for several reasons. One, he offers up his truth as a sort of quiet promise he made to himself. And two, it sidesteps a more obvious and predictable choice, his brother finding out, chastising him or worse, with no sacrifice of intensity.

Appropriate behavior (Desiree Akhavan, 2014)

Shirin, a twenty-something bisexual Iranian-American woman in Brooklyn, is left on her ass after her girlfriend Maxine breaks up with her. The breakup stems partly from Shirin’s refusal to come out to her traditional Persian parents, which put a large strain on their relationship. The film follows Shirin’s messy life as she moves in with strange roommates, takes on a new job and attempts to reconnect with Maxine. Her quest for okayness leads to some distinctly awkward sexual encounters as she tries to prove her own desirability and figure out who she is outside of her relationship. The turning point is a gradual realization that she has been performing “appropriate” behavior for her family and her ex, rather than living authentically; and the climax is dressed as a standard confrontation but it cuts real different: Shirin finally admits her bisexuality, delivering the incredible line, “I’m a little bit gay.” But the anticlimactic rejection of the moment itself, with her mother uttering a simple no, is exactly the honesty a movie with such unvarnished grit deserves.

These films have more in common than their queer subject matter though. They also don’t treat coming out as the climax. Syllogistically speaking, they all appreciate identity beyond a singular event. A coincidence? I think not.

Honorable mentions

No queer movie list would be complete without at least one of Emma Seligman’s beauties. Shiva Baby & Bottoms deserve their own post (extra shoutout to the joyous gay utopia that is Bottoms) , so I’ll just leave it at that for now.

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This second pride-edition post will be the last until July. I’ll be tied up moving and writing scripts during that time.

In the interim, feel free to catch up on some of the SL hits! :