In a year where most corners of the art form — horror, action blockbusters, dramas, comedies, etc. — have been uneven in the wake of the WGA-SAG-AFTRA strikes, it’s been a pretty great year for queer cinema. I Saw the TV Glow has remained the best film of the year for me overall with Challengers close behind. The excellent National Anthem came out of nowhere (and stayed there if you judge films by box office receipts), Love Lies Bleeding brought Katy O’Brien onto everyone’s radar, Driveaway Dolls was a blast, The People’s Joker was one of the coolest films ever to be released, and Hunter Schafer was pretty great in Cuckoo. Luca Guadagnino is even coming back for a second film this year titled Queer. While the anti-woke mob is constantly attacking corporations like Disney for adding gay characters to their franchise fair, queer-focused film has quietly taken up quite a bit of the theatrical space at the table that the studios abandoned. Even Janet Planet got its July 4th weekend in the sun, and one of the independent documentaries that will be competing for our attention and awards this FYC season, Lover of Men: The Untold History of Abraham Lincoln, is all about the academic theory that our 16th President was gay. Lavender Men, the subject of this review, is an independent queer film about why any of this matters at all. Why do we care about diversity? Who is owed a heritage and who is owed privacy? What stories do we tell and why? I think it finds an answer.
“Girl I done said it was a fantasia.”
Set inside a small independent theater, Lavender Men introduces us to Roger Q. Mason (Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution) as Taffeta, a queer stage manager who helped write a play about Abraham Lincoln’s potential romantic relationship with Elmer E. Ellsworth and then let the director lead her on and take all the credit. After an upsetting night of romantic rejection, Taffeta has a breakdown and summons the ghosts of Abram Lincoln and Elmer in the bodies of her two crushes, played by Pete Ploszek (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles; Captain Marvel) and Alex Esola (After the Wedding; Orange is the New Black), to recount their love story and help her process her place in the queer culture around her, complete with its own prejudices and injustices. Taffeta is black, heavyset, and fem-presenting.
Roger Q. Mason in Lovell Holder’s 2024 magical realism drama LAVENDER MEN. Image courtesy of Emily Owens PR.
The setup and (excellent) questions of Lavender Men are limited not by its out-and-loud queerness but by its theatricality and dialogue. It takes the shape of a confessional black box show, but the actors across the board often struggle to let the words roll off their tongues the way such a show needs. When Abe and Elmer are reenacting their haunted romance, the film is firing on all cylinders, but many times the interplay of Taffita on the sidelines, interrupting them with an attempt at modern English in contrast with their 1880s dialect, the contrasts serve only to expose a technical flaw, not a cultural difference as conceived. There is one sequence in particular, a song interlude titled “Chandelier,” that contrasts a flamboyant queerness possible today with the quiet closet of yesterday. It is meant to be disruptive to a conversation, but instead of interrupting a conversation, it takes a sledgehammer to the film’s pacing. This comparison between the level of open living possible today and the historical romances we will never know about for sure is the driver of this story, but while the film has a handle on it philosophically, it does not have a handle on it technically.
However, when it counted most, director Lovell Holder (Working Man; Peak Season) did find that contrast, and so Act 3 of Lavender Men manages to save the film. It is powerful, emotional, and incredibly acted. Yet, in a film in desperate need of compelling blocking to keep the eye engaged, Holder wastes the film’s most powerful imagery by never framing it in its entirety in a shot. Instead of being a good idea worth mourning or a great film on a budget, it becomes a fine, but very uneven film.
”Can you change the ending”
I read a lot of history books, like Washington: A Life (Chernow, 2010). All the President’s Men (Woodward and Bernstein, 1974) and The Boys on the Bus (Timothy Crouse, 1973). I own an Easton Press edition of the Federalist Papers. Last week my coworker needed something to read for a mic check and I handed him The Final Days (Woodward and Bernstein, 1976), which he tossed away after a single boring sentence. Why do I read about this? Why do any of us? Do we learn about history to understand the world we live in, or do we learn about history so that we can better understand ourselves? I usually tell people that I’m researching Watergate or the Powell memo because I want to understand how we got here today.
L-R: Alex Esola and Pete Ploszek in Lovell Holder’s 2024 magical realism drama LAVENDER MEN. Image courtesy of Emily Owens PR.
But Lavender Men makes me think that what I really want to know is: why am I angry? Lavender Men uses the closeting of history to illustrate how the absence of heritage is a wound that affects our present hearts. Elmer E. Ellsworth was the first casualty of the Civil War, and some historians think he may have been an ex-lover of Abraham Lincoln. When we look at history to inform our present, how much understanding has been lost by ignoring Lincoln’s personal sorrow in the foundation of his famous resolve? We talk about it with the death of his children, but not his potential lover. And when we look at the personal, how much pride has been robbed of the queer folk of today by ignoring the idea that the first man to die, to hold this nation together, was a gay man?
I don’t think Lavender Men is a great movie, and I’ll probably never watch it again except maybe to fast-forward to the last 30 minutes. But I will always remember its questions. Holder is a director worth watching, even if his first film isn’t always.
Screened during the Micheaux Film Festival 2024.
For more information, head to the official Micheaux Film Festival Lavender Men webpage.
Final Score: 2.5 out of 5.
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Categories: In Theaters, Reviews
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