Logo (the gay cable channel that seldom has anything on it I want to watch) has its viewers’ picks for the top 50 LGBT films, and  Pam’s House Blend is running a top 3 thread in response.  Every time one of these Pick Your Favorite GLBT Films things comes up it only serves to remind me how little same sex Romance there is out there.  But I think I can actually pick a top three…

Stipulating that I have not seen Brokeback Mountain…which seems to be on everyones favorites list nowadays (and it seems, rightfully so…)  These three have all the right ingredients, the stuff of every heterosexual romance you’ve ever seen or read, but finally gay couples get a chance to play too.

• Latter Days – Excruciatingly hard to watch in spots (like the excommunication scenes), but this is the kind of true hearted same sex romance I have long waited to see on film.  L.A. party boy discovers a group of young Mormon missionaries has moved into the apartment across from his, and takes a bet that he can seduce one of them.  Of course they fall in love.  It could easily have belly flopped into the trite pool, but like all good romances, the lovers drive each other to reach beyond themselves.  The Mormon boy challenges the party boy’s superficiality and the party boy coaxes the Mormon boy out of his suffocating shell. 
• You I Love – A sexy sweet rollercoaster of a love story.  Young successful, trendy Moscow urbanite with young successful and trendy girlfriend falls head over heels in love with young Russian male from deep in the Asian side of the country.  I almost threw a chair through the TV set when I thought the film was going to end with the lover’s being separated…but they didn’t do that to me.  Some have suggested that the film cops out by having the lovers taking refuge in a bisexual triangle at the end (with the urbanite’s girlfriend).  Given the vehement social prejudices on display in the film (and in real life in Moscow lately), I can forgive the filmmakers for this.  You do not doubt for a moment the love the two guys have for each other throughout this film and it is very touching.
• Lan Yu – Successful single businessman, preoccupied with business and cynical about love, has a tryst with a younger man that turns into a longtime on again – off again affair.  Businessman showers younger man with gifts, including an expensive house to live in, but keeps him at arm’s length because he doesn’t believe in love.  Then businessman is then caught up in the shady dealings of his company, arrested and put on trial.  Younger man sells all the gifts the businessman bought for him to pay bribes to corrupt local officials and get his lover out of jail.  Businessman learns that love is really more important then business after all.  If they’d only ended it there this film would be my all time favorite.  But then they had to go and gratuitously kill the younger lover off at the very end of the film in a random construction accident, leaving the businessman alone and grieving.  I suppose this was supposed to drive home the lesson about not wasting your chances for love, but they didn’t have to do that to make the point.

Now for three guilty pleasures…

• Gravitation and Earthian – Neither of these anime were nearly as good as the manga they were based on, but…damn!  Beautiful long haired (and I mean Long Haired) guys.   Oh yes…
• Harry and Son – Robbie Benson in a pair of cut-offs.  And the story is pretty good too…
• Happy Together – My anti-romance, for when I’m in a cynical mood.  Lovers who cannot stand each other, yet cannot keep their hands off each other, end up stranded in Buenos Aires, doing menial work to make ends meet while taking the occasional roll in the sack that they just can’t seem to avoid.  Something about the idea that Buenos Aries is the place where all failed romances end up appeals to me.