I got to the Harman Theater today to the Reel Affirmations LGBT film festival to see the 2007 UK film by David and Jacqui Morris, “Mr. Right”.
I seem to remember a book around 1990 called “A self-policing code” for gay men, saying “I’ll give up the search for Mr. Right and settle for what’s reasonable”.
But in this British comedy, there is a ménage of young men most unwilling to do that. There are several “couples” (in the style of a “Bob Ted Carol Alice” movie) but the film seems dominated by Harry (James Lance), a TV producer who doesn’t like his job, and particularly Alex (Luke de Woolfson, who looks younger than the age given in imdb), who longs for the limelight of showbiz. Yes, he wants to be an actor, put perhaps he wants to be more like a self-promoting artist.
There is, about 2/3 through the movie, a dinner scene where Alex and others entertain the question as to whether “being gay is wanting to be famous” (like in the previous film “Mulligans”, whether “being gay is being a spy”). Then Alex, whose tall, thin but extremely muscular form (particularly cute in a Union Jack tank top)and articulate manner dominate the film, enlists in a one-man play, “Malthus”, where he will justify an ideology of “Mr. Right”, that is the survival of the fittest (perhaps more related to Herbert Spencer than Charles Darwin) – put in Malthusian terms (related to overpopulation, which many people see today as a canard, given the concerns about “demographic winter”), to the point that Nazi Germany gets mentioned at least once. Alex also tells his boyfriend that his home is finally the first thing he has created by himself in his life.
The Reel Affirmations link for the film is here.
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