When is an adaptation a good one or a bad one?

When I heard that the film version of Sarah Waters’ Affinity was headed for release, I began to wonder if the film could possibly capture the creepiness that I loved so much in the novel. It started me thinking about the nature of film adaptation in general.

 

Some of my favourite film adaptations have deviated from their source material in interesting and unexpected ways. When this happens I feel almost giddy, like not only do I have my favourite book, but now I also have this awesome film.

 

The lesbian film canon has some famous film adaptations. For Desert Hearts, the film was more raw and intense than the novel. However, I loved the novel and its  emphasis more on romance and less on sexuality.

 

Fannie Fagg’s Fried Green Tomatoes is a novel that is quite explicitly lesbian, and the fact that the lesbians were excised in the film is a sore point for many. Does that make Fried Green Tomatoes a bad film? No, but to me that film feels sadly incomplete, because you can practically feel the studio’s intent behind leaving out any explicit romance.

 

I guess that’s where the strength of adaptation really lies, capturing the spirit of the piece rather than its specifics. In an interview with the BBC, Sarah Waters admitted that she thought some of the changes made by legendary screenwriter Andrew Davies for Tipping the Velvet actually improved the story.

 

However, I thought that despite some charismatic actresses, the TV version of Fingersmith, also by Sarah Waters, was disappointing even though it was almost slavishly faithful to the book’s plot. The darkness, the underlying menace, the truly gothic nature of the book is utterly lost on-screen.

 

I’m happier if the film deviates from the story if it is adventurous in its direction, such as for AS Byatt’s Possession. I loved both novel and film for entirely different reasons. The cuts made from the novel can only be described as brutal. However, the love affair between Christabel and Blanche had more passion in the film. The screenwriter was smart enough to realise that on-screen it needed a boost.

 

The bottom line is, films do have the opportunity to value-add to concepts, not detract from them. We just need to go in with an open mind. Books contain a level of detail that films do not have the luxury of. However, films can convey in a moment what it takes writers whole chapters to define.

A lingering favourite

I never miss a chance to rewatch Personal Best. The themes are as universal today as they ever were, and for a lesbian movie I am still awed by how progressive this one was.

It’s easy to relate to Chris (Mariel Hemingway) and her reluctance to put her personal ambitions above those of the people she cares about. First it is her father, then Tory, then Terry her manipulative coach. By the end of the film she somehow manages to untangle the web of who really deserves her loyalty and affection and acts on it.

Mariel Hemingway does an excellent job at portraying inner conflict, that desire to succeed weighed against the need to feel loved, and to love in return.

Too many lesbian relationships in film and TV get casually swept aside, as if their pain doesn’t count simply because they’re gay. Not only is it important that gay cinema show lesbians falling in love, we also need to see them realistically breaking up and falling out of love.

As bisexual actress Patrice Donnelly said in the Advocate in 1998:

There were lesbians in movies before, but this was the first time that being lesbian didn’t look like a disease. Personal Best showed us as good, wholesome, clean human beings who pursue excellence. It showed being a lesbian is not about deviance but about love.

That’s why Personal Best never really grows old for me.

Kimberley Peirce – the thinking woman’s director

I had the chance at the Sydney Film Festival to attend a Q&A session with Kimberley Peirce, the director of Boys Don’t Cry, about her new film Stop-Loss.

I guess the thing I love most about her filmmaking is that she’s so good at exploring raw human emotion, and her films have an authentic edge to them . She’s also excellent at getting the most from actors who have never shown their potential before. What Pierce did for Hilary Swank and Chloe Sevigny in Boys Don’t Cry I think she did for Ryan Phillipe and Abbie Cornish in Stop-Loss.

Peirce talked about the process of making the film, how it evolved from IM-ing her brother in Iraq, to a documentary featuring actual war footage filmed by soldiers, through to a fiction film.

She ultimately decided on making it a fiction film because documentaries are “then” and fiction films are “now”. It makes everything so much more immediate, and the story was an amalgamation of real-life stories and experiences.

This was the same approach she used in Boys Don’t Cry, where she took evidence from real-life but made a character-driven story, rather than just a re-hashing of facts and transcripts. What I got from Peirce was a sense of her being a very cerebral filmmaker, always thinking about the implications and effects of each shot or each story point.

So she’s got the ethics and research skills of a documentarian and the gift of a storyteller. It makes for damn powerful filmmaking. And she’s pretty cute too

Gaysploitation. Are we doing it to ourselves?

Reuters claim that gay films are doing worse than ever at the box office and with critics, despite the success of Brokeback Mountain and TV shows like Brothers & Sisters. They also claim that the rise of gay-themed cable channels like Logo and Here! are contributing to the proliferation of “gaysploitation” films, along the lines of the blaxploitation films of the 1970s.

As much as many people love the fact that there is now dedicated channels for gay content, it is true that the existence of them, and the need for more cheap, reusable gay content as a result, has probably contributed to lowering the bar.

This will continue as long as queer content is locked out of (or we don’t aspire to reach) mainstream distribution channels. Gay audiences are all too willing to download crappy video content for free on the web or watch gay schlock on cable TV.

It used to be that films were launched at festivals in the hope of securing mainstream distribution in cinemas. Now, according to Hollywood Reporter, film festivals are simply launching pads for DVD and cable distribution. Hence, standards are falling because the cable channels are clamouring for stuff they can get on the cheap and resell quickly to a salivating audience.

So, even if queer people ARE willing to get off their couches and support queer cinema at festivals, most of what we’re getting is nowhere near as good as it was ten years ago, because it doesn’t need to be. No matter how bad it is, it will get a run on cable, fund itself adequately and perpetuate this low-quality cycle.

There are of course two ways of looking at this. Some say that the fact that people are recognising the need for queer content – and just getting it made regardless of quality – is a huge leap forward for queer entertainment. I think that because we’re willing to settle for less it means that nobody will take that next step into developing gay projects with substance.

It takes real talent to produce films like Brokeback Mountain that attract new audiences but where queer content isn’t compromised. That kind of talent isn’t being nurtured in our community. Crossover success relies on established directors such as Ang Lee taking big risks and dipping their toes in gay waters.

We legitimise the scraps thrown at us over and over again. It’s either that or starve. Despite the occasional exception, we are headed down a slippery slope towards mediocrity in our entertainment. We’re a legitimate market, and we’re limiting ourselves.

Maybe we need to stop snacking on junk food, go a little hungry for a while, and really demand the good stuff whenever we choose to consume.