BY EDWIN JAHIEL
TRICK (1999) *** Directed by Jim Fall.Written by Jason Schafer. Photography, Terry Stacey. Editing, Brian A. Kates. Production design, Jody Asnes. Music, David Friedman. Producers, Eric d'Arbeloff, Fall and Ross Katz. Cast: Christian Campbell (Gabriel), Brad Beyer (Rich), Lacey Kohl (Genevieve), Tori Spelling (Katherine), John Paul Pitoc (Mark), Clinton Leupp (Miss Coco Peru), et al. A Fine Line Features release. 90 minutes. R (language, sexuality, toplessness)
Trick is a gay gay film. No, this is not a typo, since both meanings of gay are intended, as Trick is a rather upbeat romantic comedy. Nowadays gay films are out of the closet and into the street. Gayness has stopped being camouflaged or apologetic or sad or militant or whatever. It is treated above-board and openly. Trick is a good case of a movie that's entirely matter-of-fact in its subject and treatment.
The aptly-name Gabriel is a pretty angelic-looking, low-key gay young man who aspires to song-writing in the old tradition of musicals. He is helped (or is he hindered?) by his best friend since high-school days. She us Katherine, a hyper-kinetic actress. To give a demonstration Gabe sits at the piano and Kate sings and tap-dances. It's quite funny.
Gabe is a relative loner, and on the shy side. He shares an apartment with Rich who is heterosexual with a vengeance, as he regularly preempts their lodgings so as to activate his libido with a string of women. This forces Gabe to spend a lot of time out of the apartment.
On such an evening, Gabe decides to have a look at the rich gay scene of which he is not a part. At a strip bar, he and the athletic-looking go-go boy Mark get each other's attention. Then, by coincidence, they meet on the subway, where Mark energetically picks up Gabe. One thing leading to another, the active Mark and the rather passive Gabe spend a long night (The Long Night is the title of a film and the essence of several others) looking for a place to be alone together. But they get foiled time and again, in often comic ways. However, what started out as a search for sex ends up as the beginning of a love affair.
As the mini-Odyssey proceeds among the night-life clubs and activities of gays, there are several asides, parentheses, interruptions and characters, several of those quite entertaining. The film does not occur in real time, since events go from one day to the next dawn, but it has a sort of classic unity of time, place and subject.
Some scenes go on for too long before the movie cuts to the chase, yet many other scenes are well-times. Among others, they show quite cannily the transformation of Ben from timidity and embarrassment to sexual openness, and of Mark from stud-ness to caring (and from what we thought of as just a body to someone with brains).
The subject is not really terribly interesting, nor would it be in a non-gay film. In fact, with variations, a some heterosexual movies have been about a man and a woman looking for a place to be together. I am also thinking in particular of some Czech, Polish or Hungarian films where the guilty party was a Communist society with a terrible dearth of apartments--even rooms. The political subtext added much. especially in the indirect ways needed to make such works acceptable to official censors.
Yet what Trick lacks in originality is made up by its colorfulness and by its succession of solid comic inventions. E.g. a drag queen called Coco Peru with her flamboyance and advice to Gabe, in the toilets; or, in a bar, an older man's funny new song "Come to gusta mi pinga"; or, in Gabe's and Rich's place, a woman who is a caricature of Marilyn Monroe bears her breasts and "philosophizes."
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