marriage

Chris and Don. A Love Story (2007, Directors: Tina Mascara and Guido Santi): Don Bachardy was just 16 when he met Christopher Isherwood on a gay beach in Southern California. Prudently, Isherwood waited until Don was 18 before making his move. That is, if a 48-year-old man picking up a teen­ager can ever be con­sidered prudent. Despite a 30-year age dif­fer­ence, Don and Chris built a lasting rela­tion­ship that con­tinued until Isherwood’s death (at the age of 82) in 1986. Based mostly on inter­views with Bachardy, now in his 70s, Chris and Don is a sweet remem­brance of a unique rela­tion­ship, but as a film, I found it a bit flat.

I knew before seeing it that I’d be com­paring it with Bob and Jack’s 52-Year Adventure, which explored sim­ilar ter­ritory, but with the benefit of having both parties alive to tell each side of the story. Sweet as Don’s remem­brances of Chris might be, there’s not much drama there. Talking about a well-loved spouse who’s been gone more than twenty years is bound to become an exer­cise tainted by nos­talgia. Though there were a few bumps in the rela­tion­ship, Don (or the dir­ectors) seemed to gloss over them.

Perhaps most uncom­fort­able for me was the vast dif­fer­ence in their ages, as well as the fact that Isherwood was a well-known writer while Don was an admitted celebrity-seeker. Both men sought things in their rela­tion­ship which are gen­er­ally best found out­side of a romantic entan­gle­ment. The number of times the father-son dynamic was men­tioned was remark­able, and yet the dir­ectors didn’t dig very deeply into what could have been dis­turbing ter­ritory. Isherwood found in Bachardy the son he never had, as well as the youth he had lost. In return, Bachardy found a replace­ment for his dis­ap­proving father, as well as a teacher and someone who could intro­duce him to other famous people. There is a moment when Don recalls his frus­tra­tion at being com­pletely formed by Isherwood, and I’d have been curious to see more of that, espe­cially since he now seems to have com­pletely made peace with the fact that everything he has achieved in his life (he is an accom­plished por­trait painter) has been under the pat­ronage of his husband.

Technically, the film is solid but unad­ven­turous, although it does attempt some whimsy by anim­ating images Isherwood drew of his pet names for him­self (an old horse) and Bachardy (a cat). I found the anim­a­tions crudely executed, though my wife thought they were cute.

Overall, then, it felt like a bit of a missed oppor­tunity to me. I can under­stand the dir­ectors’ reti­cence since they had such great access to Bachardy, but I think some tougher ques­tions could have made the film stronger.

Official site of the film

(6/10)

Tagged as: aging, homosexuality, marriage

{ Comments on this entry are closed }