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This is the blog of Ian Rosales Casocot. Filipino writer. Sometime academic. Former backpacker. Twink bait. Hamster lover.

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Sunday, January 04, 2015

entry arrow8:46 PM | Film #5: Matthew Warchus' Pride (2014)



Near the end of Matthew Warchus' Pride (2014), a grandmother from a down-and-out mining town in Wales goes to London to join a gay pride march, and upon disembarking from her car at the parade's starting point, she calls out with more than a touch of affection and sweetness: "Where are my lesbians? Where are my lesbians?" Whereupon, said lesbians -- dear friends she has made in this story about the unlikely alliance between gay and lesbian activists and striking miners in Thatcherite England -- come upon her, and we get the group hug we knew was coming. Our hearts swell, and knowing that this is based on a true story can only get us having high hopes for the future of humanity again. This, in a nutshell, is the overall design and heart that we get from the film, a feel-good "we-can-do-this-together-as-a-community" narrative that is so well-made and so well-embodied by its huge ensemble of actors that we long surrender to its sentimentality even before we've realised it. And we find that we don't mind actually. This is very much the LGBT sibling of Peter Cattaneo's The Full Monty (1997), where comedy meets English social commentary, and makes laughing cry-babies out of all of us while learning a thing or two about social struggles in contemporary history. This is something totally earned by the film, however, and we can only wish that such a crowd-pleaser can attract the crowd it has not so far engaged in the box office.

#NotAReview #Cinema2015Project

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