Clapham Junction

The problem with Kevin Elyot's (writer) and Adrian Shergold's (director) boldly ambitious "Clapham Junction" is that it attempts to bite off so much more than it can possibly chew in just under two hours. Elyot goes for an epic structure in an intimate setting. At times it looks like he's trying to cram in forty years of gay sexual history into a night and day and it just doesn't work. I wish I could have liked it more because there is so much here to admire and spread over, maybe six weekly episodes, he might have got away with it but as it stands it just doesn't ring true. This may well be down to Elyot's reliance on coincidence. All the characters seem to be inter-related. Nothing wrong with that, you might say; it has worked as a backdrop to many splendid dramas in the past but you have to suspend quite a lot of disbelief when in a city the size of London with a sizeable gay population, all the gay characters keep bumping into each other in clubs, public toilets, on Clapham Common itself or at dinner parties or just in living across the street from each other. It's a banal plot device and you can't help feeling Elyot would have made his point a lot better if the stories hadn't been connected.

Nor is Elyot particularly good at serving up dialogue that sounds believable or naturalistic. The characters either talk in sound-bites or are reduced to double-entendres. If he can get in a crass joke, he does and nobody comes out of it well. But at least he tries. There is hardly an aspect of gay life, (or of 'straight' society's reaction to it), that he leaves unexplored. He even gives us the self-loathing bit of gay trade who beats up his pick-up for the night, (and later gets beaten up himself), and the film's most successful story is the one between the pedophile and the fourteen year old boy who worships him, (this only let down by casting a twenty-three year old actor as the boy).

It is also very unevenly acted. There may be an in-joke of sorts in casting James Wilby and Rupert Graves, (the lovers from "Maurice"), Wilby as a closeted married man and Graves as an out and aging queen he eyes up in a toilet and later meets at a dinner party. Perhaps if these parts had been better written neither actor would have looked so foolish. The best performances come from Jospeh Mawle and Luke Tredaway as the pedophile and the boy and it's very much to their credit that they lift a very difficult subject and make it moving and oddly romantic. Detractors will, of course, find this story the most objectionable for obvious reasons although the producers have cushioned the blow by casting the obviously older Tredaway as the boy.

The film itself takes as its basis the real-life murder of Jody Dobrowski on Clapham Common in 2005 but the impact is weakened by the episodic structure. Ultimately "Clapham Junction" is neither fish nor fowl but an unwieldy hybrid. Its heart may be in the right place but you can't help but feel it does its subject, (whatever you take its subject to be), something of an injustice.

The major reviews of "Clapham Junction" on IMDb have collectively been on target. The characters are lightly linked and do little to show the positive aspects of gay life. The performances and technical aspects were workmanlike. Luke Treadaway (Theo) and Joseph Mawle (Tim) were the most memorable.

The high IMDb viewer rating (currently 7.50) might be lower if it were not for student Theo's unambiguously nude scenes.

What seems to me not to be on target is the write-up on the USA DVD package: "Inspired by True Events / In this riveting film about sexual tolerance in modern society, the paths of several men intersect during a dramatic thirty-six hours in which their lives are changed forever. After another man falls victim to a violent gay-bashing incident, the homosexual community of Clapham Junction comes together to bring the assailants to justice."

My USA DVD timed out at 99 minutes and had SDH English subtitles and three previews as its extra features. You might compare the timing shown on the IMDb listing. The result is acceptable; I hoped the film would be more focused, not longer.

Comparing it to the other European heterosexual crap we get to see on TV, I would rate this gay one into the top league of good movies. As a gay man, I wonder why I like it. The message of this movie is that gays have ONLY bitchy sex, on public toilets and all of that in a violent way. To put this straight, gay life isn't that way! I'm not a fan of conspiracy theories but somehow, I hear all my alarm bells ringing. To make it short, the movie is good for people who are gay or who have at least experience with it. To all the newbies to that subject it's an anti gay movie. Please remember this story is fiction. 'Not a documentary!

Over a two day period a series of interconnected events impact a disparate group of Londoners.

Occasionally brilliant, often shocking and ultimately depressing exploration of contemporary urban gay sexuality and the resultant array of societal attitudes across age and class. In part influenced by the horrendously brutal murder of Jody Dobrowski on Clapham Common in 2005, Elyot creates a host of deeply unpleasant characters as the main focus of his exploration into homosexuality, its surface acceptance and ever-present homophobia across all social strata's today.

Whilst astonishingly frank in its depiction of casual, anonymous sexual encounters in public toilets and open spaces (Clapham Common, Hamstead Heath) and the contrast between being 'out' versus being closeted and covert, Elyot falls back on the clichéd and contrived device of 'the dinner party' to enable a host of views to bubble up to the surface. Perhaps it's the environment Elyot knows best so finds it easiest to write about, but it's still hard to gauge what his intention is with his moneyed and privileged group of diners – are they intended as a representation of middle class views and behaviours? In addition, why is practically every character either unpleasantly selfish or irritatingly naïve? It may well be that the well-heeled dinner party set do have these views and opinions, but if they are so singularly unpleasant, how can we care? It's difficult to determine exactly what Elyot is trying to say with Clapham Junction – that homophobia is still real and in consequence very dangerous? That the general view is that gay men can be universally accepted but only if they behave like the wealthy, urban, heterosexual upper middle-classes? That heterosexual people don't have any kind of secretive, covert sex life? No, straight people don't go cruising for anonymous sex in toilets or parks, but that's only because they don't need to.

Elyot paints a deeply depressing picture in Clapham Junction, which may in part reflect the truth, but he fails to find any counterpoint. All is bleak, all is dangerous - hatred, bigotry and prejudice prevail. The minor strand of the young black boy playing his violin in the face of intolerance and persecution only serves to crack the nut with a hammer - we've already learnt that it takes bravery to be who you are in the face of adversity (witness the deeply unsettling, painfully honest encounter between Theo and Tim), so why bludgeon the viewer with this message a second time? The closing scene is gratuitous in light of all we have witnessed before.

Shergold and Elyot are well served by their actors, with Treadaway and Mawle in particular offering spectacularly honest, real and brave performances – their plot-strand is perhaps the most challenging, the most unsettling but ultimately the most truthful story, and this time the concluding lack of hope is in proportion and understandable.

Moments of brilliance then, from all involved, but in the end Clapham Junction is deeply flawed and devoid of any shred of hope. Is that all there is?

A truly brilliant piece of work. The writing is creative, astute and exceptionally well crafted. The direction creates exactly the right mood for the story and brings out the best in the writing and the acting. The actors play each character so perfectly right from the beginning that you truly believe them - exactly what should happen! The story is not for the faint hearted and though explicit, it is never gratuitous. The story is written to challenge you and it does so superbly. Whether you like the content or not, you can't say it isn't a good piece of work. It makes you think and it makes you feel - and you can't ask for more than that.