Shelter [2007] [DVD]

A Generously Spirited Love Story
“Pure being,” a friend of mine once said enviously of the surfers riding the waves along the Southern California coast some thirty years ago. Though there was a strict demarcation between the gay section of the beaches and those parts that belonged to the surfers alone, even then a few surfers hung out at night in the Breakers or one of the other gay bars along Highway One, especially in Laguna. There, what seemed so easy a life out in the Pacific, just following the next big waves one after another, became less obvious and more conflicted. Stories about coming out have so dominated many gay films that the theme has developed into an archetype, a genre of its own with endless variations: from dark into light, from secrets into revelation. In Shelter, Zach is a young artist who has turned down a scholarship at CalArts in order to stay home to care for his nephew Cody. Zach has inherited the family gene, from his mother he says. All the concerns and nearly all the love the five year old Cody should find in his mother, Zach’s sister Jeanne, he gets from Zach alone. Zach has had a long time girlfriend, but everything about their relationship is tentative, on hold. When he meets his best friend’s older brother again after several years, they surf together, just as they used to. But Shaun is an openly gay man who has published a novel which Zach has read. Shaun’s sexuality is no secret to Zach, but Zach’s is to Shaun–as it may still be to Zach himself, at least in the sense that he has never before been with a man (or in all likelihood a woman; his responses to his girlfriend are mostly tepid, except when his real longings frighten him). What Zach wants more than anything are family and love. After a night during which he and Shaun kiss, Zach is happy but its meaning is still uncertain. He rides the waves, paces the deck of the house he shares with his sister and nephew in what he calls San Pedro’s ghetto, then drives back to the family house on the beach where Shaun is staying to recuperate emotionally after a boyfriend has dumped him in L.A. What follows between Zach and Shaun is stunning in its impact upon both men. Their coupling, however, is not filmed as soft core porn, all or nearly all about the physical alone, but as love scenes. What matters most is the feeling shown through their eyes. All the acting in this emotionally profound film is superb, but the love beyond words Zach and Shaun manage to express just with their eyes has almost never before been seen in movies, not even, say, in Brokeback where to some degree it was often having to be hidden by one or the other man. What follows in Shelter is Zach’s coming to understand what that love means to him for the rest of his life. Part of this is the usual problem of coming out to his friends and to his sister, though nearly all that effort is accomplished for him; they know before he tells them. But he must also come to see himself better; he must change, too, as he tells Shaun later. Part of that transformation is his discovering more fully who Shaun is. Shaun has been criticized by some viewers for being too patient with Zach. But patience is part of love, one of the virtues that help people abide all the messes we make or almost make out of our lives. When Zach learns that Shaun has mailed his application and portfolio to CalArts, he sees, quietly, the man’s generosity. In a way, Shaun has shown that he loves Zach as kindly and patiently as Zach loves Cody. Zach’s and Shaun’s erotic communion is intense. But this is a love that is also caritas, deep, perhaps abiding. It is his recognition of that possibiity, if not certainty that leads Zach back to Shaun, especially after a talk with his girlfriend in which he says his only regret (about being gay) is that he wanted to make a family with her. In this moment between them, it is her goodness which allows her to encourage Zach to return to Shaun, to the different family he might find now through Shaun and with Cody. At least, she says, he should try. Near the end, after Zach and Shaun drive to the house to pick up Cody from Zach’s sister who is moving to Portland with her rough boyfriend, Zach turns to Shaun and takes his hand in his. It is a gesture of love between them as telling as any more passionate embrace. The seemingly unencumbered lives both men had known together surfing when younger–Shaun the master, Zach the pupil in a running joke between them–has grown into a love that is in every sense good. I think this is one of the best movies ever made about gay men, searchingly decent and generously spirited about love without any loss in erotic force. It is also wonderfully realized, except in a few of the songs on the soundtrack, in both the director’s eye and the hearts of all the performers, even those in relatively minor roles (Gabe is as perfect a surfer dude as one can imagine, but with more than the usual soul). But Trevor Wright as Zach gives to his character an especially touching complexity. Zach is in some ways still a kid, talking in the lingo of surfers, tagging buildings, riding his skateboard. But he’s also emotionally older than everyone else in his life, already committed to a way of living many people never come to. His coming out is more painful to himself than it is to others perhaps because his need for real communion is already so great. Yet he finds it. This is emotionally complex work for so young an actor. But every gesture he makes, everything he expresses is true; no moment ever feels false or contrived. What the movie leaves one with is a sense of both the hopes and ambiguities of moral being, a far more difficult, yet greater life than merely riding the waves of one’s youth.

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I don’t have complains with the product itself, packaging is substantial and the quality of the footage is great. The only downside is that there are no subtitles. In terms of shipping, it took a while to process and send but it arrived on time and the shipping packing was alright.

日英ともに字幕がなく、自力のつたない英語力で見るしかなかった。他の作品との比較をする場ではないが、今までみたゲイ作品では個人的に、一番素晴らしい、感動できた作品だと思っている。人間関係が面白く、主人公が愛してしまう彼は友達の兄、姉も「ねじれた人」で、男や酒に溺れ、シングルマザーなのに子供より男という人物。その息子は主人公を父親視している、とねじれた人を描いている作品でもある。姉が後半主人公をゲイだとなじる箇所は、「貴方に言われたくない」と思ってしまった。ゲイだとなじられるシーンって必ず出てきますよね？汗悩んだ主人公が最後に選択した自分自身は、心を打たれて涙したし、本来「彼女的な存在」の主人公が「彼」と手を繋いで[引っ張って]、姉貴の前に暗に彼を差し出した想いは、「よくやった!!」と心で叫んでいた。彼ら三人家族の行く末は、子供の精神成長が心配だが、きっと上手くやって行く筈だと信じている。

Voilà une très jolie histoire, à voir et à revoir. Pleine de tendresse et d’émotion. Ce film aborde le sujet de l’homosexualité tout en douceur, à l’image du premier câlin de Zach et Shaun, mais aussi les problèmes de famille, d’enfant, de responsabilités. Zach est touchant à la fois si jeune et si mûr, à prendre soin de son père malade, de son irresponsable et égoïste sœur (que vous allez adorer détester !) , et de son adorable neveux Cody. Pas facile de tracer son chemin et décider de son avenir quand tant de chaînes vous retiennent. Le personnage de Shaun est un peu plus en retrait, mais il est craquant. Bref, un joli film, plein de lumière, un happy end comme on en rêve, et une superbe bande son.4,5/5