Film Review: House of Boys

Luxembourg – Delux Productions

Rating: *

Have you ever found yourself thinking, ‘I wish someone would make a gay version of Coyote Ugly, throw in a bit of Showgirls, and use it to depict the horror of AIDS’? Well, now you’re in luck.

Set in 1984 and told in a fairytale style, House of Boys is the story of beautiful blond boy Frank (Layke Anderson) as he runs away from his boring high-school life in Luxembourg to go to Amsterdam. Quickly abandoned by his travelling companion, he finds solace in the House of Boys, a male cabaret and strip club run by the elegant but controlling Madame (Udo Kier). There he meets a host of other dancers, but his eye is caught by American – and nominally straight – Jake (Benn Northover). Their love blossoms, but is cut short when Jake is diagnosed with AIDS – at that time only just beginning to be understood by doctors.

The film is so beset by problems it seems to be made up of little else. The one-dimensional characters each seem designed to tick a different box, but somehow fail to display any distinctiveness. The acting is poor, especially from Anderson and Northover, who both seem unequal to the weightier moments they have to tackle – not that they’re terribly convincing in the lighter ones, either. Steven Webb, as transsexual Angelo, tries hard, but he is hollow under the makeup. The only ones who escape with credit are Kier and Eleanor David as his gentle right-hand woman. To be fair, the script the actors have to deliver is painfully bad: characters don’t converse in House of Boys, but quote clichés at one another.

To go through every illogicality and inexplicability in House of Boys would be exhausting. However, it is hard to savage the film, as it has clearly been a very personal project for director Jean-Claude Schlim. It is dedicated to all those who died from AIDS-related complications and all those living with HIV, but the nobility of its cause and worthiness of its message (and it is a worthy message), do not excuse the heavy-handed and mawkish way in which the subject is handled.

The film’s portrayal of the disease is so trite it borders on offensive. Apparently its graphic medical accuracy has made it controversial, but that misses the point. The tragedy of AIDS lies in what it does to the people we love: a dedication to greater realism is a race to the cinematic bottom if it is visited upon characters we do not care about. The bond between Frank and Jake is formed so quickly and seemingly without cause that we have no time to feel invested in them, and any truth that might remain is entirely obscured by cliché-ridden sentimentality. A wasted cameo from Stephen Fry as a kindly doctor only serves to remind us this is emotional spoon-feeding.

In an earlier scene, Madame stands enraptured by a recording of Klaus Nomi, by then already dying of AIDS, singing the air of the Cold Genius from Purcell’s King Arthur. It is a truly unfortunate point of comparison, as it reminds us of the originality, power and haunting beauty this film utterly lacks.

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