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Dismissing the bizarre, decidedly unerotic anomaly of Basic Instinct II (sample dialogue: “Even Oedipus didn’t see his mother coming!”), David Morrissey has been quietly fashioning a respectable career for himself on both the silver and small screen for the best part of the last decade.  Be it Blackpool, The Deal, State of Play or the masterful Red Riding trilogy, the actor has made great strides in resurrecting the old lustre of once vanquished: namely, original drama that bothers to respect the intelligence of its audience. Such is the sense you get from the man himself, who intones with rare conviction and an obvious intelligence when talking of his experiences within a cynical industry. Which marks the resolute failure of his feature-length directorial debut – Don’t Worry About Me – as all the more wounding.

Shot in 2007, and starring unknowns Helen Elizabeth and James Brough who also function as the film’s writers, Don’t Worry About Me is a long-gestating passion project from the Liverpuddlian actor. Unfolding over the course of twenty-four hours in the director’s hometown, the simplistic narrative charts the course of two misfit ‘lovers’ as they navigate the streets of this vibrant European locale, in the process discovering emotional truths about themselves, their home lives, and the complexities of contemporary romance. Or so one assumes this is what all involved had intended.  What ensues in reality is a neat premise that superficially recalls Richard Linklater’s one-two punch of Before Sunrise and Sunset by way of Terence Davies’ Of Time and the City in its immediate plot similarities, but lacks the poignancy, cinematic dexterity, or humour of either. A Merseyside In Search of a Midnight Kiss this ain’t. Instead, the film is skittish, unfocused and lacking in overall cohesion; and in aiming for a middle ground between cutesy and cathartic, fails to convincingly strike either chord.

Problems primarily arise from the character of Brough’s David – an overly laddish and consistently unsympathetic creation that never rises above the level of caricature, save for a brief scene where he pummels a stuffed teddy bear on a beach. The wonderfully nuanced performance of his co-star, however, is perhaps the film’s only redeeming feature. Taken in isolation, Elizabeth imbues her character (a frankly ludicrous mix of raunchy Bookies Assistant and pious Catholic bedside saint) with an honesty unwarranted in the overall context of the film, as evinced in scenes such as those where she breaks down in a confessional booth over an adolescent abortion. Such moments, whilst accomplished in and of themselves, encapsulate everything that is wrong with a film that is well-intentioned but ultimately benign, inessential, and straining to justify its own existence.

This streak of undeserved ‘profundity’, coupled with an overly static directorial style that lacks any real authorial presence, renders Don’t Worry About Me not so much a cinematic experience as an inadvertent Tourist Board advertisement punctuated with an occasional pratfall or lover’s tiff.

In an accomplished career that has included collaborations with Stephen Frears and Paul Abbott, Morrissey would do well to return to what made him famous in the first instance.

Perhaps the most brutal and punishing scene in Todd Haynes’ 1991 ‘queer’ drama Poison – a film largely renowned for its barrage of brutal, punishing scenes – is one in which a young homosexual is beaten, verbally taunted and, with his jaw prised open, spat on by a group of jeering male peers. The boy quietly wilts in a corner, petals being rained on him from above, the bright blue sky and soft, sepia tones jarringly incongruous to the horror being inflicted upon him. The scene, dubbed “repellent” by many on its initial release, is now seen as one of many decisive turning points depicting the homosexual experience onscreen: unapologetic in its imagery, unflinching in its symbolic violence, though applicable to any social group that had been deemed abnormal by contemporary society. In reflecting the ostensible prejudices of a straight audience back at them, Haynes had successfully rendered homosexuality not as the unique affliction of a few, but a wider problem of social exclusion and confused, rootless identity that had the potential to affect all who could bear to watch.

Haynes’ underrated feature-length debut remains possibly the most powerful example of the so-called ‘New Queer Cinema’ movement of the early 1990s, which was a rare confluence of common themes and purposes from gay directors that aimed not only to redress the imbalance of negative cinematic stereotypes of the past, but also to shock its viewers out of their complacency. Drawing upon the underground experimentation of their cinematic forbears (Kenneth Anger, Derek Jarman, et al) and flourishing at Sundance in a period that would also give rise to Quentin Tarantino and Steven Soderbergh, this clutch of films that included Gus Van Sant’s Mala Noche, Tom Kalin’s Swoon and Gregg Araki’s The Living End, announced these directors as major cinematic talents, and not simply gay ones. Their films were bigger than life, often abrasive, always deliberately confrontational; seeming to encapsulate the possibilities of American independent filmmaking at the turn of twenty-first century. Now, in 2010, with their names rapidly becoming as anonymous as straight indie icons like Whit Stillman and Hal Hartley, one wonders whatever happened to this school of cinema which may splutter into life occasionally (Mysterious Skin, Savage Grace, Tarnation), but has ultimately been superseded by an onslaught of benign camp, ironic kitsch, and straight actors ‘gaying up’ in often successful attempts to win Academy Awards.

Painting a picture of current ‘gay’ cinema this bleak is perhaps somewhat unfair, as it is a fate that has befallen all American independent cinema of late, marked by being toothless, mawkish, and often bereft of any individualism that dares venture outside of an accepted comfort zone of ‘kook’ and ‘quirk’. The perception in the mainstream, however, is decidedly different. Surely an Oscar year that promises major nominations from three openly gay men (Nine, A Single Man, Precious), coupled with several blockbusters that peddle subtextual homoerotic themes featuring “very butch homosexuals” as their protagonists (Sherlock Holmes and, for my money, Star Trek) is reason in and of itself for celebrating the gains wrought by gay rights in recent decades. You need only glance at the meteoric rise of Gus Van Sant from underground cult figure to mainstream celebrated Oscar-winner, with Milk the latest and most successful prestige picture after Brokeback Mountain and Philadelphia to be spotlighted by the Academy. Similar conclusions may be drawn about savage iconoclast John Waters, who used to make films about drag queens eating faeces, and is presumably now basking in the glow of royalty cheques following both the remake and Broadway success of Hairspray. John Cameron Mitchell, too, has admirably traversed the boundaries of gender identity in Hedwig and the Angry Inch and Shortbus. This is without mentioning the brilliant ‘coming out’ scene in Bryan Singer’s X-Men II, gay presence on television in Queer as Folk, The L Word and Doctor Who, Lynn Shelton’s Humpday, the international prestige of Pedro Almodóvar, or even the ubiquity of Sacha Baron Cohen’s Brüno. It would appear, on the surface of things, a great time to be gay.

The willingness of Hollywood to accommodate only the aspects of homosexuality that accord with award prestige or box office expediency, though, has the potential to either expose pre-existing bigotry or simply reinforce it. One need only look at the way in which such lazy stereotyping has been exploited in the witless Horne & Corden sketch show with its screeching, casual homophobia as objectionable as a blackface minstrel show; whilst ‘You’re so gay’ remains the schoolyard pejorative du jour. The limitations of cinema in perpetuating this singular viewpoint is particularly noticeable in the dearth of documentaries – films such as Before Stonewall and The Life and Times of Harvey Milk, once so decisively instrumental and examples of cinema itself instigating change by debunking harmful myth, now a thing of the past. Robbed of any essential edginess that was present in mainstream cinema as recently as Bound, The Talented Mr. Ripley and Peter Jackson’s masterful Heavenly Creatures, the consignment of New Queer Cinema and its ilk to the rubbish-heap of cinema history is emblematic of both how normalised and unadventurous gay cinema has become; homosexuality something to be achieved as readily as Nicole Kidman donning a false nose and flouncing about doing her best Virginia Woolf impression.

1991 never seemed so long ago.

Perhaps the most brutal and punishing scene in Todd Haynes’ 1991 ‘queer’ drama Poison – a film largely renowned for its barrage of brutal, punishing scenes – is one in which a young homosexual is beaten, verbally taunted and, with his jaw prised open, spat on by a group of jeering male peers. The boy quietly wilts in a corner, petals being rained on him from above, the bright blue sky and soft, sepia tones jarringly incongruous to the horror being inflicted upon him.

The scene, dubbed “repellent” by many on its initial release, is now seen as one of many decisive turning points depicting the homosexual experience onscreen: unapologetic in its imagery, unflinching in its symbolic violence, though applicable to any social group that had been deemed abnormal by contemporary society. In reflecting the ostensible prejudices of a straight audience back at them, Haynes had successfully rendered homosexuality not as the unique affliction of a few, but a wider problem of social exclusion and confused, rootless identity that had the potential to affect all who could bear to watch.

Haynes’ underrated feature-length debut remains possibly the most powerful example of the so-called ‘New Queer Cinema’ movement of the early 1990s, which was a rare confluence of common themes and purposes from gay directors that aimed not only to redress the imbalance of negative cinematic stereotypes of the past, but also to shock its viewers out of their complacency. Drawing upon the underground experimentation of their cinematic forbears (Kenneth Anger, Derek Jarman, et al) and flourishing at Sundance in a period that would also give rise to Quentin Tarantino and Steven Soderbergh, this clutch of films that included Gus Van Sant’s Mala Noche, Tom Kalin’s Swoon and Gregg Araki’s The Living End, announced these directors as major cinematic talents, and not simply gay ones. Their films were bigger than life, often abrasive, always deliberately confrontational; seeming to encapsulate the possibilities of American independent filmmaking at the turn of twenty-first century.

Now, in 2010, with their names rapidly becoming as anonymous as straight indie icons like Whit Stillman and Hal Hartley, one wonders whatever happened to this school of cinema which may splutter into life occasionally (Mysterious Skin, Savage Grace, Tarnation), but has ultimately been superseded by an onslaught of benign camp, ironic kitsch, and straight actors ‘gaying up’ in often successful attempts to win Academy Awards.

Painting a picture of current ‘gay’ cinema this bleak is perhaps somewhat unfair, as it is a fate that has befallen all American independent cinema of late, marked by being toothless, mawkish, and often bereft of any individualism that dares venture outside of an accepted comfort zone of ‘kook’ and ‘quirk’. The perception in the mainstream, however, is decidedly different. Surely an Oscar year that promises major nominations from three openly gay men (Nine, A Single Man, Precious), coupled with several blockbusters that peddle subtextual homoerotic themes featuring “very butch homosexuals” as their protagonists (Sherlock Holmes and, for my money, Star Trek) is reason in and of itself for celebrating the gains wrought by gay rights in recent decades.

You need only glance at the meteoric rise of Gus Van Sant from underground cult figure to mainstream celebrated Oscar-winner, with Milk the latest and most successful prestige picture after Brokeback Mountain and Philadelphia to be spotlighted by the Academy. Similar conclusions may be drawn about savage iconoclast John Waters, who used to make films about drag queens eating faeces, and is presumably now basking in the glow of royalty cheques following both the remake and Broadway success of Hairspray. John Cameron Mitchell, too, has admirably traversed the boundaries of gender identity in Hedwig and the Angry Inch and Shortbus.

This is without mentioning the brilliant ‘coming out’ scene in Bryan Singer’s X-Men II, gay presence on television in Queer as Folk, The L Word and Doctor Who, Lynn Shelton’s Humpday, the international prestige of Pedro Almodóvar, or even the ubiquity of Sacha Baron Cohen’s Brüno. It would appear, on the surface of things, a great time to be gay.

The willingness of Hollywood to accommodate only the aspects of homosexuality that accord with award prestige or box office expediency, though, has the potential to either expose pre-existing bigotry or simply reinforce it. One need only look at the way in which such lazy stereotyping has been exploited in the witless Horne & Corden sketch show with its screeching, casual homophobia as objectionable as a blackface minstrel show; whilst ‘You’re so gay’ remains the schoolyard pejorative du jour.

The limitations of cinema in perpetuating this singular viewpoint is particularly noticeable in the dearth of documentaries – films such as Before Stonewall and The Life and Times of Harvey Milk, once so decisively instrumental and examples of cinema itself instigating change by debunking harmful myth, now a thing of the past. Robbed of any essential edginess that was present in mainstream cinema as recently as Bound, The Talented Mr. Ripley and Peter Jackson’s masterful Heavenly Creatures, the consignment of New Queer Cinema and its ilk to the rubbish-heap of cinema history is emblematic of both how normalised and unadventurous gay cinema has become; homosexuality something to be achieved as readily as Nicole Kidman donning a false nose and flouncing about doing her best Virginia Woolf impression.

1991 never seemed so long ago.