DVD Review - Violet Tendencies

A fruit fly fantasy comes true. This fag hag romance of the decade is charming and funny. It's a delightful, modern-day, fairy tale, except the fairies are really buff men with no wings. There is a unicorn who has a really long horn but it's not on his head.

 

Mindy Cohn (The Facts of Life) stars as Violet, a 40-year-old fruit fly, which is kind of like a bar fly but one that only buzzes around gay bars. In fact, her roommate and only friends are gay men. She loves them and would do anything to support them, but it may be to the detriment of her own personal life.

 

Violet sees fellow fruit flies getting married and leaving the bar scene. Yet, she still hangs on. Violet wants to find a man for herself and possibly get married, but she starts to feel like she'll never find a straight man if all she does is surround herself with gay men. She decides to distance herself from gay culture and in many ways stop acting like a gay man herself.

 

Jesse Archer co-stars as Luke, Violet's slutty roommate, a character-trait he carries over from his previous film A Four Letter Word (2007). This time his boyfriend, Darian, played by Adrian Armas, wants him to end the slutty behavior and embrace monogamy. Luke, however, thinks monogamy is some kind of disease.

 

Samuel Whitten also co-stars as Riley, Violet's co-worker at a fashion house and former male model. His husband, Markus, played by Swedish actor-director Casper Andreas, who is also the director of this movie, wants to adopt a baby. But, children are the last things that Riley wants.

 

Both the issues facing Luke and Riley cause them to distance themselves from the things they know and start acting in different ways. Violet does a similar thing. After some frisky friends turn out to be not so frisky, she eventually does find herself a boyfriend named Verne and he wants her to abandon her liberal, progressive lifestyle and lead a more conservative, traditional one. For Violet, Luke and Riley, all three deal with leaving behind their old lives and facing new possibilities or opportunities that may advance them or cause them to deny who they truly are.

 

After this movie screened last year at Philadelphia's Qfest, director Casper Andreas was on hand to answer questions and he said that this movie is the third in a trilogy of sorts that began with Slutty Summer (2004) and continued with A Four Letter Word. The trilogy is loosely tied together because all three involve the character of Luke. He's been present in each entry in this so-called trilogy that usually centers on someone else looking for love in the gay world. This one may be his most accessible for mainstream audiences, if for no other reason than for Mindy Cohn.

 

Mindy Cohn is amazing here. You are in love with her from the single second she appears on screen. She is totally adorable, totally loveable, totally fabulous, and totally hilarious! She handles some raunchy and embarassing humor supremely well. I don't think anyone will want to know what a fupa or biss is, but it will certainly have you cracking up. Cohn is also completely beautiful here. She's like Sarah Jessica Parker's character from Sex and the City, that same kind of spirit and energy.

 

I also appreciate how Jesse Archer who also wrote this screenplay offers up something different that you don't see in gay films. It comes to a point where more than one person has to come out, not as gay but come out as hetereosexual. Violet is not the only fruit fly. There are more and the twist is they're not all women. There are some male fruit flies who are also called fag stags.

 

The idea that a straight man would want to hang out in a gay bar and befriend gay men is seemingly a mythical one, but, this movie sets forth that it's not mythical. In a way, this movie further breeds acceptance in a more subversive fashion. Andreas also makes great use of New York City. As one of his characters marvels over architecture so does Andreas. Cinematography-wise, this is Andreas' best-looking movie so far. He really takes in the beauty of Manhattan.

 

Five Stars out of Five.

Not Rated But Recommended for Mature Audiences.

Running Time: 1 hr. and 39 mins.