Freier Fall

Free Fall has shown up on a lot of lists of good gay films and while it's viewing it's really nothing you haven't seen before if you watch a lot of queer movies. How you receive Free Fall might be based on your personal experience dealing with your sexuality (if you're one of those later-in-life guys) but more than likely it'll have a lot to do with how attractive you find the lead male characters, Marc and Kay, to be. Plot wise Free Fall very much like Broke Back Mountain (a manly straight guy discovers, with the help of a more aware acquaintance, that he's not so straight). I also has a lot in common with some 80s and 90s films and TV plots (man who is happily settled/settling in to family life discovers he's more than just a little curious about guys and how that revelation wreaks havoc on his life). Free Fall is fairly well crafted, it has an unvarnished, unsentimental quality which makes it seem like an almost cliché moody European film. The film is tightly focused on the main characters (Marc, his pregnant girlfriend, and Kay) which creates a sometimes uncomfortable intimacy. But beyond the passionate relationship of the male leads (which is often shown in a cliché queer movie fashion; fast and hard and quick) there's not much here. One has to wonder if Free Fall would be so well received if Kay and Marc weren't such good looking guys. Had this been the story of two guys who weren't ripped and chiseled but two average guys leading average lives who found themselves in love it might have been a more interesting film.