MAN IN AN ORANGE SHIRT. (2017) WRITTEN BY PATRICK GALE. DIRECTED BY MICHAEL SAMUELS. STARRING OLIVER JACKSON-COHEN, JAMES MCARDLE, JOANNA VANDERHAM, JULIAN MORRIS, DAVID GYASI, FRANCES DE LA TOUR AND VANESSA REDGRAVE. REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©
'Critically applauded BBC mini-series from the makers of BROADCHURCH AND APPLE TREE YARD, WRITTEN BY BEST-SELLING AUTHOR PATRICK GALE.'
Adam: 'Grandpa was gay...?'
Flora: 'Grandpa was gay...'
I liked this one, an LGBT film in two hour-long episodes from the BBC. It was originally broadcast as part of BBC 2's GAY BRITTANIA season commemorating the 50th anniversary of the 1967 Sexual Offences Act and it's sort of like a play in two acts, or a two-parter film set in two separate eras but each part dealing with the same subject. Namely, being gay in a society that still, maybe even today, isn't completely comfortable with gay people.
In Episode One, as it were, we're back in wartime Britain/post-war Britain and an ex-Army chap called Michael Berryman (great name for a horror actor, is that!) is about to get married to a bright young thing called Flora, who's been patiently waiting for him to come back from the war.
What Flora doesn't know about her betrothed is that he's gay, and not only that but he's already in love with a man he met while in the Army, a fellow soldier called Thomas March who is also a gifted artist. They have a brief but intense romantic affair in the cottage belonging to Michael's family. There's gay sex involved and everything...! You don't see any wieners but if firm male buttocks are your thing, then you should enjoy these scenes, snigger.
To Thomas's deep distress, Michael goes ahead with his wedding to Flora, choosing a miserable life of stiff-upper-lipped conventionality with a wife and child over a life of being true to himself. He never stops loving Thomas, however, and stands by him even when Thomas is sent to prison for twelve months for 'gross indecency,' the sort of blanket name given to homosexual acts at the time. Well, that and buggery, an unpleasant word if ever there was one.
Flora finds out the true state of affairs- pardon the pun!- when she uncovers a secret cache of love letters in a drawer, letters that have passed between the two men. She's horrified beyond belief and thinks that what they're doing is disgusting, immoral and criminal.
She agrees to stay with her husband, however, for the sake of their child and for the conventions, as long as Michael is discreet in his dealings with other men and doesn't get caught. She's turning a blind eye, in other words, for the sake of the marriage, something women have been doing for various reasons for centuries now. It's a sad situation for all three of them, with not much chance of a happy outcome.
Fast-forward to 2017 now, and Michael's grandson Adam, completely unaware of his own grandfather's homosexuality, is struggling with being a gay man in the modern world of do-as-you-please and 'app sex.' You know, app sex, where you use an app on your phone to hook up with other gay males for sex. Yes, things have certainly moved on since the gay 'Forties...!
Adam lives with his grandmother Flora (she's in her nineties now), the woman who'd endured marriage to a gay man back in the day because, frankly, there wasn't a lot she could do about the situation back then. Adam has never felt able to discuss his homosexuality with his Granny Flora, whose feelings about men being gay for each other are as strongly negative as ever, tempered as they've been by her own bad experiences.
Adam seeks refuge in sex with strangers. Take it from me, that only leads to unhappiness. He's miserable and repressed until he meets Simon, a handsome gay interior designer who has a partner, an older man named Caspar, and who's already come to terms with his own gayness.
Simon and Caspar have the kind of posh gay lifestyle that we see on the telly a lot, where they have dinner at a proper table instead of in front of the box, with wooden salad bowls and pricey wine glasses and meaningful conversations about the new art gallery that's just opened next to that darling little sushi place.
What are the chances, I wonder, of a good LGBT drama being made where the gay people aren't all cultured and civilised professional peeps with prohibitively expensive sound systems and real salad tongs? You know, where they're just ordinary people who eat chipper dinners sometimes and have mismatched crockery? No chance at all? Right, I was only asking...!
So, can Simon help Adam to accept himself for what he is and to have that long-overdue conversation with his Granny Flora? And can the discovery of an old painting by Thomas March cause the release of emotions necessary for Flora to tell her grandson the truth about
her marriage and about Adam's grandfather's true identity?
You'll have to watch the film to find out, guys. Watch out for the wonderful Frances De La Tour as Thomas March's old mum back in the 'Forties, and also for yet another star turn by Vanessa Redgrave as Adam's ancient old bridge-playing homophobic Granny Flora.
She's only homophobic, though, because of her unhappy marriage to a man who was faced with Hobson's Choice or, more correctly, no choice at all. Go with his heart and be with Thomas, thereby risking a life of ridicule and hostility from people wherever he went, even risking imprisonment because that's what things were like back then, or choose respectability with his wife and child, but a respectability that carried a high price? See what I mean about no choice at all?
I don't blame Michael for making the choices he made but it must have been dreadful for Flora to be married to him, knowing that he was having sex with other men. Was he trying to have his cake and eat it too? Was he being selfish by keeping both sides of his life and personality going at once?
We can't really answer those questions ourselves. Without having walked in someone's shoes ourselves, we can't really say who should have done what and where or with whom they should have done it. It's probably not our place to judge other people, anyway, given that none of us is perfect his-or-her-self. Well, I come pretty close but hey, that's just me. I'm clearly a special case...
This drama certainly throws up some challenging questions about the different attitudes to homosexuality from wartime Britain to the present day. If you're up to the challenge, watch MAN IN AN ORANGE SHIRT. If you're not, well, I'm sure there's an episode of GAME OF THRONES on somewhere...!
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, film blogger and movie reviewer. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, womens' fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra's books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
You can contact Sandra at:
http://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com
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