GetOut Magazine

Will gay-themed film about Mormons find audience?
By CRAIG OUTHIER
Get Out
“Latter Days,” a gay missionary love story from “Sweet Home Alabama” screenwriter C. Jay Cox, has ticked off Mormons from here to Tonga — though you have to wonder if all the hubbub isn't part of the filmmaker's grand design.

After all, didn't Cox enjoy scads of free publicity (and a subsequent distribution deal) when the movie was banned from a Salt Lake City movie theater during last year's Sundance Film Festival? Officially, theater officials cited the movie's “lack of artistic quality and cinematic values.”

Now that's a laugh. Call “Latter Days” many things — precious, gimmicky, over-sexed — but its artistic quality is waaaaaay better than most niche- marketed Mormon-made movies, including “God's Army” and “The Singles Ward.” Beneath that homoerotic rind, “Latter Days” at least has the virtue of being a salient, challenging portrait of a young man grappling with his faith and identity.

Not that the movie doesn't cause severe irritation from time to time. Cox, making his feature directing debut, has basically created a gay “My Fair Lady,” about a shallow, sculpted West Hollywood party boy — ironically named Christian (Wes Ramsey) — who makes a bet with co-workers that he can bed one of the four corn-fed Mormon missionaries who just moved into the bungalow next door. Over stacks of dirty laundry, Christian makes a love connection with Aaron (the promising Steve Sandvoss), a sincere, dutiful 19-year-old from Idaho who is obviously in the closet, since he talks about his mom (Mary Kay Place) and has opinions about Ann-Margret. Aaron becomes Christian's friend and, inevitably, his lover.

When Aaron's fellow missionaries find out, he's shipped back to Idaho to face his family. Christian, meanwhile, sprouts a conscience, shamed by Aaron into examining his promiscuous ways. As a filmmaker, Cox's operating philosophy is pure “Will & Grace”: pack in as much catty, pithy dialogue as possible, and if half of it is intelligible, so much the better.

Reportedly, some Mormon advocates have objected to the film's brief depiction of the Latter-day Saint excommunication process, but that's a crock. What really irks Mormons is the film's depiction of a missionary engaged in explicit gay sex in a Salt Lake City hotel room. Mormons won't be the only people bothered by this, and it's a shame that Cox — a lapsed Mormon — didn't see fit to universalize his message of tolerance by watering down the erotica. Subsequently, non-gay audiences will generally steer clear of “Latter Days,” which is a shame, since its vision of the missionary culture is among the most insightful and honest that this critic (also an ex-Mormon) has seen. Certainly, very few LDS faithful will brave the skin show, and Cox will be left preaching to the choir.

‘Latter Days’
Starring: Steve Sandvoss, Wes Ramsey, Jacqueline Bisset, Mary Kay Place Rating: Not rated (explicit sex, profanity) Running time: 108 minutes
Playing: Opens Friday exclusively at Harkins Camelview in Scottsdale
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