TONGUES UNTIED (1989)

“I was mute, tongue-tied, burdened by shadows and silence. Now I speak, and my burden is lightened, lifted, free.”

TONGUES UNTIED originally broadcast on PBS stations across America on July 16, 1991, as part of their “POV” (Point of View) series. It is an experimental documentary by Marlon Riggs talking about the alienation of gay people in American society, specifically gay Black men. And the subject of gay people being silenced is ironic because while reading old newspaper articles about TU’s original release I came across multiple sources saying that 18 of the 50 largest television PBS stations (markets) refused to air the film. And others didn’t show it until late at night. Including one that didn’t show it until midnight! But let’s not go off into the weeds about dim-witted program directors in 1991…is TONGUES UNTIED a good film? Yes, it’s quite good.

As mentioned earlier: TONGUES UNTIED is an experimental film and it did take my perfectly chiseled honky buttcheeks a few minutes to get into the rhythm of the free-style, poetic, street rapping approach the film used, but once I caught on, I dug it and even wished the film had been longer. At 54 minutes I felt like Marlon really only scratched the surface of his story. (Maybe this has already happened), but I would love to see much longer different documentary about Marlon Riggs and the subject matter and events talked about in TONGUES UNTIED. For example: he briefly talks about having full on anal sex with other boys at age 6! Like holy shit, that could be a full doc all to itself! And don't even get me started on the breakdown of different kinds of snaps! I could watch a 12-hour film about that.

I don’t want to give away too much, you should just see the movie for yourself, but there was one segment that I want to talk about. They’re talking about how gays are openly mocked and ridiculed in society and during this segment, there is a close-up shot of poet and activist Essex Hemphill simply looking into the camera. At the same time, they play clips of popular movies of the time using the f-word. It was very simply done and yeah, it’s kinda like that one scene from South Park, but I personally found it very upsetting because I remember seeing all of those movies back in the 1980’s and it never even crossed my adolescent mind at how hurtful it was. And now as I’m going back and re-visiting and reviewing older movies, I’m straight up shocked at how fucked up some of these mainstream films are. I’m talking about you, CROCODILE DUNDEE. Anyway, I just found that segment to be heartbreaking.

Sadly, TONGUES UNTIED is not for all audiences, but it deserves to be seen by all (adult) audiences.

Double-feature with PARIS IS BURNING.

[Update: It is not part of the film, but I included a screen capture of Marlon Riggs' obituary. He died in 1994 at age 37. It's sad to think about the positive impact he could have had if he had lived longer. We were all robbed.]

MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE (1985)

A young man, Omar (Gordon Warnecke), lives in London with his depressed father. His father is so bummed out that he just sits in bed all day and drinks. Omar is offered a job by his uncle in his uncle’s parking garage. Soon he is promoted to driving around drug trafficker Salim. One evening, while Omar is driving Salim around, the car is approached by a small group of goofballs. While the dorks are literally licking the car’s windows, Omar looks over to the side of the road and there is sexy badboi Johnny (Daniel Day-Lewis) leaning up against a light pole. They used to be schoolboy chums and begin talking again. Eventually other family stuff happens and Omar is given a broken down laundromat to run. He hires Johnny to help.

MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE is a watchable film (and I’m sure back in the mid-1980’s it was a fresher idea), but overall, it left me flat. Maybe if I knew more about Thatcher-era London I would have enjoyed it more but based on the Criterion Collection disc cover and the various things I’d heard about the film over the years, I was expecting the romantic relationship between Omar and Johnny to be the main focus of the film. Instead, to me, it felt like Omar’s family was the main focus, the tension between the street punks and well, everybody to be second and finally, Omar and Johnny’s relationship third. Also, I didn’t get any sexual chemistry between the two main actors.

Solid acting, a television set behind a sofa, meddling pace, unimpressive sets and locations that kinda gave off a made-for-TV vibe, too small of a cast, multiple scenes out on the street but without any feel of it being a real street with random citizens walking around, multiple unsympathetic characters (including our two heroes, I especially felt bad for the little girl they terrorized while they were stealing her family's electronics), 1980's fashions, a SOME LIKE IT HOT poster, another poster for a movie that looks like it is called LAILA (which there is a movie from 1984 with that name), a very odd placement of a traffic light, a character with a face tattoo (not sure what the historic timeline is on cinematic face tattoos, although we all know that King Vidiot had one in 1983), non-threatening street punks, a woman in jeans and a purple shirt playing a video arcade machine but then when a fight breaks out it's a different woman in jeans and a purple shirt, a weird water(?) sound effect that was annoying, a "turf accountant" which I had to Google. It's the same as a betting hall, like for horse races. Also, how was Salim so naive as to not expect some kind of reprisal for what he did to the punks foot?

MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE is historically interesting and I’m glad it was made (and I'm glad I watched it), but the entire thing felt undercooked to me. I would like to see a remake.