Getting Go: More Than Just Skin Deep

It's not easy to pull off a modestly funded movie. So how does a little project like Getting Go manage a seven-out-of-10 stars rating on IMDB?

This romance is remarkable for the believability of the world, the two leads, and the gradual development of their genuine affection over the course of several nuanced dialogue scenes (sprinkled throughout otherwise fairly sensational imagery).

It helps that much of the film is the "recordings" made on a handheld camera by the character Doc (Tanner Cohen), as he pieces together the life of his friend Go (Matthew Camp), and it looks appropriately homemade, in context. It has a lot of footage of go-go dancing, images of full-frontal nudity, a fair amount of groping and kissing, and some nicely rendered sex scenes that offer enough detail to feel authentic but not so much they feel forced. The filmmaker strikes a nice balance between fantasy and reality -- which is mimicked in the two lead characters, one of whom is sincere to the point of being inhibited, while the other struggles to become someone deeper than his body-obsessed livelihood requires.

The back and forth between the two men has moments of tenderness punctuated by bursts of anger and disappointment. For Doc, this is his first love, and he wrestles with issues of trust and control. Go, on the other hand, sees Doc as a conquest, who, ironically, because of his reluctance to jump straight to sex, manages to elicit an emotional connection from him that could (gasp) lead to a long-term relationship. The stylistic choices underscore the investigation of what love and sex looks like to each of these young men, and without revealing the ending, suffice to say they both come away from the experience fundamentally changed.

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I was accused once, while going to art school, of wanting things to be beautiful. It was said to me, ironically, by a very good-looking guy I had a crush on, and he didn't mean it as a compliment. I've thought a lot about it since then, wondering if he was right, and wondering if it really was a bad thing. And, to his credit, I've made a lot of projects over the years in which the quest for perfection is a topic, either overtly or subliminally.

But I have also come to realize that what I think of as beautiful is not always pretty, and this is the distinction that counts. A group of skate punks walking under an overpass, their lean frames silhouetted against graffiti-covered walls, can be just as elegant as an Ansel Adams print. A Nick Cave song overflowing with anger is as compelling as a Pablo Neruda poem. Obviously, I'm not alone in my perception -- the world of art is diverse and vast. But maybe what's important is to look for beauty in things as well as to enjoy beauty where it is indisputably present. Through that lens, projects that are flawed can sometimes be as stunning as those that are flawless.

The moments of artistic clarity make this little gem stand out. It has a signature voice. Behind the work is a filmmaker who examines his place in his own community, who is brave enough to question the categories gay men assign to themselves. Embodied by Doc, he dismisses labels like bears, twinks, femmes, power bottoms, and, by implication, numerous other subcategories. Ultimately, he's on a quest to embrace an identity that reflects his dreams of finding love and connection, of living life fully -- something radical, say, like human being.

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