by Loren King
Bedrooms And Hallways Review
Rose Troche's Bedrooms and Hallways is the latest example of a very modern romantic comedy about the fluidity of sexual orientation. Think Chasing Amy without the overbearing explanations, or Jeffrey with a more female sensibility.
Troche, a lesbian who directed the groundbreaking Go Fish, offers a conventional filmmaking style in this unconventional story set and shot in England. Leo (winningly played by Kevin McKidd) is a comfortably open gay man looking for love. Leo's surprise 30th birthday party thrown by his madcap friend and roommate (Tom Hollander) sets in motion a series of funny and touching events that cause Leo to question his loner status and his attraction to unavailable men. Leo is the likable everyman: in the "men's group" he joins made up of straight guys trying to examine their feelings, he comes off as the most ordinary. When he candidly declares his attraction to group member Brendon (handsome James Purefoy), he sets the group, led by gay actor Simon Callow as a straight, sensitive, '90s guy, into a tizzy.
Brendon is more than flattered; he's not at all surprised. The two begin a believable and humorous sexual roundelay, complete with the emergence of Brendon's girlfriend who once dated Leo. As Sally, Jennifer Ehle looks like a young Meryl Streep and is winning enough to make men and women swoon. It isn't at all a stretch that Leo and Sally share a special bond: nor is it making a statement on Leo's gayness. Rather, Troche gently and without and agenda portrays ordinary human emotion and unexplainable attraction. It is refreshing that Troche sought out a project that mines new territory after the huge success of her debut, Go Fish. But, in its own way, Bedrooms and Hallways is a no less brazen or fresh take on human sexuality. It is a surpringly effective and very contemporary romantic comedy that will appeal to both men and women, gay and straight and everything in between.
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