Film

Ah, the gay cowboys.

I loved it. It got off to kind of a slow start, and some of the scenes underlining the growing attraction between lovely Heath and lovely Jake were slightly clumsy. In fact a couple of times I half-expected a big comedy sign with arrows and flashing lights and the words “GAYS HERE!! LOOK!! GAYS!!” to glide across the screen like the mother ship in a game of Space Invaders. Lots of manly wrestling, that sort of thing. Once the initial shagging scene* was out of the way, however, I was transfixed. I needed a wee when we got in there, and thought I’d just nip out during a slow bit. I must have a cast-iron bladder as I couldn’t tear myself away for a second, and sat glued to it for the full two hours plus.

The joy of the gay cowboy film is in the way that you forget you’re watching a film about gay cowboys – it’s just a love story, and one that is played out totally convincingly. A couple of things jarred a bit, namely a scene where I was almost convinced that a baby had had a prosthetic nose fitted to make it look more like Jake Gyllenhall, a weird thing that Heath Ledger kept doing with his mouth (I think he was trying to convey that he was a man who repressed his emotions, but it put me in mind of a dog’s bottom), and the succession of fright wigs employed to give a sense of time passing. By the end of it, Anne Hathaway looked like an extra at Dollywood and Heath Ledger was more David Soul than tortured soul.

All of this aside, it was simply beautiful. Gorgeously shot, sparsely directed and, in parts, unbearably moving. I am not ashamed to say that I cried like Michael Barrymore at a press conference. And not just because I really, really needed a wee.

Carry on.

* Do not, I repeat do not go and see this film with a parent or close relative. It will be like the time you watched the Amityville Horror with your mum when you were six** and James Brolin and that skinny woman did it and you had to leave the room.

** Just me then.