The movie Bros: more than Friends, by Nicholas Stoller, was billed as the first romantic comedy to star two gay characters. And indeed it is. Bobby Leiber (Billy Eichner) is a New Yorker who just wants to fall in love. An idea that the film’s first big trailer showed in all the elegant cuteness of it. Nevertheless, Bros: More Than Friends It is the most solid step of a phenomenon that shows a narrative and consequent evolution of the theme of gay love on the big screen.
So it is a more subtle and complex idea than a typical romantic story. Beyond the “boy meets boy” formula, Stoller’s film is the first to break the taboo of recounting a relationship between two men in all its peculiarities. Bros: more than friends He tells his argument from kindness. The premise of the shy guy who ends up falling in love with the popular guy is the same as millions of similar stories. In fact, it is the pattern of great movies in which romance is the fundamental trunk of the story.
However, on this occasion, love and romance are wrapped in the gaze of American gay culture. Also in its guidelines and nuances. But even so, it remains a universal story. A friendly, sensitive and built to link with a larger audience than the natural one of a similar narrative. With a sizeable budget and within the distribution schedule of a major study, Bros: more than friends it is a rarity. A transcendent step within the theme queer in the world of Hollywood and, specifically, in the way that pop culture understands sexual diversity.
Bros: more than friends
Nicholas Stoller’s film Bros: More Than Friends was heralded as the first romantic comedy to star two gay characters. And indeed it is. Bobby Leiber (Billy Eichner) is a New Yorker who just wants to fall in love. An idea that the film’s first big trailer showed in all the elegant cuteness of it.
But it is about something more subtle and complex than a love story. Beyond the “boy meets boy” formula, Stoller’s film is the first to break the taboo of recounting a gay relationship from kindness. Doing it, in addition, from the pattern of the great films in which romance is the fundamental trunk of the story.
Bros: more than friends and gay love on the big screen
Bros: more than friends it is a transformation of the cinema with respect to its way of delving into gay emotional life. The film shows the context of a middle-aged man who, after a long journey, manages to find love. It may seem like a simple formula, until you remember that less than fifteen years ago the LGTBIQ+ community was a marginal part of cinema. One used, at best, as comic relief or as a center of drama and pain.
However, the evolution has been clear. Not only in grand elegant arguments like The Power of the Dog by Jane Campion or Portrait of a woman on fire by Celine Sciamma. In 2020, the movie happy noveltyby Clea DuVall, showed a lesbian couple at the center of a troubled romance.
With the same codes of the romantic comedy, Aby (Kirsten Stewart) and Harper (Mackenzie Davis) went through all the misadventures of a couple under family pressure. A situation to which we had to add the necessary debate on the sexual orientation of its protagonists. However, the film dared to delve into issues such as self-acceptance, identity and, in the end, love as a universal language.
The maturity of romance in the cinema
In 2017, Call me by your nameby Luca Guadagnino, analyzed the first love, the need and the search for individuality. Everything under the glass of the first love of a teenager and his journey in search of understanding his own sexuality. The film, based on the book of the same name by André Aciman, surprised and moved critics.
Especially for giving Elio’s (Timothée Chalamet) arduous journey deep cultural significance. It was not only the encounter with the spring love of early adolescence. Gaudagnino also delved into sexuality as a type of intellectual and moral freedom. The film went through censorship and discomfort from some sectors of the industry and became a commercial success. It even earned an Oscar nomination for best picture. A milestone in the history of cinema.
Increase rendering from new codes
In the same line as Bros: more than friends there is the surprising success of Netflix’s heart stopper. Euros Lyn’s eight-part series, based on Alice Oseman’s graphic novel, tells a story of teenage love. But she doesn’t do it from the torture of guilt, confusion, or peer pressure. Actually, one of the highest and most elegant points of the series is its ability to narrate the adventure of first love from the codes of Generation Z.
Charlie (Joe Locke), a gay student, falls deeply in love with his classmate Nick (Kit Connor). The latter still wonders about his sexual orientation. The argument then analyzes, in an endearing and sensitive vision of hope, love and intimacy, the way in which both understand their emotions. At the same time, the possibility of assuming the transit between childhood and the first years of youth. All in the midst of an almost innocent look at the ability to love and sexuality as a form of expression of the individual.
In a more adult and dark tone, but also with an undoubted depth, is the recent success of AMC +, Interview with the Vampire. The new adaptation of Anne Rice’s novel of the same name ditches the erotic tension of the book and Neil Jordan’s film version. Instead, the plot shows Lestat (Sam Reid) and Louis (Jacob Anderson) as a couple. queer in the supernatural world.
The series, acclaimed for its exploration of the erotic and ethnic perception (Louis is played by a black actor) is a surprise. Especially because the way the writing team decided to show their sexuality is free, unprejudiced and frontal. From loving gestures to the rigors of a relationship destined for disaster. Rice’s monsters have become an accurate look at a new kind of sensibility on the subject.
Bros: more than friends love as a great human dilemma
In Bros: more than friends, Love is everywhere. Also the need to understand one’s identity cuts across sex. But, between both things, the script is a prodigy of intelligent and well-constructed decisions about desire, self-validation and happiness.
In the end, the film is proof that cinema continues to be a sounding board for pop culture. A journey of enormous interest and conscious solidity that, without a doubt, carries a deep emotional charge. Also, the ideal time for great stories that, until now, had been marginalized or minimized on the big screen. Perhaps the greatest achievement of Bros: more than friends as production.