“Audiences have moved beyond tolerant of LGBT themes. I think the entertainment industry is tolerant. Audiences—a huge audience, the majority in the western world—is simply accepting of gay characters.” — Thom Fitzgerald

WELCOME TO Part Three, the final act in my retrospective celebrating my all-time favourite gay films (excluding documentaries and horror). Here are the final four entries on my list of twelve, each centring gay/queer themes and characters. Make sure you check out Part One  & Part Two. 

So, why do “gay movies” matter? Why is “queer cinema” a valid medium? Some filmmakers, like Canadian writer/director Xavier Dolan (a gay man), have pushed back against having their work labelled as “gay film” or “queer cinema.” Still, it matters to me because it gives shape and visibility to lives that have too often been pushed to the margins, allowing me to see reflections of my own experiences on screen in a way that feels genuine and human. At the same time, it opens a window into queer lives beyond my own, expanding my understanding of diversity.

And it’s not just about representation for its own sake (not that that’s necessarily a negative); it’s about reclaiming narratives that were once denied or distorted, and showing the full complexity of gay/queer existence beyond stereotypes and tragedy (which, at this point, for me, is exhausting). When I watch movies centred on people who are, in part, reflections of me as a gay man, I feel less alone and more understood; this was more potent in my youth than it is now, of course, but the emotion still resonates today. I’m reminded that our lives are worthy of documentation, celebration, and preservation. Queer cinema creates space for empathy, challenges prejudice, and affirms that our stories are not only valid but essential to the broader human narrative.

And frankly, as a writer myself, I take having my work described as “gay” or “queer” as a huge compliment. Those labels don’t limit a story’s audience or its themes—they just name a valid and meaningful perspective. Non-LGBTQ+ viewers can take just as much from queer narratives as we’ve always taken from predominantly straight ones, especially considering that for most of film history, nearly everything was made with straight audiences in mind. I’ve never heard of a straight writer/director bitching because someone labelled his M/F romance movie as a “not gay/queer” film.

And no, they’re not all great movies, and some embody problematic portrayals. But sometimes you have to sift through the mediocre and the offensive ones to find the real gems. I hope you’ve enjoyed the films that I consider gems.

And here are the final entries…

Girls Will Be Girls (2003)

Girls Will Be Girls isn’t your typical drag comedy where the joke is “look, it’s dudes in dresses.” Instead, writer/director Richard Day builds a world where the central idea is much simpler and more committed: these are women, period. The fact that they’re played by gay men in drag isn’t treated as a reveal or a punchline within the story—it’s just the film’s language. Unlike films such as Outrageous! (1977), The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994), or To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (1995), there’s no switching between identities or reminding the audience of what’s “underneath.” The film asks you to accept its characters as women living their lives in this comedically exaggerated version of Los Angeles.

That commitment is what makes the performances feel especially authentic: Jack Plotnick as Evie Harris, a washed-up, alcoholic C-list actress (an obvious parody of the eternally kitsch Joey Heatherton); Clinton Leupp as the iconic Coco Peru, Evie’s loyal best friend and perpetually unlucky doormat; and Jeffery Roberson as Varla Simonds, a wide-eyed ingenue and the not-that-bright daughter of Evie’s late rival Marla Simonds. No one is playing this movie in a wink-wink way; they stay in character completely, and the film never pulls back the curtain. It creates a transgressive and delightful effect where drag stops being about switching genders and becomes about fully living in one exaggerated, heightened version of femininity. Once you settle into it, it actually feels pretty natural. You almost forget the actors’ truths.

But it’s that “almost,” I think, that makes it so impressive. You’re not meant to forget entirely, because the whole idea—the magic of drag, the power of gender play—depends on that awareness carrying through.

The film’s look and feel are very intentionally stylized: a present-day Los Angeles that somehow feels drenched in 60s/70s Hollywood glamour and soap-opera energy. Retro hairstyles, salty and sarcastic language, gaudy clothes, and over-the-top reactions fit right in, since everything already feels slightly surreal. That retro LA vibe gives the film its charm: flashy, yet dated (just like Evie), and totally committed to being larger-than-life. The result is a campy queer comedy where everything is dialled up, but nothing feels entirely out of step with the contemporary. The movie, like its leads, has simply been “dragged up.”

By casting gay men as women who are themselves performing exaggerated versions of femininity, the film creates layers of impersonation that constantly destabilize what is “authentic.” It’s a film about how everyone—queer or not—is performing roles to navigate desire, ambition, disappointment, selfishness, and social expectation. It’s the faded TV star who refuses to let go of her former celebrity (even when much of it was infamous behaviour and bad acting); it’s the bored, directionless housebound woman who lives in the memory of past love she may be seeing through rose-cloured glasses; and it’s the starlet who will, maybe, do anything to become famous, including commercials about TV dinners. It’s the artifice of Hollywood, baby.

The humour is loud and often absurd, but it carries a distinctly queer intelligence: it understands that camp is not frivolity but critique, and that exaggeration can reveal truths that realism often smooths over. And it’s another film full of quotable lines.

“Evie: I admit, my looks are starting to go. Coco: Starting to go? Evie, your looks are at home and in bed.”

“Varla: My mother always said, ‘Feelings are like treasures, so bury them.'”

This movie just cracks my husband and me up.

Touch of Pink (2004)

Touch of Pink, written and directed by Ian Iqbal Rashid, is a romantic comedy that explores very real tensions and (perceived?) pressures at the intersection of (homo)sexuality, cultural identity, and family expectations. At its core, the film explores the dissonance of living openly as a gay man in one sphere of life while deliberately concealing that same truth in another. Alim’s (Jimi Mistry) life in London, England is marked by freedom and self-definition. Still, that freedom collapses under the weight of his widowed mother’s expectations and the imagined gaze of a conservative muslim family structure. (Though perhaps they’re not as conservative/judgmental as Alim thinks).

The “lie” he maintains—hiding anything “gay” in his apartment and introducing his partner as a “friend” to his visiting mother—isn’t treated as a minor social inconvenience or played for comedy, but as a slow erosion of intimacy and integrity, both within the couple and in the mother–son relationship.

The film’s central tension lies in the unequal burden placed on relationships when one partner is fully out while the other is not.

Giles (Kristen Holden-Ried), Alim’s openly gay partner, is repeatedly asked to shrink himself, to play a role that denies the legitimacy of their relationship. This dynamic exposes a painful ethical imbalance: love becomes conditional on performance, and affection is filtered through Alim’s fear of being outed to his mother. The film underscores how secrecy doesn’t just hide a relationship, it fractures it, forcing one partner to become complicit in a narrative that erases their shared reality. And this may just lead to its destruction.

The cultural element is the primary source of anxiety for Alim, an only child facing pressure to marry—an expectation grounded in his Canadian family’s assumption that it will be to a woman. His Ismaili Muslim South Asian heritage, along with his mother’s more traditional values, complicates his ability to live openly within that world, particularly in relation to his sexuality, but also in navigating interracial and cross-cultural intimacy. This was a determining factor in Alim’s decision to leave Canada and live abroad, away from his family, in the first place. Factoring in that Giles is Caucasian, dating outside one’s culture and racial identity becomes further entangled with Alim’s fears of judgment and disapproval, as well as a perceived betrayal of familial expectations.

Ultimately, Touch of Pink critiques the emotional cost of asking a partner to participate in denial. Pretending a lover is merely a “friend” to preserve appearances is framed not as harmless diplomacy but as a deeply unfair demand that privileges family comfort over one’s truth. The film suggests that living truthfully is not just a form of personal liberation but an ethical necessity within relationships, because love that must be hidden or repeatedly disavowed in certain social circles risks becoming undervalued in private. This film asks a difficult question: What is the price of belonging to a family or culture if it requires the fragmentation of one’s most intimate bonds? And if Alim had the courage to speak his truth and live authentically, what might actually happen—beyond the fear of what he imagines will happen?

The most distinctive feature of this film, which is totally surreal, is Alim’s imaginary companion: Cary Grant (played to uncanny perfection by Kyle MacLachlan), who functions as a glamorous projection of Alim’s inner conflict. This old Hollywood persona becomes a way for Alim to externalize his anxiety around sexuality, cultural obligation, and his relationship with his mother.

Rashid’s choice of Cary Grant carries obvious symbolic weight. Here we have an icon of projected heterosexuality, both off-screen and on-screen, who has long been surrounded by speculation about his sexuality/queerness, making him an ideal vessel for Alim’s negotiations between identity and desire, and between public persona and private life. After all, the parallels are striking: Grant lived with actor Randolph Scott off and on for 12 years, and they were publicly known as “roommates” and close friends, mirroring how Alim presents Giles to his mother as “just a roommate and friend.”

[Richard Blackwell, then an actor at RKO, Jerome Zerbe, a photographer who took publicity shots of the men in their home, and Scotty Bowers, a Hollywood fixer, all claimed to have had sexual relationships with the pair. Blackwell wrote in his autobiography that Grant and Scott “were deeply, madly in love, their devotion was complete.” Grant’s biographer and friend Bill Royce also claimed that, in old age, Grant confided that he and Scott were bisexual, and that their relationship was the first time he’d ever been in love.]

Rather than offering stable guidance, this imagined mentor often gives Alim advice that’s contradictory or unhelpful, exposing how internalized homophobia and cultural shame can masquerade as “common sense” or socially acceptable caution. In this way, the Cary Grant figure is less a wise guide and more a dramatization of Alim’s split consciousness: one part seeking freedom and honesty, the other constrained by fear of rejection. At times, the fantasy feels like Alim trying to script a version of himself that can survive within conservative expectations: polished, charming, and non-threatening. Yet, it repeatedly fails when confronted with emotional reality.

Mistry is likable and endearing, though Alim’s whiny, “poor me” attitude can wear thin. Holden-Ried shines in his role; he’s charming, empathetic, accommodating, and (maybe too) understanding of Alim’s requests, until he begins to see a future marked by manufactured closetedness. I really love the film’s ending; it’s satisfying and heartfelt, showing that inauthenticity stifles freedom and that true love and romance are worth fighting for. Think like, if a Hallmark-style gay romance had real introspection and narrative depth—and could afford Kyle MacLachlan to co-star in it.

WEEKEND (2011)

Okay, I have a lot to unpack here. Not since John Greyson’s Lilies have I experienced a film that sent me down such a rabbit hole of existential queer introspection, especially around love and loss, and, unique to this film, the dynamics of gay male connection, casual sex, and the disposability and/or transferability (yes, that’s a real word) of intimate partners.

Writer/director Andrew Haigh’s Weekend is so much deeper and more complex than just a fleeting (doomed?) gay romance compressed into 48 hours; rather, it examines how gay and queer intimacy is navigated in contemporary spaces where casual sex, guarded emotions, and the longing for something more lasting coexist anxiously. At its core, the film explores the fragile pursuit of genuine connection within “gay culture,” where fleeting encounters are often the norm and the possibility of a profound relationship built on love and trust can feel both miraculous and seemingly unattainable.

The chemistry between the two leads is wholly authentic and unforced. Russell (Tom Cullen) is introverted and somewhat closed off; he seems used to a life in which desire is expressed briefly and then compartmentalized. Glen (Chris New) is more talkative and provocative, and appears initially to embody the archetype of the emotionally detached hook-up culture participant. Yet Haigh quickly complicates these assumptions. What unfolds over the weekend is not a straightforward transition from sex to love, but a gradual revelation that even within the framework of a casual encounter, something real and destabilizing can emerge where one wasn’t expecting it.

The film’s emotional power lies in its attention to how gay men navigate the tension between connection and disposability. In many gay/queer social contexts—especially urban nightlife scenes, as the film utilizes—sexual encounters can be plentiful but emotionally transient. Within this landscape, the desire for a meaningful connection doesn’t disappear; instead, it becomes complicated by expectation, for wanting more yet preparing for the worst. One learns to anticipate endings before beginnings have fully formed. Weekend captures this with remarkable precision: Russell and Glen are both aware, at least initially, that their time together is limited, but neither fully understands what that limitation will mean until it begins to hurt emotionally.

Glen, who’s been recording his sexual experiences as part of an artistic project, begins by treating Russell as just another subject: another voice, another story, another body. But Russell resists easy categorization. He’s quieter, more emotionally reserved, and less at ease with self-exposure. As Glen draws him into conversation, what develops isn’t simply physical attraction; Russell feels seen, not just desired, observed with interest and care. In turn, Glen becomes more than a provocateur; his bravado begins to thin, revealing insecurity, longing, deep hurt, and a kind of existential searching that mirrors Russell’s, though his is expressed in his own, muted way.

The “tragedy” of Weekend lies in its narrative design: the weekend must end. Glen is set to leave for America, and Russell must return to his lonely life in Nottingham. The film doesn’t construct artificial obstacles; it simply allows time to bring about the inevitable.

As Monday approaches, the question isn’t whether the connection was real—it absolutely is—but how to face the possibility of a deeper relationship when it emerges unexpectedly and is immediately curbed by circumstance.

Russell’s emotional arc, I feel, is particularly important here. At first, he’s resistant to naming what’s happening between him and Glen, as though naming the connection might render him vulnerable to disappointment. Glen begins as the more verbally self-aware character, more willing to theorize and/or articulate experience, but he, too, becomes affected by the intimacy they share. What emerges is a shared hesitation: a mutual recognition that what they’ve found is meaningful, coupled with the equally strong recognition that it has an end, whether either truly desires that or not.

Glen’s departure is inevitable, but it’s not emotionally clean. Both men resist closure in different ways. Glen suggests that what they’ve experienced is significant but transient; Russell, more openly emotional about what has transpired between them, struggles to reconcile the intensity of the weekend with the return to ordinary life and is less willing to see their connection as finite. The film refuses to resolve this tension with easy catharsis. Instead, it leaves us in the ambiguous space between connection and separation, where meaning is felt but not secured. It’s not HEA or HFN. Is it tragic? What is it?

This is where I’ve allowed myself the liberty to imagine a continuation of Russell and Glen’s story, in a very much “Choose Your Own Adventure” style. I’m giving in to a romantic reading of the film, to believe that what’s “real” will inevitably come back around, that if the bond is genuine enough, it will override circumstance, geography, and timing. Though Weekend neither confirms nor denies this possibility, I find myself drawn to that sense of hope. Look, Russell is hardly satisfied with his life in Nottingham; get a plane ticket and join Glen on an adventure, man. Take the time to see where this connection leads! 

Some might argue that whether or not Glen returns to Russell is beside the point that Haigh is making, that what matters, ultimately, is that something poignant and transformative has occurred in both of them. These gay men have each been altered by being truly seen and emotionally desired by another, beyond projection or physical passion. Well, I think both positions can hold true at the same time.

The reason I feel this strongly is that, in Haigh’s films, the avoidance of happy endings feels deliberate, even pessimistic. It gives audiences the impression that gay/queer intimacy is inherently fraught or doomed. It can reinforce the idea that LGBTQ+ stories must be tragic in some form to be “serious” or authentic. Haigh has often described his goal as telling gay stories “not defined by trauma, but by intimacy and connection.” He’s drawn to realism, wanting trauma in his films to inform the world, not dominate it, so that it should function as background texture rather than the entire plot. Okay, fine, but I still feel he engages in what I call “semantic sleight-of-hand.”

By rebranding sorrow and heartache as “realism,” Haigh seeks to distance his work from the “trauma trope” long connected to queer cinema. However, the audience is still experiencing pain, loss, and emotional distress, which is functionally the same in effect. Haigh’s framing of his films this way doesn’t mask the fact that the core conflicts are still rooted in suffering. It’s a rhetorical move, rather than a true break from trauma-centred storytelling. So I embrace a hopeful, if not entirely happy, ending.

In any case, Weekend remains a masterpiece, even with its open-ended, bittersweet finale.

God’s Own Country (2017)

God’s Own Country, written and directed by Francis Lee, is a quietly powerful film that explores isolation not just through landscape, but through identity.

Set in a remote rural environment on a Yorkshire sheep farm, the film underscores how being gay in such a place compounds loneliness; Johnny’s (Josh O’Connor) emotional repression feels inseparable from the expansive landscape surrounding him. His mother has long deserted them, his once hard-working father is paralyzed yet still asserting authority, and his Nan is loving but terse and, like her grandson, overburdened with responsibility. 

Johnny’s life is marked by routine, a lack of communication, and an inability to articulate his homosexuality beyond fleeting, impersonal sexual encounters. This isolation is not only geographic but deeply internal, shaped by a lack of emotional openness all around.

It’s never entirely clear whether the two elders already know that Johnny is gay and simply don’t talk about it, or if they’ve never really suspected anything until they see how he comes to interact with Gheorghe (Alec Secăreanu), with Johnny appearing lighter and, dare I say, happier. Up until the end of the film, Johnny’s “outness” feels ambiguous, though he never truly behaves as if his sexuality is tied to negative self-worth. He seems already acclimated to it. This isn’t a film about the struggle to accept one’s queerness; rather, it’s a story about learning to understand and embrace intimacy and connection on several levels.

Gheorghe’s arrival on the farm disrupts Johnny’s routine in profound ways. Johnny is rough, guarded, and often aggressive, especially in the way he initiates sex. When he tries this approach with Gheorghe, Gheorghe firmly resists but without quarrel, instead offering an alternative grounded in patience and touch rather than taking control. He introduces the possibility that sex can be tender, communicative, and emotionally driven. These moments become transformative, showing Johnny that intimacy between gay/queer men is not only achievable but deeply fulfilling when vulnerability replaces defensiveness and the assertion of dominance. Gheorghe’s quiet strength challenges Johnny not by force, but by example.

Importantly, Gheorghe’s sense of self-worth is shaped by his lived experiences as both a gay man and an immigrant, a Romanian migrant worker in a predominantly white area. Rather than internalizing shame or anger from a sense of dual otherness, he carries himself with a calm dignity, embracing both aspects of his identity. This self-assurance is most evident when he refuses to tolerate disrespect, particularly after Johnny’s lapse into old habits—having drunken sex with a stranger in a pub restroom—while Gheorghe is left alone to deal with bigotry from two locals, which he handles non-violently. Gheorghe doesn’t lash out at Johnny in violence; he responds with hurt and disgust, withdrawing to make it clear that he will not be treated as disposable. His boundaries reveal a deep understanding of his own worth.

Ultimately, the film gestures toward a longing for connection that goes beyond physical desire. Gheorghe seems to seek a monogamous, emotionally present relationship—something Johnny has never truly considered, having only expressed his sexuality through detached hook-ups. Through their evolving relationship, God’s Own Country becomes a meditation on what it means to let someone in, to dismantle emotional walls, and to recognize that genuine intimacy requires both courage and consideration. Johnny comes not just to understand, but to feel the consequences of his reckless actions, and that’s where the ultimate growth of his character comes in, when he seeks to rectify his f#ckup. Johnny does what I wish Russell would (will?) do in Weekend: go after love.

The ending is understated yet deeply moving, offering a clear sense of the status and future of Johnny and Gheorghe’s relationship, as well as how they will relate to Johnny’s father and Nan. Nothing is spoken in this scene; no words are needed to convey anything. The film comes full circle, as silence transforms from something that once separated people into a shared language of understanding, love, and connection.

Lastly, as a sort of “epilogue” to this three-part series, I want to give a shout-out to the films that, had I done a top 20 (and I almost did), would have absolutely made the list.
My Beautiful Laundrette (1985), directed by Stephen Frears
Edward II (1991), directed by Derek Jarman.
The Hanging Garden (1997), directed by Thom Fitzgerald.
Trick (1999), directed by Jim Fall.
All Over the Guy (2001), directed by Julie Davis.
FAQs (2005), directed by Everett Lewis.
Another Gay Movie (2006), directed by Todd Stephens.
Make the Yuletide Gay (2009), directed by Rob Williams.
Check them out! And I hope you enjoyed these 3 posts as much as I did making them!