The Wolves of Kromer (2000)

Maybe I'm too hard on this film. It is, after all, made with good intentions. Good intentions, however, are not enough to make a film worth watching. Especially if said film is an aggravatingly pretentious fantastical allegory about homosexuals and their societal status as outcasts. No evidence of any deep thinking exists in this film -- the filmmakers thought of their thesis (wolves = homosexuals) and filmed it as is, using a stock plot reduced to its barest elements. Anyone who's conscious and of sound mind should take about ten minutes to figure out where this is going and what every character represents in the schematic. What makes it even worse is that the film is so sincere and so convinced that its message needs to be heard (because nobody else has ever made a movie in this fashion... oh, sure, hundreds of Queer Cinema films have made films about societal intolerance, but none of them ever thought to make their protagonists wolves!) that it really crosses the line and starts feeling like hectoring. It's capital-A Art gone bad. Nobody should have to bear witness to that. (The Loss of Sexual Innocence, anyone?)

Grade: F