I’m just in the mood for a movie with gay (or bi) dudes!

That’s not Call Me By Your Name or Love, Simon or another one that’s been recced to me a hundred times already.

Disclaimer: this is not an official rec list of The Best Movies with MLM That You Absolutely Must See! There’s a pretty wide variety to content and tone.

Not all the movies I’m going to recommend are explicitly queer — some of them center heavy implications or are easily read as homoerotic and/or homoromantic, but part of the reason I want to recommend them anyway is because for me, it doesn’t make them less satisfying or exciting to engage with, especially when we’re on the hunt for something to scratch that itch.

With that said, I’m going to put a note before each recommendation noting how implicit/explicit the queerness is, and I’m also going to make an explicit note if a character or relationship is only a side plot or smaller thread, so that you go in knowing what to expect!

I’m not going to be recommending Moonlight (2016) (it’s not under-recommended, it’s just new and lauded for good reason) or God’s Own Country (2017), Maurice (1987), Call Me By Your Name (2017), Love, Simon (2018), Brokeback Mountain (2005), Midnight Cowboy (1969), Handsome Devil (2016), The Birdcage (1996) or La cage aux Folles (1978), The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), Kill Your Darlings (2013), Rent (2005) or A Single Man (2009).

Most of those movies are genuinely quite good, they’re just the first movies that people jump to name when people ask for queer movies with MLM.

This list is not in order of preference, quality, or complexity! The recommendations are just numbered so that you have an easier time coming back to this list for reference as needed!

If you use Letterboxd, here’s a Letterboxd list that has every single movie I mention on this list: I’m just in the mood for a movie with gay (or bi!) dudes!

Please note that I’m not including content warnings for anything, nor noting any of these films for their value as moral education. None of these recommendations should be taken as me advising that one should base one’s ethics or one’s queerness on however it’s portrayed in each film.

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1. Big Eden (2000, dir. Thomas Bezucha)

MLM are central to the plot, explicitly written throughout, with romance the primary theme.

Henry Hart is a young gay artist living in New York City. When his grandfather has a stroke, Henry puts his career on hold and returns home to the small town of Big Eden, Montana, to care for him. While there, Henry hopes to strike up a romance with Dean Stewart, his high-school best friend for whom he still has feelings. But he’s surprised when he finds that Pike, a quiet Native American who owns the local general store, may have a crush on him.

Big Eden (2000) on Letterboxd.

If you watch a single movie on this list, make it this one.

If you’ve ever desperately wanted an easy-going, slice-of-life, sweet gay comedy-drama with no homophobia or violence, no boring straight shit taking up screen time, no obstacles except two men full of love who just don’t know how to show it to one another as the entire town watches on and tries to get them together, this is the movie for you.

And the love interest is Eric Schweig, and he cooks, and he’s got a DOG!

If you want more casual intimacy and love between men after this one, something that might scratch the same itch is 3 Men and a Baby (1987). It’s not a hugely queer movie by any means, but it’s about three men who coparent a baby together, their relationships with each other aren’t diminished or made out to be insignificant or unimportant, especially because they all share a paternal role in this movie and the sequel. It’s a very 80s movie and it’s dated for all that, but the love and affection is pretty constant throughout.

2. Twittering Birds Never Fly: The Clouds Gather (2020, dir. Kaori Makita)

The protagonists are both MLM and their queerness is a significant part of the plot, explicitly written throughout. This is not a simple romance, but has significant dark comedy, crime, and thriller elements.

The sexually masochistic yakuza boss, Yashiro, isn’t the type to warm up to others easily. But when Chikara Doumeki, his newly hired bodyguard, catches his interest, he reconsiders his “hands-off” policy with subordinates. As Yashiro’s invitations fail, the yakuza boss finds out his bodyguard has a very personal reason for staying at arm’s length.

Twittering Birds Never Fly: The Clouds Gather (2020), via Letterboxd.

Saezuru Tori Wa Habatakanai’s movie is a straight adaptation from the manga, but it’s nonetheless more than worth watching — it goes very hard on having one protagonist, Yashiro, as a CSA survivor and plays deeply into how he weaponises sex against enemies as well as how he uses sex and BDSM to cope; in contrast, Doumeki is deeply attracted to Yashiro but has problems with erectile dysfunction and also has a very outwardly emotionless flat affect, so obviously, they’re obsessed with one another.

It’s very funny if you like caustic, nasty men.

If you like Saezuru Tori, you might also like Love Wedge (1992), which is based off of the manga Ai no Kusabi (there’s a 2012 adaptation too but it’s not great and it’s not finished).

3. The Talented Mr Ripley (1999, dir. Anthony Minghella)

The protagonist is MLM and his queerness is central to the plot, explicitly written throughout. Note that this is not a romance, but a thriller and a tragedy.

Are you reading this entry and thinking, wait, that movie’s gay? I see it talked about all the time and I never realised it was gay!

Imagine my surprise while watching it.

If what you like from your queer movies is wholesome good soft representation, this is not the movie for you, but if you want to see an incredibly tense and thrilling fic about a man whose desperate affection for others is frequently cast aside and rejected, who constantly feels rejected out of place, and spirals as he becomes more and more obsessive, and goes to greater and greater lengths to maintain his fractious relationships?

Oh, this is for you.

HOW FAR WOULD YOU GO TO BECOME SOMEONE ELSE?

Tom Ripley is a calculating young man who believes it’s better to be a fake somebody than a real nobody. Opportunity knocks in the form of a wealthy U.S. shipbuilder who hires Tom to travel to Italy to bring back his playboy son, Dickie. Ripley worms his way into the idyllic lives of Dickie and his girlfriend, plunging into a daring scheme of duplicity, lies and murder.

The Talented Mr Ripley (1999), via Letterboxd.

If you enjoy The Talented Mr Ripley, you might benefit from checking out Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), where a similarly toxic and obsessive relationship is a significant sideplot.

4. Hook (1991, dir. Steven Spielberg)

MLM are the antagonists in this plot and their relationship is depicted, but not explicitly described as gay within the text. If you have eyes, you will nonetheless see that it is a marriage.

WHAT IF PETER PAN GREW UP?

The boy who wasn’t supposed grow up — Peter Pan — does just that, becoming a soulless corporate lawyer whose workaholism could cost him his wife and kids. During his trip to see Granny Wendy in London, the vengeful Capt. Hook kidnaps Peter’s kids and forces Peter to return to Neverland.

Hook (1991), via Letterboxd.

If you’ve read J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan, you’ll know that Hook and Smee are embarrassingly and lovingly obsessed with one another — luckily, for Hook, Dustin Hoffman and Bob Hoskins understood that, and played their roles accordingly:

“Bob Hoskins and I were rehearsing and suddenly we looked at each other and realised it at the same time. We said, ‘These guys are gay….’ and it was fun.

“Suddenly we rehearsed it that way: ‘Get over here, Smee. Give me a foot massage.’ Suddenly it made all the sense in the world. They were really good friends. They lived on a ship. They were devoted to each other.” (x)

Hook and Smee are the antagonists in this movie, and they’re by no means the central force or consideration, but their relationship with one another is full of physical affection, kisses, massages, married bickering, contrasting parenting styles, and back-and-forth — it’s also codependent, manipulative, nasty, and just plain funny.

A thing that personally makes me feral about their dynamic in this movie is not just the love and affection they have for one another, but Hook is pretty blatant about Hook’s canonical depressive episodes, and Smee is not only adept at helping him through them and his suicidal ideation, but they also show a lot of casual affection and comfort with each other’s bodies as Smee helps Hook on and off not just with his clothes or shoes, but with his prosthetic. It’s really nice to see disability & care in the context of a romantic relationship without it being treated as a tragic thing or a big event every time.

If you too enjoy that dynamic, I might also recommend Paddleton (2019), which is about two best friends moving forward when one of them develops a terminal illness. It’s not a sexual relationship, and in the film itself they have discussions about whether their relationship is romantic or not, but I would describe it at the very least as queerplatonic, and regardless it’s deeply intimate and full of love.

It’s a far less sensitive film and is a bit messy throughout, but it’s genuinely very earnest and loving with the two protagonists — See No Evil, Hear No Evil (1989) with Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor is about two friends, one is deaf, and the other is blind. The main plot is nonsense, but the slice of life, the affection, and the way they help one another with their respective disabilities is genuinely funny and fun throughout.

5. Breaking Fast (2020, dir. Mike Mosallam)

MLM are central to the plot, explicitly written throughout, with romance the primary theme.

Right, it’s quite possible that like I did, you’ll start watching Breaking Fast and you’ll find the acting a bit wooden and the dialogue slightly stunted — when I tell you it’s unbelievably worth it, to stick with it for half an hour and let yourself be drawn in, please believe me and take my advice.

It’s an astonishingly earnest movie that shows so much and so many kinds of love, and it’s just sweet and genuinely laugh-out-loud funny throughout, and I can’t recommend it enough.

A RAMADAN ROM-COM.

Mo, a practicing Muslim living in West Hollywood, is learning to navigate life post heartbreak. Enter Kal, an All-American guy who surprises Mo by offering to break fast with him during the holy month of Ramadan.

Breaking Fast (2020) on Letterboxd.

6. Gods and Monsters (1998, dir. Bill Condon)

MLM are central to the plot, explicitly written throughout,with queer trauma and identity, especially in old age, as central themes.

You ever watch a movie that just reaches into your skull, scrambles everything about a bit, and scrapes out some of your brain, and it’s kind of amazing? Yeah. That’s Gods and Monsters.

Set in 1957, it’s all about gay identity, trauma, a desire for intimacy, suicide, growing older, mental illness, repression, and intergenerational connections. The relationships in this are hard, biting, difficult, desperate, and heavily feature kindness and a desire to connect, but are also coloured throughout by past pain.

It’s sublime.

It’s 1957, and James Whale’s heyday as the director of “Frankenstein,” “Bride of Frankenstein” and “The Invisible Man” is long behind him. Retired and a semi-recluse, he lives his days accompanied only by images from his past. When his dour housekeeper, Hannah, hires a handsome young gardener, the flamboyant director and simple yard man develop an unlikely friendship, which will change them forever.

Gods and Monsters (1998), via Letterboxd.

Another movie that’s got a much sweeter and gentler tone to it, but is about intergenerational conflicts and friendships in the queer community, is Tucked (2018), which is about a drag queen in his eighties taking a much younger queen under his wing, and is set in the modern era.

If what intrigues you is the abuse of power within a younger possibly queer dude who’s manipulated and has his life twisted by the older guy who’s more experienced in his queerness, I might recommend A Very English Scandal (2018), which is a mini series about the Thorpe Affair, and is devastatingly good.

7. Mysterious Skin (2004, dir. Gregg Araki)

One of the two protagonists is explicitly MLM, and the film is broadly about recovery from CSA and childhood trauma, with queerness, including self-destructive hypersexuality, as part of that.

Mysterious Skin is very, very good. I would also say it’s very, very important, that it devotes a great deal of care and effort and time and empathy into depicting different kinds of relationships and approaches to trauma, to intimacy, to community, to survivorship, to reclamation, to bodily autonomy, to queerness.

It’s not an easy watch.

I really like how it depicts the CSA because it doesn’t do it the way that some movies do, in a way that ends up trying to go for shock value but ends up feeling salacious and like it’s victimising the child actors in the movie itself, but in a way that’s visceral and agonising and sickening, but with implications that don’t just create what feels like even more exploitative material.

The way it depicts queer hypersexuality and sex as a method of self-destruction and self-harm but also self-assurance is deeply, deeply real, and just tremendously made.

TWO BOYS. ONE CAN’T REMEMBER. THE OTHER CAN’T FORGET.

A teenage hustler and a young man obsessed with alien abductions cross paths, together discovering a horrible, liberating truth.

Mysterious Skin (2020), via Letterboxd.

Some other movies that go into childhood trauma and how that affects the navigation of queer youths and the different ways they respond to trauma are The Boys of St. Vincent (1992) and its sequel, Closet Monster (2015), and Sleepers (1996).

8. Bright Young Things (2003, dir. Stephen Fry)

The character I’m reccing this for is explicitly MLM, but he is a side character that plays out a significant sideplot.

SEX… SCANDAL… CELEBRITY… SOME THINGS NEVER CHANGE.

In the 1930s, a social set known to the press — who follow their every move — as the “Bright Young Things” are Adam and his friends who are eccentric, wild and entirely shocking to the older generation. Amidst the madness, Adam, who is well connected but totally broke, is desperately trying to get enough money to marry the beautiful Nina. While his attempts to raise cash are constantly thwarted, their friends seem to self-destruct, one-by-one, in an endless search for newer and faster sensations. Finally, when world events out of their control come crashing around them, they are forced to reassess their lives and what they value most.

Bright Young Things (2003), via Letterboxd.

Miles Maitland is played by a young Michael Sheen, so that’s why the pretty boy above looks familiar to you. Bright Young Things is based off of Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies (if you’ve not heard of Bright Young Things, you nonetheless probably know Brideshead Revisited (1981) (or 2008), also based off of a seminal queer text by Waugh), and is all about the declining state of things for young people as the ’20s are left behind.

Ouch, too familiar, let’s go back to Miles.

His is a side plot, but it’s significant, and as a character he’s unbelievably evocative — he’s wildly fruity and flirtatious, he’s incredibly open about his sexuality and very provocative about it, and he’s painfully, agonisingly, desperate for other people’s love and approval, which you see more and more as his life — like everyone else’s — spirals out of control.

Bright Young Things is a good movie and I think it’s fun, but it’s honestly worth watching just for Miles and Agatha alone.

If you enjoy the fun and cheerful energy, alongside the fruity period era, of Bright Young Things, you’ll likely also enjoy the Jeeves and Wooster (1990) show, the Raffles (1975) show, and the Granada Sherlock Holmes (1984).

If you want more movies from the interwar period and you’ve already seen Maurice, Brideshead, and Another Country, I would really recommend Regeneration (1997), which centers some of the gay war poets of WW1 alongside the central narrative, and also A Month in the Country (1987), where Kenneth Brannagh plays a more minor queer side character that you just can’t help but fall a bit in love with.

9. Withnail and I (1987, dir. Bruce Robinson)

While a side character is explicitly MLM, the primary relationship between the two men in the text can only be inferred as queer, but is nonetheless deeply intimate and codependent.

So, if you’ve ever been a student and/or an actor and/or an artist and been roommates with similarly chaotic, wounded, and struggling people, there will be parts of Withnail and I that will be so relatable to you that you will ache with laughter. There’s a particularly evocative bit where they argue over whatever lifeform has begun to form in the sink of unwashed dishes that’s just… painfully true to life.

IF YOU DON’T REMEMBER THE 60S DON’T WORRY, NEITHER CAN THEY.

Two out-of-work actors — the anxious, luckless Marwood and his acerbic, alcoholic friend, Withnail — spend their days drifting between their squalid flat, the unemployment office and the pub. When they take a holiday “by mistake” at the country house of Withnail’s flamboyantly gay uncle, Monty, they encounter the unpleasant side of the English countryside: tedium, terrifying locals and torrential rain.

Withnail & I (1987), via Letterboxd.

There’s an explicitly gay character, Uncle Monty, played by Richard Griffiths in this, and he’s a mirror of sorts for his nephew, Withnail; Monty’s kind of an awful guy, but he’s motivated most of all by a deep sense of failure and a sense of worthlessness having never achieved his goals as an actor, and lacking any kind of lasting intimate relationship, which we see in Withnail, too.

Withnail and I is a movie about toxic codependence, it’s a movie about emotional repression and a sense of not having the script for the everyday things that everyone but you is following; it’s a movie about alcoholism and needing to be numb just to cope because you feel utterly unequipped for the world and your own feelings; and fundamentally, it’s a movie about intimacy, and it’s a movie about loneliness.

It’s bitterly funny. It’s got some of the funniest scenes I can name — and part of the way it achieves such hard-hitting dark humour is by going so dark in other aspects, so be ready for that.

If what you enjoy is caustic codependence between men who’re arguably in love, I would also recommend the TV show Vicious (2013), and obviously Venom (2018).

10. Deep Cover (1992, dir. Bill Duke)

Neither of the protagonists is explicitly MLM in this, and while the arguably homoerotic relationship between the protagonist and the other character is a central motivator, it’s purely just a queer reading.

So, Deep Cover is not a movie about queer masculinity.

It’s a movie about Black masculinity and Black manhood in 90s Los Angeles, and the sense of impossible responsibility to protect others from a system that can’t be bested, it’s a movie about crime and the inherently abusive system of police, about how the war on drugs victimises the most vulnerable, about the intentional attacks on and fracturing of Black families by the American state, and it’s also about childhood and generational trauma.

THERE’S A THIN LINE BETWEEN CATCHING A CRIMINAL… AND BECOMING ONE.

Black police officer Russell Stevens applies for a special anti-drug squad which targets the highest boss of cocaine delivery to LA — the Colombian foreign minister’s nephew. Russell works his way up from the bottom undercover, until he reaches the boss.

Deep Cover, via Letterboxd.

I would argue that John Hull (Laurence Fishburne), the protagonist, could be easily read as bisexual, but I would argue fervently that David Jason (Jeff Goldblum) is almost certainly bi, if not gay, and I think that the way that the movie presents their relationship is deeply homoerotic either way.

One of the main themes in the film is the way that Black men and masculinity is viewed and interpreted by different people, whether that’s other Black people, non-Black POC, or white people, and the different ways these interpretations and assumptions and prejudices affect interracial dynamics.

In contrast to this, there’s a great deal of commentary and portrayal of Jewish masculinity, and John Hull and David Jason are frequently not just contrasted, but pit against each other — Jason is frequently emasculated not just with antisemitic slurs and comments, but in the same breath, with homophobic ones, and his dynamic with Hull is deeply intimate and vulnerable, but also explicitly notes the way that Black sexuality is fetishised (by Jason) as animalistic, and the dynamics between them are always skirting this incredibly uncomfortable line between Jason’s repressed homosexuality and attraction to Hull and his own racial fetishism, but also Hull’s need and desire to protect the vulnerable, and also to have people love him and desire him unconditionally, which Jason… almost does.

It’s not that Hull is less attracted to or less loving toward his girlfriend — in fact, in reading the film for me, it often feels like Hull is using Jason’s attraction to and fetishism of Hull in order to control and manipulate him, which he more than deserves because he’s just the worst, and as a power dynamic between them is just incredible to watch.

It’s a really really good film, whether you see the queer angle or not, and I can’t recommend it enough.

If you want more fucked up manipulative interpersonal dynamics with more in-depth commentary on emasculation and queer masculinity, I might recommend Unconditional (2012).

11. Food of Love (2002, dir. Ventura Pons)

This movie is explicitly about MLM and their relationships throughout, not to mention queer trauma, and is thematic throughout.

Young aspiring pianist attracts attention of famous musicians. Chance encounters bring them together but expectations must be managed by all.

Food of Love (2002), via Letterboxd.

So, Food of Love, for me, was a very relatable story, and one that I don’t think I’d ever seen play out in anything. It knocked me on my ass, for quite a while, which sometimes, seeing your own experiences represented does.

Food of Love is about a very skilled young pianist, Paul Porterfield, who meets his hero, Richard Kennington, another very skilled pianist who’s beginning to lose hold of his youth, and is subsequently losing his lustre and his appeal within the wider artistic community.

Porterfield is a teenager when they meet and Kennington seduces him, and a lot of the descriptions brush off the movie as being about the trials and tribulations of young love, which… sure, it is, kind of.

But Porterfield also reads as autistic and quite uncomfortable with the sexual relationship throughout, and Kennington and Porterfield are always looking past one another when it comes to what they want — Porterfield wants artistic acknowledgement and not so much mentorship as the genuine connection and assurance of someone who understands what it’s like to be with him, what it’s like to experience the pressure he’s under, and is willing to exchange sex for something that approximates to that connection; Kennington, on the other hand, wants to feel that he’s still important, still attractive, still worth something, even as all evidence increasingly points to the contrary.

It’s a film about how art and creative scenes fetishise youth and ingenuity, and how particularly within the queer community, we have a desperate fascination with appreciating and experiencing youth, especially because so many of us don’t experience the same open youthful exploration of sexuality and relationships non-queer people have in their teens, and because we don’t expect to live as long in the first place.

It’s also about how lonely art and performance spheres are, especially when you’re at a level where you’re skilled enough that people can’t see the negatives in pressure you might be under, and focus solely on your artistic value rather than your value as a person, pedestalising and casually dehumanising you — how the only people you can connect with about that are other artists and performers, but they’re your competition, and those connections can be fulfilling, but dangerous.

It’s… It’s a very good movie. If anything of what I just said feels relatable or applicable to personal experience, you’ve got a storm coming with Food of Love, but it genuinely executes it so, so well.

Holding the Man (2015) isn’t quite the same, but it does delve a lot into insecurity within a gay relationship and the casual cruelty that can come with trying to assert independence whilst also having to rely on the other person by necessity because of the tenuous support you can’t always rely on from the community around you; Uncle Frank (2020) also delves into the sense of isolation one feels even from loving and caring family members as not just an artist/”intellectual”, but also as a queer person.

12. Another Country (1984, dir. Marek Kanievska)

The main character in this is based off of the real life spy, Guy Burgess, and his being MLM and his queerness is central to the plot and explicit throughout.

Boarding school movies are their whole own queer category, so this was a vital recommendation, I think, and given how much nasty men I’ve just recommended, we need a bit of tenderness.

Another Country is about the difficulties and complications of navigating attraction to other boys in the boys’ school environment, but it’s also very much a movie about the class system in the UK, and how the rigors and expectations of that class system uphold all kinds of bigotry and prejudice — not just hatred of the lower classes, but also homophobia and other social prejudices; it’s a movie about how class and social standing allow for the consolidation of power, and about cruelty and social cannibalism on the social ladder, and how difficult it is to meaningfully reject and remove oneself from that system.

Maurice is about these themes too, but Another Country makes the explicit link throughout between being a communist (being anti-aristocracy and anti-class stratification as we know it) and being gay, and the tenderness and the sort of desperate ache in all of Bennett’s interactions with other men, but especially with Harcourt, is really hard-hitting, and so, so good.

Dead Poets Society (1989) tends to be the first “gay movie about boarding school” rec that comes to mind, so I’ll recommend a miniseries that’s also based off of Guy Burgess and his band of iconic traitors, which is Cambridge Spies (2003).

Pride (2014) is of course another film that’s about queerness and class in the UK, and the necessity for that solidarity.

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I don’t think cause came up to recommend Priest (1994), but it’s about queerness and Catholic religious trauma, and it’s really good. I don’t need to recommend it, but if I do, it’s the 50th feature film I’ve mentioned in this piece, and I like that.

Otherwise, if you’re like, wow, that’s a long list and I’m not up to it right now, but I want to watch something, here’s three short films that are good and you can watch on YouTube:

• Query (2020, dir Sophie Kargman) — 9min. A leisurely day belies its uninvited end as Jay and Alex, best friends and roommates, challenge one another on their opinions of sexuality. (via Letterboxd)
• Papercut (2018, dir. Damian Overton) — 15min. Two closeted actors en route to an awards show argue in a chauffeured limo about how important it is to appear straight. (via Letterboxd)
• Curmudgeons (2016, dir. Danny DeVito) — 16min. The best part of getting old is no longer caring what anybody thinks. Eighty years-old and in assisted living, Ralph Pajovic is involved in a relationship that makes his family anxious. On a crisp, winter day, his unlucky-in-love granddaughter comes for what seems like an ordinary visit. A curmudgeon by nature, Ralph can’t possibly predict the surprise she has in store for him. (via Letterboxd).

Hope this list offered some food for thought, even if you’ve seen everything already.

I’m, of course, on Letterboxd.