From Hong Kong, director Bruce Saxway has crafted a fascinating mindbender titled Graupel Poetry.

Two actors and an actress play out roles that depict situations around relationships. Then the same actors also switch the roles, or so it seems, with dialogue and situations we previously saw them portray.

    Therefore, this probing film has a gay, bisexual, and heterosexual interplay that compels the viewer, no matter how advanced they are in their comfort over their own orientation, to frankly look at how they might side with one character in a given situation and not with the other actor or actress in the same situation. It reminds us that we all have our own unexamined stereotypes, signifiers, and prejudices.

    Saxway knows what he’s doing and I say this because too often, filmmakers go surreal and nonlinear with the idea that they’re creating something ingenious when in reality, they’re just making a mess. But Saxway penetrates how we think we perceive things and Graupel Poetry will benefit any attentive viewer. He also succeeds as well as just about any filmmaker I can think of on depicting the concept that dream time and corporeal time fluctuate between two dimensions of reality.



By John Townsend August 17, 2012