Not a GWM: The DL Chronicles
Reel Affirmations 2007
Review by Tim Plant
Rating: 
(3 out of 5)
Sunday, 10/14/2007, 5:30 PM
Feature presentation, $10 at Lincoln Theatre
A NEW SERIES from here! television, The DL Chronicles uses the same set-up as Sex and the City: a narrator sits at a computer providing deep, thought-provoking voiceovers for the episode. Also true to SATC, there’s a lot of sex. That’s where the similarities end.
Focusing on the ”down low” culture in the African American community, these two episodes of the DL Chronicles have no connection to each other. The first focuses on Boo (Oneil Cespedes), a player in every sense of the word. He’s cheating on his girlfriend with other women, men, you name it. After a number of sex scenes, in a page from the 1995 film Kids, the ”six-degrees of sex” chart reveals some scary news. Countless simulated orgasms are probably the best acting in the episode — the rest of the dialogue is fairly canned and stilted.
The next episode is decidedly more entertaining and lighthearted. The loving, but closeted, couple Mark (Ulrich Que) and Donte (Colbert Alembert) are just about to convert the second bedroom (kept for appearances) to an office when Mark’s brass cousin (Dee Gibson) arrives. The harder everyone tries to play it straight, the harder it is for everyone to keep their secrets. While overall an amusing episode, the danger and fear of coming out hits home in this one.
Milind Soman Made Me Gay () is an over-edited look at South Asian men and the difficulties they face in reconciling their culture and their sexuality. Director Harjant Gill interweaves his experiences with several others, using countless filming techniques to distract from the stories. For his own tale, Gill projects images across himself and a wall while moving through what can only be called a series of interpretive dance moves. Similarly, Ayush Gupta’s tale of dating a white American — and explaining that to his Indian parents — is sweet, but the staging of his boyfriend in the background striking different poses ruins any personal connection that may have been captured. Ultimately, what could have been a compelling look at a subsection of the gay community is lost to poor delivery. — TP
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