One film I won't be seeing

This week's Listener has a couple of articles about Niki Caro's film adapation of The Vintner's Luck by Elizabeth Knox. Since I first read The Vintner's Luck it's grown on me as an incredibly powerful story about a love which transcends religion, gender, and even species. With this in mind as my primary reading of the novel, I was perturbed by the interpretation suggested by the Listener feature.

In the main story, Caro says, "Film-making is a more populist medium and I wanted to make the film a little more accessible. For me, it takes... those characters... and it puts them in an environment that is easier for a film audience to enjoy." The Listener follows up with "[main character Sobran's] relationship with the angel, Xas, is more spiritual, less sexy".

In the interview with Elizabeth Knox, we get this:

The emphasis is on Sobran's love triangle with his wife and Aurora, the baroness who becomes his winemaking partner, rather than any angelic hanky-panky. This is not Chateau Brokeback. "I think the strategy is to get the general audience in by not showing too much gayness, possibly," muses Knox. "I hope there's enough gayness in the movie. After all, it is the story of the man and the angel."

Finally, the interview with the two male stars, Gaspard Ulliel (Xas) and Jérémie Renier (Sobran), makes it all horribly clear.

• Ulliel: "Niki was just wondering if she wanted to push it that much or not. She was saying it's not really a sexual relationship, a proper gay relationship. It's like a really strong friendship."
• Renier: "Sobran has three loves. With his wife it's real, it's very physical; with Aurora it's more intellectual; and with Xas more with the air, with the spirit. It's not gay, just very intense. Like with best friends."
• The Listener: "There is a scene of tender, funny high jinks - aerial on the part of Xas - between the two men. [Ulliel says] 'It's like a metaphor for making love.' "

Let's just be quite clear here. This is not a film adaptation of The Vintner's Luck. This is, as Caro herself admits, similar-looking characters with the same names dancing to a whole different tune. Acting out a heterosexual love triangle which never existed in the novel. Reducing a burning sexual passion to "a really strong friendship". Splitting Sobran's character neatly into three - whereas a key narrative in the novel was his struggle to reconcile his spiritual needs and understandings with his fleshly ones.

The Listener sums up the adaptation as settling for "less gayness and less God". Less, in fact, of the two themes which made this novel unusual and beautiful. Less of what makes it worth spending time over. And why? Because film audiences are too secular, too heterosexual, too unaccustomed to seeing things which are very far removed from their own experience. They're so afraid of gay sex, they must have it reduced to "a metaphor". Is Sobran's sex with his wife - sex which is so unimportant that we never see it in the novel - "a metaphor"? Of course not. If he is to have a "very physical" love for his wife, it's going to happen onscreen. Because straight sex is so normal we have to see it to believe it occurs at all, whereas gay sex is so scary that the audience must be left guessing about it. This is heteronormativity as a marketing plan.

I will not see this film, nor will I see any other film adaptation of The Vintner's Luck, until it can show me both of these themes honestly:

Sobran had taken his troubled heart to church, had tried to pray - but his desire had sprung up, a curtain of fire, between himself and the Virgin... he had meant to ask for God's pity and help. His desire was an imperfection. But instead of praying, Sobran remembered... In the dream that hatched in its incubation, a memory of warm flesh he'd touched and knew, Sobran was able to kiss the mouth that always said such interesting things.

Sobran found that he couldn't say, in prayer, "God help me". He didn't feel shame or fear. His desire was a triumph - Xas was so fine that of course Sobran should love him. God had made Xas beautiful, had made his clever tongue. "What am I supposed to do?" Sobran asked God, laughing, and waving his desire up like the smoke of a sacrifice. "This is what you get, Lord, for your great work."

-- The Vintner's Luck, pp 54-55, Victoria University Press 1999