Skip to main content

Canadian filmmaker Bruce LaBruceFernando Morales/The Globe and Mail

An early review of Bruce LaBruce's Gerontophilia in Variety suggested that the queercore provocateur had "lost his edge."

Indeed, the film, about an affair between an older fellow and a much younger man, is more sweet than shocking. Still, the man is no shrinking violet, and I was hoping to get a rise out of the filmmaker when I brought up, in an interview, the issue of Russia's anti-gay tirade.

I got nothing. LaBruce described the current homophobia as "cyclical" and said he didn't support any sort of boycott, not even of a nation in which the harassment of gay people was being organized through groups known as, for example, Occupy Gerontophilia, who claim to be trying to "reform" homosexuals.

While acknowledging that the gay movement in Russia "perhaps wasn't as developed as it is in North America and the West," LaBruce said he felt no "homophobic vibe" when he brought his homosexually explicit L.A. Zombie to the Tomorrow film festival in Moscow two years ago. Oh, well, perhaps the gent behind Gerontophilia is getting old himself.

Follow related authors and topics

Authors and topics you follow will be added to your personal news feed in Following.

Interact with The Globe