I am Michael – James Franco’s latest gay drama

I Am Michael

I am Michael, James Franco’s latest gay drama surpasses expectations as a touching look at identity.

Guys, prepare to pick your jaws up off the floor, as this is a gay film that stars James Franco.

Perhaps that’s being a bit unfair on him. Whatever his motives, he has starred in a wide range of films that candidly explore different aspects of being gay, as well as working with some up-and-coming queer directors. I Am Michael is one such film, which tells the real-life story of the eponymous Michael Glatze; a prominent LGBT writer and activist who completely renounced his homosexuality after finding God.

We first meet Michael in San Francisco, living in a sun-drenched apartment with his boyfriend Bennett, and working for a gay magazine that covered clubs, sex, and gay issues (how glam!). He sidles up to a twink called Tyler in a bar, who quickly becomes a part of the couples relationship. The three of them set out on a ol’ fashioned American roadtrip to film a documentary on LGBT youth. So far, so Dustin Lance Black.

However, this picture-perfect serenity is smashed when Michael starts getting heart palpations and he worries that he’s inherited the condition that saw his father keel over dead in front of Michael when he was only 12. This fear sees him descend into a sweaty, deranged mess, but it’s finally allayed when a doctor tells him that he definitely hasn’t got any genetic heart problems. Michael sees this good news as God’s work and starts to get more and more interested in his own long-dormant faith.

For the rest of the film, we watch as Michael slowly but surely deconstructs his previous gay identity, while building himself a new one as a staunch, chino-wearing Christian who fights against the perceived dangers of homosexuality with the same fervour he used to promote it with. It’s Michael’s measured transition that makes the film. We tend to think of ex-gays as indecisive and deeply-repressed men, but with Michael, the decision comes across with the same coldly driven logic as someone changing their network provider. Once he has his health scare, he has a cursory look into Mormonism and Buddhism, before settling on a life in Christianity. He’s never pressurised into it by anyone else and it’s a largely passionless move.

Franco manages to track this transformation from flirty activist to po-faced evangelical really well, as does Zachary Quinto, who seethes with quiet fury as Bennett. However, it would have been rewarding to have more screen-time on how it affected both Bennett and the more vulnerable Tyler.

I am Michael is a sobering look at the search for identity and just how far people will go to feel that they truly belong. It’s a story that could have very easily been sensationalised and cheapened, but it’s difficult to see how any of the real-life people depicted in the film would have any issues with it.

• I am Michael is out now on DVD by Matchbox Films.

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