Biopics about the youth of famous men are often overshadowed by their fame to come. "The Motorcycle Diaries," for example, depended for much of its appeal on our knowledge that its young doctor hero would someday become Che Guevara. "Little Ashes" is interested in the young men for themselves.
It shows unformed young men starting from similar places, but taking different roads because of their characters. Garcia Lorca, who is honest with himself about his love for another man, finds real love eventually with a woman, his classmate Margarita (Marina Gatell). Dali, who presents almost as a transvestite, denies all feelings, and like many puritans, ends as a voluptuary. Bunuel, the most gifted of all, ends as all good film directors do, consumed by his work. I am fond of his practical approach to matters. Warned that angry mobs might storm the screen at the Paris premiere of "Un Chien Andalou," he filled his pockets with stones to throw at them.
"Little Ashes" is absorbing but not compelling. Most of its action is inward. The more we know about the three men the better. Although the eyeball-slicing is shown in the film, many audiences may have no idea what it is doing there. Perhaps Dali's gradual slinking away from his ideals, his early embrace of celebrity, his preference for self-publicity over actual achievement, makes better sense when we begin with his shyness and naivete; is he indeed entirely aware that his hair and dress are those of a girl, or has he been coddled in this way by a strict, protective mother who is hostile to male sexuality?
Whatever the case, two things stand out: He has the courage to present himself in quasi-drag, and the other students at the Students' Residence, inspired by the fever in the air, accept him as "making a statement" he might not have been fully aware of.
I have long believed that one minute of wondering if you are about to be kissed is more erotic than an hour of kissing. Although a few gay Web sites complain "Little Ashes" doesn't deliver the goods, I find it far more intriguing to find how repressed sexuality express itself, because the bolder sort comes out in the usual ways and reduces mystery to bodily fluids. Orgasms are at their best when still making big promises, don't you find?
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