Review: Circuit

Circuit queens won’t learn a thing because they’ll be too busy cursing the film’s strategically placed white sheets.

Circuit
Photo: Jour de Fête Films

With all the inter-office beatdowns and lonely nights at home, it’s terrible being an openly gay police officer in rural America. It only makes sense then that John (Jonathan Wade Drahos) would make his way to West Hollywood, where a bump of K becomes his indoctrination into the film’s lascivious gay culture. Circuit is basically a lost episode of Showtime’s Queer as Folk. While the film nobly purports to expose the good and the bad of the gay circuit scene, good intentions are lost amid soap opera acting methods, gratuitous shots of plump asses and silhouettes of dicks, and ridiculous musical montages (not the ones inside the clubs, just the ones inside bedrooms set to “White Rabbit” and intercut with images of gay bacchanalia). Character trajectories are ridiculously off-kilter: the buff, straight-edged cop is too-easily hypnotized by gay culture; the Latino hustler is a grotesque caricature of superficiality; and the HIV+ sex performer who tragically caters to demands of his size queen audience. Sure, Circuit has authenticity to spare (part of the film was shot at the White Party and director Dirk Shafer understands the freedom provided by the gay ghetto), yet the film serves up punishment like a hokey Afterschool Special. Death is the obligatory punishment for exaggerated narcissism. Circuit queens won’t learn a thing because they’ll be too busy cursing the film’s strategically placed white sheets.

Score: 
 Cast: Jonathan Wade-Drahos, Andre Khabbazi, William Katt, Kiersten Warren, Daniel Kucan, Nancy Allen, Brian Lane Green, Jim J. Bullock, Bruce Villanch  Director: Dirk Shafer  Screenwriter: Gregory Hinton, Dirk Shafer  Distributor: Jour de Fête Films  Running Time: 120 min  Rating: NR  Year: 2002  Buy: Video

Ed Gonzalez

Ed Gonzalez is the co-founder of Slant Magazine. A member of the New York Film Critics Circle, his writing has appeared in The Village Voice, The Los Angeles Times, and other publications.

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