If You See Only One Gay Indie Movie This Year, Make It “Patrik, Age 1.5”

Every year, it seems as if there’s only one small gay indie movie that breaks out of the pack and becomes the movie everyone talks about: Eating Out in 2004, Mysterious Skin in 2005, Another Gay Movie in 2006, Shelter in 2007, and Were the World Mine in 2008.

These are all pretty good movies, even if I didn’t always agree that they were the ones that most deserved to break out. (Last year, I liked Ciao more than Were the World Mine. And I liked Quinceañera more than either Shelter or Another Gay Movie.)

But I have a feeling that this year’s gay indie break-out movie will be Patrik, Age 1.5 – a Swedish film released last year in other countries, but only now being seen here in the U.S.

If it doesn’t break out, something’s truly not right in the world. It’s a flat-out wonderful movie.

In the film, written and directed by Ella Lemhagen, Göran and Sven are a gay couple who’ve recently moved to the homogenous suburbs precisely so they can adopt a baby. They’ve gone through a long process, and to their delight, they’re told that they can soon expect a child, age “1.5 years.”

That, of course, turns out to be a typo. The only child available to them is a very troubled, and very homophobic 15-year-old boy, Patrik.

Now I know what you’re thinking: it sounds gimmicky. And didn’t we just do the heartwarming gay family comedy thing with last year’s Canadian misfire Breakfast with Scot?

Okay, sure, maybe we all know where this story is going. But before we got there, the movie kept catching me completely by surprise.

Better still, the movie earns its emotions the old-fashioned way: through smart, honest writing and sensational performances.

I don’t want to give too much away, because part of what makes the movie work is its unexpected twists.

But there’s a scene when teenage Patrik, who’s never had anyone care about him before, cuts himself. Göran asks him, “Do you want me to put a Band-aid on that?”

“I’m not a little kid, you know!” Patrik says defiantly.

Cut to a scene where Göran is putting a Band-aid on Patrik’s cut. Then Göran sees an older cut on Patrik’s arm and asks, “Do you want me to put one on that too?”

Wordlessly, the boy nods yes.

It’s wonderfully understated (and heartbreaking) scenes like this that tell you this movie was made by a group of pros. No long, showy monologues about horrible things that happened five years before – just genuine emotion and real characters set in the here and now.