Little Ashes (2009)

Film: Little Ashes (2009)
Stars: Robert Pattinson, Javier Beltran, Matthew McNulty, Marina Gatell
Director: Paul Morrison
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

This is potentially going to be a niche question, but do you ever find on a streaming or (especially) your Netflix DVD queue movies that you don't really remember why you wanted to see them in the first place?  I have been trying adamantly during this quarantine (and yes, despite the weather and other people seemingly taking it less seriously, I am very much still sticking to quarantine behavior & will probably be one of the last people to start going out of this willingly), I've been making a point of having a near-constant rotation of Netflix discs, and as a result, I'm getting to some movies that I probably added a decade ago, and never really got around to hitting the top of my queue until now, always lumbering somewhere in the 250's (I have, in grand total, almost 900 films in my Netflix DVD queue).  This is why Little Ashes is coming to you today, a decade after you vaguely remember it existing.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is based on the early life of Salvador Dali (Pattinson), Luis Bunuel (McNulty), and activist-poet Federico Garcia Lorca (Beltran) when they are attending art school in Madrid.  The three men, obviously incredibly talented, spend most of their days discussing art and politics and revolution, and when Bunuel is controlling the conversation, women & sex.  Dali & Lorca begin to have an emotional affair, which briefly turns into a physical one, albeit an affair that Dali cannot seem to consummate despite clearly wanting to (though the film toes the line a little bit with this, it doesn't feel so much that he's not sexually-attracted to Lorca so much as it is that he can't get past the moral & legal implications of having sex with a man).  The two grow apart, physically, romantically, and most crucially, politically, with Dali becoming much more conservative & capitalistic, while Lorca becomes more involved in the fight against the Nationalists, which leads to his eventual assassination.

I'd like to pretend that my love of art history was the reason that this was initially put on my queue, but that would be a lie.  In 2009, when Little Ashes was released, I would've been in the throes of Twilight fever still.  I was way too obsessed with the Twilight franchise back in the day, both the movies and books, which I'll admit are not high quality, and I'm not going to defend my choices here other than I don't have a lot of guilty pleasures, particularly cultural ones, so I'm allowing myself this (and yes, I am going to read Midnight Sun the day it comes out).  So the idea that my "Team Edward" shirt might be making out with another guy was enough for me to pursue this film, though the Twilight fever apparently wasn't enough for me to ever bump it up my Netflix queue.

The end result is disappointing.  Gay sex scenes in movies are always quite prudish, but with a new star who's about to be a matinee idol for a major film franchise, I have to imagine that the studio heads weren't willing to let more than a few chaste kisses slip between Pattinson and his leading man (though supposedly this is the film where Pattinson "actually" masturbated onscreen because he couldn't simulate a realistic-looking orgasm, and while there's no nudity, that scene does make the film's final cut).  Without that passion, between two men whose character are entirely driven by their own artistic heat, the film falls apart.  It's boring, the leads aren't allowed to have chemistry, and McNulty's Bunuel, who could've been the saving grace, falters into wild mood swings that deny us the ability to understand his character.  As a result, this is a movie that if it is lounging in your queue after a decade, it's okay to admit you just don't want to see.