Are there any gay surfers? Ed Aldridge says there's him and about two or three other blokes. Aldridge should know, having spent the better part of a year scouring Australia to find enough openly queer board jockeys to populate Tan Lines, his hilarious account of an adolescent struggling to come out (to himself) and exit a randy little island community just offshore from Sydney. On the new DVD (TLA), Aldridge's jocular commentary provides answers to such questions as why so many 16-year-old straight-identified surfer boys were willing to be gay for precious little pay, why there are so few surfing scenes in the movie, and finally, why so much bloody tea-pouring? There's also a silly audition video that lets you decide if Aldridge found the sexiest combinations among the boys at his disposal. The young director, who likes to be known simply as Ed, explains the origins of the cartoon that kicks off his story, as well as the inspiration for the following desperate dialogue.
"Have you been wanking in bed again, Midget?"
"Piss off!"
"You're sick, man!"
"I've got to do it somewhere!"
"In bed with your mom, bloke?"
"That's where I am in the morning, that's where I'm turned on. Anyway, it's not like she strokes my balls while I'm whacking it off!"
When we first glimpse him, Midget Hollows (the oddly charming newcomer Jack Baxter) is lying in a bed he shares with his decidedly eccentric mom, Betty. His headphones are channeling kick-ass rock (a Sydney band, The Mares, provides a righteous soundtrack). Growing up in an Aussie beachtown where everybody knows everybody else's business, Midget has gained a reputation as a surfing, hard-partying, horny little bugger. He finds himself suddenly having to defend himself when a hunky fellow surfer, Cassidy (curly-haired Daniel O'Leary), returns. He and Midget shag by night, and put up a good macho front by day. Midget has his phobias and secrets, like a mysterious well-paid part-time job that takes him to the hillside mansion of the town's crazy old widow (Lucy Minter, doing a wacky take on Miss Haversham).
Freshman writer/director Aldridge says, "I figured I'd better do a film about teenage sexuality while I was still in my 20s, thereby avoiding the label of 'old pervert' invariably slung at middle-aged directors like Larry Clark." He bends over backwards to avoid making Midget and his surf-rat buddies come off as sweet and innocent. Midget is decidedly obnoxious at times, warding off blowjob requests from the town's lone out longhaired gay boy, and putting down an overtly gay teacher, Mr. McKinzie (Christian Willis), who he believes "corrupted" Cass, forcing the boy to take a long furlough abroad.
Fiercely enthralled with Cass but anxious not to offend the macho surfer code, Midget looks for a way to leave town with honor (and the dude). It's a town whose adult residents all seem to have suffered a precipitous loss in ambition and brain cells. It's great to finally have a movie where the seniors are at least as horny and exhibitionist as the kids. Aldridge deftly spins out the summer affair between Midget and Cass in both its erotic and intimacy stages, interspersed with a running battle between the religious icons in Cass' bedroom: a surprising tolerant Virgin Mary and fiercely disapproving dead Pope.
Tan Lines, inspired by that lovely 70s Aussie sex classic, Bruce Beresford's Puberty Blues, is defiantly pro-sex and non-judgmental about every possible sort of consensual hookup between kids and between the generations. It's a heartfelt ode to adolescence as richly observed as Igby Goes Down or The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys.