Search The Archive
|
Headlights sweeping dark roads on the outskirts of town. A clean-cut white boy at the wheel. Balmy nights in Memphis, down on the Missisippi delta. What are all those parked cars doing here? Who are those guys wandering up and down? And why are there no women? As if you didn't know. |
Moody and unpredictable. The Delta holds your attention the same way snakes are said to hypnotise rabbits. Lincoln Bloom is a nice lewish boy with a car, has a blonde girlfriend, a respectable family in the suburbs and nocturnal habits he'd rather they didn't know about, Lincoln is compulsively drawn to danger but not quite game for anything—as an interesting little scene with a businessman who takes him back to his hotel room demonstrates.
However, something clicks when Lincoln meets the other side of the American dream in the form of John, a troubled Vietnamese-African American who calls him 'boy'. They take Lincoln's family boat for a midnight cruise down river and a few beers. But this is not a romance. Soon Lincoln's out of the picture altogether and we're away with John, deeper into the pool halls and porno theatres of his midnight ramblings. Surely it will all end in tears or something even worse?
The Delta is both a queer and cinematic gem is deft construction and completely original story defies predicability and fascinates (CB)