Writer-Director Frank Vitale and co-writer Allan Moyle created something unique and hard to forget in MONTREAL MAIN. The film played the "Gay Film Festival" circuits in the 1970s and occasionally showed up on US art house screens at the time, but has rarely been revived since. Seeing it again, so many years later, the gay connection can be seen as rather tenuous. Yes there are openly gay characters in the story. And the attitude towards them is not judgmental. Also, these characters exert some influence on the two main performers (Vitale and Moyle). But it's not truly a "gay film". This is really the story of men who are long past boyhood, but who refuse to leave their adolescent sensibilities behind. Photographer Frank (Vitale), in particular, seems troubled by this situation (without knowing exactly what is going on inside him). He concocts a notion that he needs to explore homosexuality, since most of his friends are gay. An absurd idea, and when a brief experiment with Bozo (Moyle) goes bust, it's pretty clear to both men that this will not be the road to take. The scene is remarkable for the way it expresses the mutual frustration and confusion of both characters, and it's a good way to get the story started. Bozo really seems interested in women, or at least he is interested in a particular woman, whom he courts in a somewhat charming fashion, and then overwhelms and drives away with his idiotic, puerile behavior. Frank, on the other hand, falls into a much more provocative situation. When he invites Johnny, the teenage son of some friends, to go on a photo hike in the local mountain, he ends up triggering a dangerous obsession. Here is where the film has been connected to "gay cinema", and yet it's not clear what Frank's interest in Johnny really means. Frank never once makes a move on the boy, nor discusses anything sexual with him. Johnny is an almost medieval kind of love object, with Frank occasionally seen observing his androgynous prettiness from a safe distance. Is the boy's androgyny, with his shoulder-length stringy hair, a key to understanding this story? Perhaps, because Frank is so obviously confused and stuck in a place between adolescence and manhood, that he does not truly know what he wants out of life, much less out of Johnny. The two participate in harmless activities, and it really seems that Frank may be just extending his own youth through this friendship. It's worth mentioning that one of Frank's openly gay friends very wisely advises him to back off from the boy and give him "lots of space". But it's not until Johnny's father has to tell Frank flat-out to stay away from his son that some realization begins to dawn. This is not a film of great revelations or audience-pleasing resolution. It's a kind of meditation on growing up, and how difficult it can be for some men to fully leave their younger days behind them. On that level, it's engrossing and occasionally moving.
A great advantage of low-budget, independent films like this can be the way they capture a time and place. MONTREAL MAIN is shot on real locations (including interiors, which look very lived-in, to say the least). The viewer can have a real sense of the particular neighborhood of Montreal where much of the film is set. Much about these areas has probably changed over more than thirty years, so it's an interesting time capsule. Another time capsule aspect is seen in the actors' appearances: men with bushy, long, greasy-looking hair; women wearing mostly unflattering clothes. The mid-1970s may not have been a time fondly remembered for fashion, but this really documents the way people looked and lived. Vitale's use of French New Wave techniques gives the film energy and a style that matches its content.
A great advantage of low-budget, independent films like this can be the way they capture a time and place. MONTREAL MAIN is shot on real locations (including interiors, which look very lived-in, to say the least). The viewer can have a real sense of the particular neighborhood of Montreal where much of the film is set. Much about these areas has probably changed over more than thirty years, so it's an interesting time capsule. Another time capsule aspect is seen in the actors' appearances: men with bushy, long, greasy-looking hair; women wearing mostly unflattering clothes. The mid-1970s may not have been a time fondly remembered for fashion, but this really documents the way people looked and lived. Vitale's use of French New Wave techniques gives the film energy and a style that matches its content.