Posted on: Friday, May 7, 2004

Love story of a gay Mormon is tender

By Kevin Thomas
Los Angeles Times

C. Jay Cox's "Latter Days" is a love story involving two people from such radically different worlds that it is inevitable their lives will be turned upside down, never to be the same. Yet Cox expresses a profound belief in the transforming power of love, no matter what the circumstances or the cost.

An assured first feature, "Latter Days" is already a controversial work even though it extols spirituality, charity and forgiveness.

Christian (Wes Ramsey) is a buff young gay man living the good life in L.A., where he works at an upscale restaurant whose proprietor is the wise and elegant Lila (Jacqueline Bisset). There's camaraderie between Lila and her employees, who include Julie (Rebekah Jordan), an aspiring singer-songwriter who is also Christian's best friend and roommate in a vintage Spanish-style hillside court.

A group of young men moves into a cottage in the court, and soon Christian is betting his co-workers that he will seduce Aaron (Steve Sandvoss), one of his new neighbors. The confident Christian regards the fact that Aaron is a Mormon missionary as an amusing challenge.

After Christian makes his move, Aaron is forced to admit he is secretly gay — but that does not mean he will just fall into Christian's arms.

Neither young man is at all prepared for the impact they have on each other, triggering passion and emotion that will be increasingly hard to deny but — because of the Mormon view of homosexuality — could spell disaster.

Cox, a gay ex-Mormon, must be credited with a compassion and detachment that not all filmmakers would be capable of mustering, yet his mature vision gives dimension to Aaron's parents. They are deeply religious, and his mother (Mary Kay Place, in one of her finest portrayals, which is saying a lot) finds herself incapable of forgiveness, while his father (Jim Ortlieb) is paralyzed with shame.

At once romantic, earthy and socially critical, "Latter Days" is a dynamic film filled with humor and pathos. It is sometimes raunchy, sometimes overflowing with spiritual and emotional yearning, and often melodramatic. Yet in its impassioned, enlightened way it rings true to the workings of the human heart and some of life's harsher realities.