Baxter! (1973)

Although Baxter! is not a gay themed film per se, I will include it here for the following reasons: a. It's about a teenager who doesn't fit in and struggles to find some connection in life. When I saw it a teenager myself, felt more or less the same, even if for different reasons. It helped navigate through the heaven & hell that is puberty. b. He escapes this estrangement by forming a family that is not based on blood, but on love. (a) & (b) are truly part of the gay experience. c. It's a hard-to-find, rarely-seen film which deserves to be discovered. And d. this was the first review I wrote for IMDb, under the name of yiefthy, over a decade ago. It was appreciated there and I hope it will be appreciated here too.

This is my review: "Dear dad, I wish this journey would go on forever" writes young Roger Baxter to his ever-absent father, on the flight from America to England - and right away tears up the letter and flushes it down the toilet. That's how this exquisite film about troubled adolescence, indifferent parents and the painful realization of commitment and loss begins. And it's no easy ride. Steering clear of the clichés that usually burden these movies, it offers us a clear and passionate view of the mind of this teenager in the way good British films do, in a simple no-nonsense way. (Kudos to actor-turned-director Lionel Jeffries for his efficient "invisible" direction).

A little about the story: Roger Baxter (Scott Jacobi) comes to London with his divorced mother (Lynn Carlin). They are rich and he's enrolled in a very exclusive school, which he hates. His mother is a self-absorbed artistic socialite who has little time for her son. His father (Paul Maxwell) is still in the States and he's as absent to his son as he is to us viewers (we hardly ever see him). Also Roger has a speaking disability (he cannot pronounce "r") which further separates him from the rest of the "normal" people. The sun shines for our hero through a handful of encounters: a young couple (a French chef and a Swedish model, played by Jean-Pierre Cassel & Britt Ekland respectively) who become surrogate older siblings, a young girl (Sally Thomsett) who's as close to a romantic interest that Roger comes to, but not quite, and the Speech therapist (Patricia Neal) who's a much stronger mother figure than his own mother. Through a series of events Roger has his psyche shattered, but the end of this film, a great scene between Scott Jacobi and Jean-Pierre Cassell, is both optimistic and touching.

The acting is uniformly very good, but special mention must go to two actors who really carry the film. Scott Jacobi as Roger Baxter gives the performance of his career, while Patricia Neal as the speech therapist, Dr. Roberta Clemm, conveys both the quiet authority as well as the human warmth needed for the part (Favourite scene: Roger is on the verge of a nervous breakdown and his mother, not understanding what is happening with her son, slaps him. Patricia Neal grabs her wrist and in a very quiet voice says: "I hate violence, Mrs Baxter. And I tomorrow I'm going to hate myself for this. But right now, I warn you, if you so much as move, I'm going to break you into little pieces").

When the movie came out in the early seventies, a British film critic called it "a small masterpiece". Do find out for yourselves that indeed it is so.

Grade: 10/10

The trailer: