Memorial Day, 4th July and Labor Day are the perfect weekends to get away from gay city life and to find oneself. But the 7 friends and a new lover are to find not only peace and tranquillity: unfaithfulness, personal tirades, romance and youth culture mess up the otherwise trouble-free life...

The gay country house seems to belong to gay culture as much as the darkroom. One year after the British Boyfriends of 1996, the North Americans and their friends go back to an idyllic frontier land. Although there is no similar German film, they can make the real pilgrimage to a little gay schloss in the woods near Göttingen. Films like William Friedkin's The Boys in the Band (1969) and, more recently, Together Alone ('91) and Lie Down with Dogs ('94), have shown us how gays like to dissect themselves, their friends and lifestyles.

Whilst the last film mentioned above at least has an above-average portion of sexual joie de vivre, Love! Valour! Compassion! makes one ask whether there is such a thing as a happy gay. The film makers do enthuse about their characters' more positive self-images, as compared to the 28-year-old film The Boys in the Band, but for Queer View at least, it is clear that the boys on the private lake in Montreal in 1997 are still tragic characters. So-called ageing still gives the homos problems, as does the resulting unfaithfulness of their comrades. One is bitter, another so camp, his life must be full of problems. Homos could always perfectly imitate the tenor of the straight world without really noticing it. It may be that dramatic extremes are best evaluated as emotional lows; but wallowing in them is something best treated on a couch, not in the cinema. A few drag elements and some good soundbites are always welcome, but simply turn a tragedy into a tragi-comedy.

Love! Valour! Compassion! is superficial in its treatment not only of youth culture, but also on the subject of racism. When Perry asserts that after ten years an African American child will still be a nigger, who is so intimidating that white gays wet their pants in fear of him, liberal white gay viewers might be able to identify with Perry's appalled friends. But would a white audience notice the film's racist tendencies? Do they not just get excited about the completely politically incorrect choice of words when, at the same time, they get the creeps when they think about going out in a mainly non-white gay part of town? The only non-white character in the film serves no other purpose than that of a sex object; a role which fell to actor Randy Becker in his only other film Lie Down with Dogs. When the code word Dorothy is lost on his character Ramon, that is somewhat crass. However, we wonder also how many of the didactic white gays have even the most rudimentary knowledge of Latino culture, whether gay or straight, 58-year-old or contemporary.

We must also mention in this vein the characterisation of blind Bobby. Apart from the fact that he is blind, his character is not explored in any detail, in contrast to the others. Of course his character is treated wonderfully romantically as the sight of the seeing. As there is supposed to be a surprise in store for everybody, we are told that Bobby is not quite as faithful as we all think. Why, asks Queer View, are blind people different, holy? In the press material Bobby is characterised as blind, but not necessarily faithful. Dammit, the blind and unfaithful lover has just destroyed the romanticising of his so-called disability...

• Gays will still, of course, flock to see this film, as it does provide good entertainment. For deeper thinkers there is a wonderful, if unintentional, mirroring of white, bourgeois, homosexual views.

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