Violet Tendencies

By: Amos Lassen

Violet Tendencies

Two Worlds Almost Come Together

Amos Lassen

"Violet Tendencies" stars Mindy Cohn about being "true to oneself. Cohn is Violet, a 40 year old woman who envies the way her gay friend lives yet she also wants a straight romantic relationship. Her gay friends do not want to hear anything about it and the way she speaks with a "cutesy outrageousness". The lines are funny, the comedy is campy and the film is great fun.

I bet compare this to "The Ugly Ducking" with a gay twist. The plot is simple, the acting is only fair and the script is far from perfect but there is Mindy Cohn is Violet and she saves what otherwise would be only a fair to middling movie (that is an Arkansas expression). She is profane but fun and the movie while silly is a somewhat touching story about the last fag hag in New York.

Violet is a businesswoman in her forties whose friend at work explains to her that because her friends are gay she has few chances of having a meaningful hetero relationship and Violet goes on a manic hunt to find Mr. Right.

I really wanted to like this film and I did enjoy some of the sections of it that showed us gay men and how they live. Markus (Casper Andreas), Zeus (Marcus Patrick), Riley (Samuel Whitten) and Vern (Armand Anthony) are the men but unfortunately their characters are not fully developed and the film becomes a cliché of other romantic comedies. Jesse Archer who wrote the screenplay tries very hard to get laughs and there are some very comedic moments but unfortunately some fall short. An interesting aspect is that the gay men are all beautiful and successful and we know that this is not always the case for many of us. Therefore there is little that rings true here.

I am usually a big fan of Andreas who directed this film but this one just doesn't quite make it.