On Paddy’s Day the latest in a long line of films with gay characters comes to our screens. Ok, I shall now remove tongue from cheek. I Love You Phillip Morris is a heck of a brave film for a pair of A-list actors to star in and for a distribution company to sell. For the actors it means ‘playing gay’, which isn’t as career-threatening when the actors are married with kids, but for the distribution company it means selling a film with Jim Carey playing a gay guy but not camping it up for laughs. What to do? Well, for a start you sit on the film for a while and ponder. I Love You Phillip Morris was actually completed in 2008, but is seen as such an anomaly that the marketing people were lost. It’s a sad state of affairs when a great actor playing gay fries the marketing wires, but it’s evident even in the trailer for this film:

Are we being sold a comedy? A love story? And where are the anal sex jokes? Well, actually I Love You Phillip Morris has all three in a film that defies categorisation, allergic as it is to pigeon-holes.

For a gay audience it’s such a huge relief. On the poster for the film, Carey looks camp and gay for laughs, but blame the distributors and don’t let it put you off. This is a complicated, layered film full of laughs but not at the expense of the love and heat between the guys.

It tells the amazingly true story of Steven Russell, a Texas lawman living the life of a good wholesome Christian but trying to figure out who he really is. When he comes to terms with the fact that he’s gay he jumps 100% into the ‘gay lifestyle’.  However, as all Prada-loving queens know, it’s expensive so he becomes a very successful conman.

This is a nice comment on how queer people in the closet are experts at pretending to other people and ourselves that we’re not who we really are. It’s when this comes crashing down around Steve that he ends up in prison and meets the love of his life, the titular Phillip, and finds out where we belongs.

There are no holds barred in the depiction of this loving relationship, they are physical and intimate and, yet again, not for laughs. This is true love. So, when Steve gets out of prison, he goes back to conning just to spend time with Phillip. It’s a romantic notion of how a person will do anything for the one they love.

If this hadn’t been written and acted as well as it is (Carey is outstanding and this is coming from someone who isn’t a fan), this could have been a disaster – a camped-up piece of Bruno-esque embarrassment. The distribution company may have been delighted with that but the audience deserve better. Here, we get it.

I Love You Phillip Morris opens in cinemas on March 17.

I Love You Phillip Morris on IMDB

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