"Asteroid City": Bleak play within a play within a play, with one teensy gay kiss and Matt Dillon's dick

Movie night was Asteroid City (2023), which I thought would be about atomic testing in Nevada in the 1950s.  Instead, I was watching the Theater of the Absurd.  Maybe Ionesco, where your mother turns into a giraffe and offers you brownies,  or a Monte Python episode where one sketch bleeds into another, so Vikings are suddenly talking to the Minister of Finance about the hippodrome tariff. 

As far as I can tell, there are two plays with plays.

1. In an old-fashioned black and white tv studio, a narrator tells us that what we are witnessing is a story, not real. The curtain opens to reveal:

2. The Playwright (Edward Norton) auditioning an actor for the lead in his play (Jason Schwartzman), who brings him ice cream, changes into a different costume, and delivers a nonsequiter monologue.  

They kiss..  But don't get excited: it's in the distance, and never referenced again, while there are three or four heterosexual romances coming up. We cut to the main story:

A lot of people arrive for the Junior Stargazers' Convention in Asteroid City, Nevada , where an asteroid crashed to Earth (they mean a meteor).  During the opening speeches, an alien descends from a spaceship and grabs the asteroid.  Everyone is put under quarantine, while the government tries to convince them that nothing happened.  After a week, the government is about to lift the quarantine, but the alien returns and gives the asteroid back.  The quarantine is on, but everyone riots, and the next day they are gone.  Maybe it was all a dream.

While all this is going on, there are several soap opera stories.  Steinbeck (Jason Schwartzman again, I think) arrives with his son and three young daughters.  He was going to leave the son and go on to his wealthy father-in-law's house to bury his wife's ashes, but his car broke down.  During the quarantine his three daughters, who are witches, bury the ashes in the desert and perform a spell to resurrect her.  She isn't actually resurrected, but she apparently appears in a flashback or flash-sideways scene.

Left: This is Jason Schwartzman's penis.  It is not Jason Schwartzman's penis, it is a salami.  It is not a salami, it is the diary of a 17th century French poet who wrote about salamis.

I figured that Steinbeck must be the famous novelist and nude model, who was active in Hollywood at the time, so I went scurrying to wikipedia for his biography.  It doesn't match.

More nonsequiters and dicks after the break

The Line of Beauty: Thatcher-era gay guy settles in with a conservative MP, dates closeted men

 

Amazon Prime has been pushing The Line of Beauty, a British drama about a poor boy who moves in with his ultra rich, ultra powerful classmate.  The trailer shows him smooching with an old guy, so apparently he seduces the Dad. There are three parts, each an hour long, set in 1983, 1986, and 1987.  I'll review the 1983 episode, "The Love Chord."

Scene 1: Closeup of a huge mansion in the ritzy Notting Hill section of London. Two guys arrive. "Is this where you live?" Nick Guest (Dan Stevens) asks, overwhelmed. Guest, har har.  His classmate Toby (Oliver Coleman): "Well, where my parents live."  Sounds like a Saltburn or Brideshead Revisited coming up.

Nick continues to gawk as Toby leads him through the house. An elderly lady with an Italian accent shows him his room: quite a let down, tiny, with awful wallpaper. Don't worry, you'll be in the master suite as soon as you seduce a few family members. 

Scene 2:  Dinner time.  Dad (Tim McInnerny) has just been elected a Member of Parliament for the Conservative Party.  In the homophobic 1980s!  Their affair is going to cause quite a scandal.   

Left: Tim McInnerny prepares to go down on a bellhop in What the Butler Saw.

Plot dump: Nick has graduated from Oxford with a First in English, and is now is working on his doctorate, researching Henry James. He has agreed to housesit all summer, while Mom and Dad are in France and Toby is traveling through Europe.  Wait, I thought this would be a Nick-Toby romance, or at least Nick seducing Toby first on his way through the family.   "Oh, we forgot to mention that you will be taking care of our mentally ill teenage daughter, Cat."

Cut to Toby shaving in a towel (nice physique!), giving Nick the deets.  Cat used to cut herself, but she's on medication, and feeling better. 

"Does she know...?"  Nick asks.  Sure, and she's fine with it.  Say the Word, idjits!  He gazes at Toby's butt.  Not good enough -- say it!

Scene 3: Mom, Dad, the housekeeper, and Toby say goodbye and drive away.  That night, Nick is reading a Henry James novel, when Cat appears in a bathrobe with booze and two glasses. She lights up a marijuana joint. I thought she knew?  Maybe Girlfriend wants to snag herself some gay cock

"What's it like being gay?" she begins.  "It seems perfectly normal to me."

Next question: "Have you shagged Toby?"  No, he's straight. "But you fancy him."  Of course not. Are we going to get an unrequited love plotline?   Nick isn't dating anyone at present, so Cat decides to find him a guy. 

Scene 4: Nick comes home to find Cat talking to an elderly working-class man, who keeps grinning and gazing lustfully at him.  Ulp, not Nick's type!  Psych: he's not a hookup, he's just visiting.  She has actually been searching the personal ads (remember those?).  "Black guy, late 20s, very good looking."  

Nick calls to make a date with Black Guy, Late 20s, then rushes downstairs to tell Cat.  But she's gone -- and one of the knives is missing from the kitchen!  She's cut herself.  But she was so happy before.   He bandages her wound, then goes to her room and confiscates her knife collection.

Scene 5: As they walk in the garden, Nick asks if Cat knows what causes the urge to cut herself, or if she can tell when it's coming.  She doesn't get any advance warning: her mood has nothing to do with it.  Suddenly everything suddenly goes "black and glittering," and she has to stop living.  He wants to call the parents, but she assures him that it won't happen again. If  she has no control over it, how can she promise that?

Cut to evening. Cat doesn't want to go back to her room, so she sleeps on the couch, while Nick plays the piano. Hey, she's trying to sleep!  

Scene 6: Nick rushes to an outdoor restaurant for his date with Leo (Don Gilet), the personal ad guy.  It's rather awkward.  Leo looks for an excuse to dismiss Nick as racist, is disappointed to discover that he isn't rich, and is annoyed when he misunderstands "Let's get going."  Neither has a place, so they end up kissing and doing anal in the private garden.  Nick is the top.  A little of Leo's butt is shown. 

Scene 7:  Mom and Dad return from France with gifts of foie gras and perfume.  Nick and Cat agree that everything was brilliant, so they suggest that he stay on as Cat's attendant. Shouldn't he have training in mental illness, crisis intervention. and such? Of course he can still work on his degree, and he can bring friends over.  But can we screw in my bedroom?

More closeted guys after the break

Matthias Schweighofer: Dick and butt shots of the German superstar in depressing-sounding movies

 Matthias Schweighöfer is best  known in the U.S. as Werner Heisenberg in Oppenheimer (2023), but he has 82 acting credits listed on the IMDB, in both English and German.  No gay roles that I can find, but some buddy-bonding, and quite a lot of frontal nudity.

He strips down to have sex with girls in Friends of Friends (2002) and Baal (2004).

As a high rocker in Eight Miles High (2007).

As German folk hero Klaus Stortebecker in 12 Paces without a Head (that's how far he could walk after being decapitated)

Lots of Matthias butt after the break