Subscribe to watch - 14-day free trial, then £6.99 a month
Postcards from London
A stylish, sensuous film about a young man’s journey into an unusual form of escort work.
Director: Steve McLean
Overview
Set in a vibrant, neon-lit, imaginary vision of Soho, this morality tale manages to be both a beautifully shot homage in the spirit of Derek Jarman and a celebration of the homo-erotic in Baroque art. When teenage beauty and Essex boy Jim (Harris Dickinson, the compelling lead in Beach Rats) arrives from provincial boredom to seek his fortune, the promised cultural excitements of Soho prove hard to find. On his first night, he is robbed by a stranger, ends up homeless and is forced to sleep in a cardboard box. But with a word from a kindly security guard, he discovers a group of art-loving rent-boys who take him under their wing.
The group exist to provide very special services for art connoisseurs – intelligent, post-coital conversation based on an intense knowledge and appreciation of the great masters. With his love of art history, Jim is a willing pupil, but his passion is impeded when he discovers he suffers from Stendhal’s Syndrome, a rare disease that finds him fainting in the presence of great art. Frequently dazzling and often audacious, this is a film for anyone who has ever fallen in love with one of the beautiful subjects in an old master painting. With a script that keeps you in thrall to Jim’s journey, Postcards from London illuminates the potency of high art in queer history. Writer-director Steve McLean has created a powerful film whose unlikely blend of voyeuristic pleasures and sharp-talking, Adonis-like art-fanciers has a hypnotic quality that is as transporting as it is brilliant.
strong language, sex referencesRelated
Amores perros Amores perros
Drama 2000 148 mins Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu
Alejandro González Iñárritu's (Birdman, The Revenant) gripping debut feature is a savagely brilliant triptych around the theme of animalistic desires.
Drugstore Cowboy Drugstore Cowboy
Drama 1989 101 mins Director: Gus Van Sant
Matt Dillon and his not-so-merry band of junkies rob pharmacies and cheat death.
Maurice Maurice
Drama 1987 140 mins Director: James Ivory
Merchant Ivory’s landmark adaptation of E M Forster’s classic LGBTQ+ novel and a precursor to the James Ivory-scripted Call Me By Your Name, starring Hugh Grant, James Wilby and Rupert Graves.
When I Saw You When I Saw You
Drama 2014 94 mins Director: Annemarie Jacir
Following the Six-Day War in 1967, a young Palestinian refugee boy yearns to be reunited with his father and joins a band of freedom fighters.
Birthday Girl Birthday Girl
Drama 2023 95 mins Director: Michael Noer
Heart-pounding Danish drama about a mother’s desperate attempts to unmask her daughter’s attacker on board a cruise ship.
Good Bye, Lenin! Good Bye, Lenin!
Drama 2003 121 mins Director: Wolfgang Becker
After his mother wakes from a coma in 1990, a young man goes to great lengths to pretend East Germany still exists in this wonderfully bittersweet tragicomedy.
The Arbor The Arbor
Biopic 2010 90 mins Director: Clio Barnard
Clio Barnard's film about Bradford playwright Andrea Dunbar mixes reconstruction, interviews (performed by actors) and scenes from the plays.
A Separation A Separation
Drama 2011 123 mins Director: Asghar Farhadi
A powerful tale of a middle-class marriage in crisis, and winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
Oldboy Oldboy
Thriller 2003 120 mins Director: Park Chan-wook
Park’s wilfully grotesque fable about an abductee trying to fathom the mysteries of his past.
LOLA LOLA
Science Fiction 2022 79 mins Director: Andrew Legge
Two sisters in WWII Britain invent a machine that can decode TV broadcasts from the future, in this irresistible found-footage sci-fi that buzzes with timeless ingenuity.
Scrapper Scrapper
Comedy 2023 90 mins Director: Charlotte Regan
A gorgeous and colourful heart-warming gem from Charlotte Regan, one of the best new voices in British film.
Beach Rats Beach Rats
Drama 2017 98 mins Director: Eliza Hittman
Gripping account of repressed sexual desire in a hyper-masculine environment, with British newcomer Harris Dickinson as a virulently macho Brooklyn teen.
County Lines County Lines
Drama 2019 90 mins Director: Henry Blake
Blistering thriller of a teen groomed to work for a brutal, organised drugs network.
Amores perros Amores perros
Drama 2000 148 mins Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu
Alejandro González Iñárritu's (Birdman, The Revenant) gripping debut feature is a savagely brilliant triptych around the theme of animalistic desires.
Drugstore Cowboy Drugstore Cowboy
Drama 1989 101 mins Director: Gus Van Sant
Matt Dillon and his not-so-merry band of junkies rob pharmacies and cheat death.
Maurice Maurice
Drama 1987 140 mins Director: James Ivory
Merchant Ivory’s landmark adaptation of E M Forster’s classic LGBTQ+ novel and a precursor to the James Ivory-scripted Call Me By Your Name, starring Hugh Grant, James Wilby and Rupert Graves.
Architecton Architecton
Documentary 2024 98 mins Director: Viktor Kossakovsky
Victor Kossakovsky’s film essay looks at the way we have constructed our built world through a series of breathtaking sequences.
Layla Layla
2024 100 mins Director: Amrou Al-Kadhi
A British-Palestinian drag performer catches the eye of a strait-laced white man in Amrou Al-Kadhi’s stunning, semi-autobiographical debut.
When I Saw You When I Saw You
Drama 2014 94 mins Director: Annemarie Jacir
Following the Six-Day War in 1967, a young Palestinian refugee boy yearns to be reunited with his father and joins a band of freedom fighters.