Dorian Blues, directed by Tennyson Bardwell, is a coming-of-age story about a teenager named Dorian Lagatos (played by Michael McMillan) who concludes one day in the early 1990s that he is gay. The director-writer writes about someone he personally knows, and the story is realistic as a result, though unremarkable. When the movie begins, he is a high school senior in a small town in upstate New York; the closest city is Utica. His macho father Tom (played by Steven C. Fletcher) prefers his younger brother Nicky (Lea Coco) because of his athletic and masculine personality. Indeed, his father expresses contempt for Dorian on many occasions. A case in point is a dinner table discussion one evening when Dorian suddenly says, "I disagree" after his father's latest sermon on politics. Dorian says that he dislikes President Nixon because of his dishonesty; his father points out that Dorian's idol President Kennedy dishonestly won the 1960 election, thus attempting to ridicule his son's reasoning and to silence his dissent. After the discussion, Dorian realizes in his room that he is gay. His preoccupied mother Maria (played by Mo Quigley) is not interested in his confession on the subject, so he tells his brother, who counsels him to stay in the closet. At school, Dorian is bullied one day by a smart ass classmate but saved by his brother from a beating, and he befriends a chubby gay classmate, with whom he has his first sexual experience. Dorian's priest urges him to consider his homosexuality to be a passing phase, and his brother pays $100 for a stripper to have sex with Dorian, but he cannot proceed. Dorian sees a psychologist, who counsels him to tell his father. When he does, his father orders him out of the house. Dorian is only too happy to pack up and head for New York, where he soon enrolls at New York University, finds some gay friends and even a lover, a second year law student who dumps him after two months because he resembles his father too much--intense and certainly not relaxed. Meanwhile, his brother pleases his father, who announces at a holiday party that his son has a full athletic scholarship at Syracuse University. However, one day his brother drives to New York, contacts Dorian, confesses that he was stripped of his scholarship because he could not make the team, accompanies Dorian to a gay bar where he encounters some of his athlete friends from rival schools, and then telephones home to inform his father of his misfortune. Shortly thereafter, his father dies of a heart attack. When Dorian arrives for the funeral, his mother astonishes him by admitting that she hated her husband; now, she openly expresses loves for both her sons, who are now closer than ever. When the film ends, the soap opera calls for a sequel. MH
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