Den Mother

[February 9th, 2005] I just saw a liberating, ground-breaking love story.

That it involves an unattached, sexually active, HIV-positive gay man and the nephew who unexpectedly lands in his care makes this one of the most captivating queer films I've ever seen, sort of like a gay version of Guess Who's Coming Out at Dinner?

It's timely that Bear Cub, Spanish director Miguel Albaladejo's taboo-touching film, screens in Portland just as state lawmakers are considering limiting adoption rights. For legislators who think married, heterosexual couples should receive preference as adoptive parents, here's a movie that just might make you think twice about gay parenting.

Unlike most Hollywood films, Bear Cub doesn't shy away from depicting the harsher realities of queer life. But it also shows that, despite what happens in and out of our bedrooms, gays have what it takes to be good parents.

And it's not an easy journey. The characters in Albaladejo's film are complex, unrepentant people. The absorbing lead character, Uncle Pedro (José Luis García-Pérez), a hunky dentist, exhibits a healthy sex drive despite having a sexually transmitted disease. Although you never see him in the act of having sex on screen, you know he has it—a lot of it. That is, when he's not working hard to be a good provider for his nephew and extended family.

Set in modern-day Madrid, Bear Cub zooms in on the gay community of gentle giants known as bears. Albaladejo's ursine ciudad is populated with heavy-set, hairy queer men who eschew Ken-doll queens in favor of meatier pursuits. In Portland, you'll find this subculture hanging out at Gail's Dirty Duck, while in the movie version of Madrid they meet in dimly lit bathhouses, clubs, parks and bathrooms.

What makes the film seem quietly revolutionary is that it doesn't depict its gay characters as just more stylish straight people. Instead, Pedro maintains the baser instincts that we're likely to associate with the sex lives of gay men, but his character also reveals how being a good father means being good at sacrifice.

The boy's paternal grandmother challenges Pedro for custody and threatens to expose the dentist's addiction to anonymous sex. That's when Pedro realizes he has few legal claims to his nephew and then faces the most difficult decision of his life: giving up custody of the one person he has come to love more than himself.

It's this straddling of two mutually unfamiliar but still familial worlds—the loose queer brotherhood of bears and the pent-up sanctity of the straight family—that reveals the interesting paradox at the heart of this film.

In the movie, no one really cares that Pedro's gay, that he sleeps with lots of men, or even that he has HIV—until he takes on the important role of fatherhood. That's when all hell breaks loose. Then his private life becomes something painful that can be used against him.

We live in a state that now threatens to do the same thing to us. It's not right. Once we realize we're all as complicated as the characters in Bear Cub, we might not need movies—or new laws—to legislate who we can love. And who we can raise.