CONFIDENTIAL

CRITIQUE for The Myrtle and The Rose:

This novel has the most unusual concept this reader has ever seen for filmic presentation consideration.  It reads like one of the more obscure tales of the Arabian Nights and it is very effectively told.  The unusual nature of the story (an all-consuming love between a fully-grown man and a twelve-year-old boy) is also its biggest detraction.  This kind of story, while presented respectfully and almost purely, is simply not going to go over big in places like the conservative Midwestern and Southeastern United States.  There probably is an interested audience for this story but the material would have to be handled with the utmost of care.  In the wake of the controversy surrounding the recent release of the remake of “Lolita” it should be assumed that no matter how sensitively handled many will call the story pornographic.

All of the characters come right out of the stereotype textbook with the only twist being the love between two males.  The characters are all well written and thoroughly enjoyable, and the antagonists do their proper work of making us empathize even more fully with the unlikely couple of heroes.  Character development is also as it should be and the growing love between Hamid and Hawk is the central relationship.  As the men’s love grows so is the plot further complicated by a cruel and vindictive world at large.

Once the main storyline is presented and the protagonists established then their future becomes the driving force and main suspense.  We want to see the two go on continually to higher and higher aspects of their deep bond but we know this thing will not last.  Though the story is set in the year 1000 AD the exact same thing would happen today, and there would be an even greater hue and cry over the strange but true relationship.  We know the two want nothing more from life than to be together and in the best of poetic traditions they commit to each other unto death.  Story is structured like a fable or fairy tale (pardon the pun) and it unfurls in a linear timeframe.  There is no flashback because exposition is usually explained in dialogue or by the omniscient narrator.  Once the oddness of the story has given way to plain old storytelling we are hooked and the journey is enjoyable – again, however, probably not for everybody.

The commercial appeal of this piece is entirely up to the creators brave (or stupid) enough to attempt such a fable.  There is a definite fringe, gay, arthouse and overseas audience for the story if it is done properly.  It would be very easy for this thing to become one of the campiest turkeys ever to be filmed, and at that it could still possibly succeed!  Generally this could be a true film curiosity akin to the silent film version of “Salome” that was entirely cast with gay folks.  Today it is regarded as high camp and it was apparently a bomb when released in the twenties.  If done with sensitivity the rich and oddly majestic story could be translated into an escapist gay Arabian tale a la Merchant and Ivory, or “Lawrence of Arabia” taken to a further extreme.