Books, Arts & Manners: Homo Preludens

FANTASY is a tricky genre. It lends itself to conveying messages from inside what appears to be mere escapist fluff. But it is also susceptible of overinterpretation, symbol hunting, projection (psychological, not cinematic) when escapist fluff is all there is. And there is a third possibility, as in Prelude to a Kiss, where a hidden agenda gratifies an in-group while eluding the uninitiated. You might call it subliminal subversion.

Prelude to a Kiss, written by Craig Lucas and directed by Norman René, began as an off-Broadway hit, was transferred to Broadway on the basis of Frank Rich’s glowing review in the New York Times, and is now brought to the screen by the original team. Lucas and René had previously joined forces on Longtime Companion, a dubious film about AIDS in which people died rather too prettily, and the quick and the dead were eventually reunited in a rose-colored fantasy in the manner of an equally factitious heterosexual dud, Places in the Heart. Prelude to a Kiss, a faithful adaptation of the play, has a homosexual subtext kept deliberately elusive.

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John Simon

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FANTASY is a tricky genre. It lends itself to conveying messages from inside what appears to be mere escapist fluff. But it is also susceptible of overinterpretation, symbol hunting, projection (psychological, not cinematic) when escapist fluff is all there is. And there is a third possibility, as in Prelude to a Kiss, where a hidden agenda gratifies an in-group while eluding the uninitiated. You might call it subliminal subversion.

Prelude to a Kiss, written by Craig Lucas and directed by Norman René, began as an off-Broadway hit, was transferred to Broadway on the basis of Frank Rich’s glowing review in the New York Times, and is now brought to the screen by the original team. Lucas and René had previously joined forces on Longtime Companion, a dubious film about AIDS in which people died rather too prettily, and the quick and the dead were eventually reunited in a rose-colored fantasy in the manner of an equally factitious heterosexual dud, Places in the Heart. Prelude to a Kiss, a faithful adaptation of the play, has a homosexual subtext kept deliberately elusive.