Everything’s going great for Thomas (Nico Tortorella) and Oscar (Juan Pablo Di Pace): they’re madly in love, and living the good life in LA, supported by a diverse group of cool friends. They also have a cute backstory: young Oscar was a child star on a television show avidly watched by young Thomas, and they first met as adults when Thomas was hired to shoot a wedding where Oscar was a guest. It was love at first sight, and after being together for a year, their attention turned to questions of enlarging their family.
Thomas is sure he wants kids, but Oscar, who had a rough childhood in foster care, isn’t so sure. As a compromise, they foster a child, and fall in love with little Arthur while caring for him. But fostering is not adoption, so when Arthur’s birth mother comes to reclaim him, he has to go. That raises the question—do they want to have children of their own, whether through adoption, surrogacy, or some other means? And if so, when?
The Mattachine Family, directed by Andy Vallentine from a screenplay by his husband Danny Vallentine, offers a sensitive exploration of what’s involved in building a non-traditional family, where there are no assumptions that you can be sure are shared and there’s also not much history to be used as a model. On top of that, they have to deal with all questions heterosexual families do, including the need to balance career development with family responsibilities. These are not abstract questions but matters of real life, and often you don’t know how you really feel about them until you are actually living them.
For Thomas, secure in his career as a photographer, now is the time to start having kids. For Oscar, whose acting career nearly ended when he was outed as gay, it’s definitely not the time—he’s starting to get gigs again, which means he’ll have to travel to shooting locations and remain there for weeks or months at a time, a setup less than ideal for shared parenting. And he doesn’t want to take time off from his acting career after spending twenty years working to get it back.
The film’s attention shifts to Thomas, as he explores how his friends are managing parenting and tries to clarify what it is that he wants. Lesbian couple Leah (Emily Hampshire) and Sonia (Cloie Wyatt Taylor) are going the IVF route. Annie (Heather Matarrazzo), a lesbian, and Ted (Carl Clemons-Hopkins), a gay man, live together to co-parent their child while maintaining separate sex lives. Everyone is beautiful and lives in beautiful homes and eats beautiful food—so while there is racial and ethnic diversity among the characters, there’s not much in terms of economic and social class. The screenwriting also has a tendency to turn the female characters into stereotypes and punchlines, while the male characters are much more richly sketched.
In case you’re not up on gay history, the title alludes to the Mattachine Society, a gay-rights organization founded in 1950 that advocated for the rights of gay people “to live, work and participate in a free society.” The organization is referenced in the film and two characters not only walk to but also up the Mattachine Steps in Silver Lake (Los Angeles), which are dedicated to Mattachine Founder Harry Hay.
The Mattachine Family won the Best Screenwriting Award at the San Diego Filmout Festival, and was nominated for awards at the Seattle International Film Festival and the Calgary International Film Festival. | Sarah Boslaugh
The Mattachine Family made its New York premiere at NewFest 2023 and is available for home viewing through the NewFest website through Oct. 24.
