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Bookmark this pageUrinal (1988)
Director: John Greyson
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
This overly ambitious film, part documentary and part fantasy, is centered around a research project on the policing of cottaging (or 'washroom sex', as Canadians term it) in Ontario. The most interesting parts of the film (revealing the lengths that the Canadian police go to, including the use of agents provocateurs and video surveillance, in order to make easy arrests and bump up prosecution figures) are the interviews with men who have been charged with 'gross indecency', with gay activists, with a lawyer working on behalf of prosecuted gay men, and with Svend Robinson, Canada's first 'out' gay MP. Unfortunately, you also have to wade through a nonsensical framework involving the ghosts of famous lesbian, gay and bisexual figures (including Eisenstein, Frida Kahlo, Mishima and Langston Hughes), who are summoned to the garden of two dead Toronto sculptors to talk about the history of lavatories and debate the question of police entrapment. Aiming for imagination, it just becomes weird... and boring.Author: MG
Cast & crew
Director: John Greyson
Producer: John Greyson
Cast: Pauline Carey, Paul Bettis, George Spelvin full cast
Genre(s): Documentaries
Duration: 100 mins
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