"Yossi and Jagger" meets "Hans and Franz"

Remember the genre? Which genre? The genre. The one in which two beautiful foreign boys find themselves and each other against a beautiful backdrop in their native land. And yes, even if you're American, if you live in NYC or even the suburbs, "Brokeback" counts. Seems Time Out New York is now aware of the phenomenon. From Tom Beer's review of "Summer Storm" in this week's issue:

Apparently, every national cinema needs a sweetly optimistic gay coming-of-age story in the vein of England’s Beautiful Thing, Spain’s Nico and Dani and Taiwan’s Formula 17. Germany—where Fassbinder’s venal homosexuals have historically dominated the screen—now offers Summer Storm, a gentle if predictable little film about one boy’s coming out....If the prospect of all this Mitteleuropean boyflesh cavorting in the woods conjures up scenarios from a Bel Ami gay-porn video, you’ll be relieved (or perhaps disappointed) to know that director Marco Kreuzpaintner, for the most part, doesn’t pander.

Unfortunately, the review does not make reference to the original classification of such films, in my Gothamist post from December:

Somewhere in the late high school-early college era, some female friends and I discovered a truly wonderful film genre: two beautiful foreign boys (not, like, toddlers, but maybe 19-year olds, definitely not 30 year olds, you get the idea) fall in love in front of a beautiful backdrop (beach, snow, any breathtaking landscape). These movies are rarely explicit, typically with one "sex" scene in which you don't really see anything, maybe a bit of kissing, but mostly longing gazes and unoriginal romantic dialogue. They are rarely political, except for the occasional vague plea for tolerance, and the understanding that, if you're watching the movie, you're rooting for the beautiful foreign boys to have a beautiful foreign wedding and beautiful foreign (adopted) children at the end of the story.

Fine, so credit was not given where credit was due. But the important thing is, I had no idea there was a British entry to the genre, nor have I yet seen the German version of the same. But I think I may have finally outgrown these movies--my first thought when seeing the picture that goes along with the review wasn't, gosh, two beautiful foreign boys, but yikes, aren't those kids too young to be fooling around with anyone of either sex?