Paul Mescal’s sticky sex scene, Oscar buzz for a gay biopic & more thrilling fall film fest reactions

Excuse the hot take, but fall is the best season. Period. And it’s not just because of “sweater weather,” Pumpkin Spice Lattes, or the anticipation for Halloween (a.k.a. Gay Christmas)—it’s because autumn is also the start of awards season!

Oh, sure, we’ve still got a long road to the Oscars, but early buzz and debates over which iconic actress is most deserving officially kick off with the major fall film festivals.

The Toronto International Film Festival is right around the corner, but this past Wednesday saw the start of the starry Venice International Film Festival followed immediately by the more lowkey Telluride in Colorado on Thursday.

And, thanks to those dueling festivals, the past 24 hours have brought first reactions and unbridled excitement for a handful of notable queer films that might just be proper awards contenders come the end of 2023. Our little cinephile hearts can barely take it!

Let’s break it all down so you know which movies you need to put at the top of your must-watch lists…

Is All Of Us Strangers the middle-aged gay romance we’ve been waiting for?

For many, the name Andrew Haigh is enough to consider a movie “highly anticipated.”

The gay filmmaker made a name for himself with the sexy two-hander Weekend (but don’t sleep on his indie rent boy drama Greek Pete either!), and has just continued to deliver, including the blistering elderly romance 45 Years and the coming-of-age story Lean On Pete—not to mention, he helmed some of the best episodes of HBO’s Looking and the 2016 movie.

So, we can admit we’ve been foaming at the mouth for his latest, All Of Us Strangers (based off an ’87 Taichi Yamada novel), which sounds like a return to the intimate, erotic gay love story of Weekend, but with a ghostly twist.

Fleabag‘s “hot priest” Andrew Scott stars as Adam, a lonely forty-something gay man who begins a romance with his flirty younger neighbor Harry (short-short king Paul Mescal) after a chance encounter. Around the same time, Adam visits his childhood home and is surprised to find his long-dead parents (Claire Foy, Jamie Bell) living there—not looking any older than the day they passed.

How are these two stories connected? That’s one of the questions at the heart of what critics are already raving is a sensual, heartbreaking masterpiece.

After its Telluride premiere, All Of Us Strangers debuted on Rotten Tomatoes with a 100% fresh score, with some lauding it as Haigh’s best, most personal film yet. Astoundingly, Adam’s family scenes were all filmed in the director’s actual childhood home, and it sounds like the supernaturally shaded story allows him to unpack what it means to be a gay of a certain age, feeling out of time between a generation ravaged by AIDS and the more liberated queer youth.

Oh, and did we mention the sex? Early reports liken the film’s raw, revealing scenes of passion to those in this fall’s Passages, with both Scott and Mescal shockingly committed to the love-making. One tweet/Letterboxd review of the film already has us reeling:

Looks like we’re going to need to bring some tissues—for… multiple reasons—to All Of Us Strangers, which arrived to theaters December 22.

Will Colman Domingo march to the Oscars with Rustin?

Monday, August 28 commemorated the 60th anniversary of the March On Washington, the powerful civil rights protest that culminated in Martin Luther King, Jr.’s famous “I Have A Dream” speech.

One of the key organizers of the march was a gay activist named Bayard Rustin whose work has largely been under-sung in the annals of history. But he’s finally—finally—getting the biopic treatment he’s long deserved with gay filmmaker George C. Wolfe’s Rustin.

And it sounds like the great, chameleonic actor Colman Domino finally—finally—has the awards-worthy leading film role he’s so long deserved.

We just got our first look at his performance when Rustin‘s trailer dropped earlier this week, and considering what we saw there it’s no surprise the effusive praise out of the film’s Telluride premiere tells us that the accomplished gay actor carries the ambitious picture on his back. “The man throws down the gauntlet and delivers a performance for the ages,” says Variety‘s Clayton Davis.

The early reviews for the film have been strong, too, with Wolfe’s direction (he previously helmed Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom—also starring Domingo) and the sprawling ensemble receiving high marks. But we can’t help but get hyped about the Domingo hype, in particular, who was one of our Pride50 honorees this past June.

So, is an overdue Oscar nod on the horizon for the film, theater, and television veteran (he won a Guest Actor Emmy for Euphoria just last year)? It’s still too early to say for sure, and he’ll certainly have stiff competition from the likes of Oppenheimer‘s Cillian Murphy and Academy favorite Leonardo DiCaprio for Killers Of The Flower Moon.

But a girl can dream, eh? Rustin hits theaters November 3 and then begins streaming on Netflix on the 17th— let’s hope awards voters DominGO to the ballot boxes and show this icon some love.

Is the homoerotic Saltburn all style, no substance?

And, last but not least, is a movie that just sounds wilder and wilder each time we hear something new about it: Saltburn, the sophomore feature from Promising Young Woman director Emerald Fennell.

The premise is simple enough—an outcast Oxford student is invited to spend the summer at his popular classmate’s wealthy family estate—but the devil’s in the details with this one, which has already been described as “naughty,” “horny,” “audacious,” “insane”—the list goes on.

With rising star Barry Keoghan as our unreliable narrator/protagonist and Euphoria hunk Jacob Elordi as his alluring and enigmatic new pal, our ears perked up when word got out that the flick shared similarities to The Talented Mr. Ripley, one of our all-time favorite “be gay, do crime” movies.

On one hand, that comparison hints that there’s more than meets the eye with the film’s central “friendship”—that maybe Keoghan’s character isn’t quite as innocent as the synopsis would lead you to believe.

But the Ripley of it all also teases that Saltburn‘s going to be pretty d*mn homoerotic, and first reactions confirm that to be very much the case—though it’s not overtly gay, we’re bummed to hear. Still, any movie that supposedly features *minor spoilers ahead* an extended montage of Elordi in tighty-whities and a scene where Keoghan’s character drinks his used bathwater (yes, really) will have us queuing up at the box office.

Unfortunately, first reviews of the film are decidedly more mixed—it debuted on Rotten Tomatoes with a 70% fresh rating—which shouldn’t be too surprising considering how divisive the bold climax of Fennell’s Promising Young Woman proved to be.

Even the critics more willing to go along with Saltburn‘s wild ride acknowledge it’s a bit more “style over substance”—but when the style is that lush and extravagant who can complain?

And everyone’s been applauding Keoghan’s go-for-broke performance, which seems to cement him as one of his generation’s most exciting, unpredictable actors. Plus, it sounds like Gone Girl Rosamund Pike turns in another knockout Ice Queen role. Oh, and don’t worry: People can’t stop talking about how stunningly gorgeous Elordi is in this.

Saltburn hits select theaters November 24, and then opens wider on December 1.