Indeed, the subject promised a lot of food for thought:how can a gay and talented young musician fit in the world of dogmatic clichés of his mother's? Quite a common and, alas,dangerous situation. Indeed,the cast promised a lot:British actors usually present a much more sophisticated and profound performance than their famous Hollywood counterparts.Also, they usually speak better English ! Indeed,the characters involved promised a serious and uncompromising drama , because they differed from the traditional gay films stereotypes . Well,it might have been a real masterpiece, but...it failed.Why?What is the reason? I believe the main culprit is the script that ,probably, is a little vague in its message.What is the idea of the film?The liberation of a gay spirit from the chains of traditions and old values?The sudden (and absolutely unbelievable) "awakening " of the boy's mother, who is the type that brings their sons to a suicide and then cries for them for the rest of her life?The cruelty and deceit of the gay world?The ruined dreams and ambitions (again, never properly explained)of a young musician? Unfortunately, these questions have never been answered, and the only reaction of a viewer after watching the film is the disappointed shrug of his/her shoulders.

Forgive me, but I'm a retired proofreader, and Juilliard is almost never spelled correctly except by people directly connected with the school.More to the point, I quite liked the film. Everything worked for me -- acting, direction, story, production. Not that I thought it a great film -- I did think there could have been more attention paid to motivation in several instances, such as Kennington's not answering Mansourian's many messages, Paul's involvement with Alden, and Paul's leaving Juilliard. Not to mention how Paul went from being good enough to get into the highly competitive Juilliard to not being good enough for a career as a musician in just a few years. Another 20 minutes could have fleshed out many aspects of the sometimes sketchy narrative.While the wide range of opinion expressed by others above is not unusual in film commentary, the diametrically opposed views on so many points is fascinating to me. Perhaps hot-button subjects such as homosexuality, abortion, etc. inspire hyper-sensitive, if not hyper-critical responses -- pro and con.What concerns me is how little or how narrowly most of the commentators -- gay as well as straight -- seem to understand the uniqueness of everyone's gayness, everyone's coming-of-age, everyone's taste and attractions. Of course, the same is no doubt true of heterosexuals.For many, experimenting and/or interacting with peers is the "right" or "best" way to come to terms with one's sexuality. For others, far older or younger people are more appropriate partners, whether for short-term liaisons or for longer relationships. While some of this no doubt derives from our individual (sometimes twisted) psychological underpinnings, I'm convinced that such variations often are merely part of the great breadth of human nature.Regardless of gender, many older people do gravitate to the younger for intimacy, but it's also true that many younger people gravitate to the older. Of course, some are manipulative, even predatory, but by no means is it always the older taking advantage of the younger. Regrettably, I think only one of the commentators above noted that Paul was using the older men, just as they were using him. Often, such "unequal" relationships are mutually beneficial.Speaking of my own non-sexual experience, as a child and well into adolescence, I felt (and others observed) that I related more comfortably with adults than with my peers. In adulthood, it's been just the opposite -- I've been more comfortable with people 10, then 20, now 30 years and more younger. The only period when I was in-sync with my peers was my college years and shortly thereafter.Frankly, my development as a gay person might have been much less difficult had someone 25 or 35 or 45 initiated an intimate relationship (sexual or not) with me in my adolescence. My few halting attempts to find intimacy with adult men were met with abject terror of even being suspected of pedophilia. Left to my own devices, I didn't really figure it out until I was about 30. Not that I ever thought I was, or tried to be, straight; I simply didn't have a sexual or emotional life. It's been rich and rewarding since, but I can't help wondering how much I might have missed. But enough about me.It strikes me as troubling that so many, perhaps most people lack the certain instinctual knowledge that everyone's experience, everyone's psyche, is different. They may know it intellectually, but not viscerally. And so they can't help judging other people, as well as art and literature, as if everyone's life experience were much the same.We're all entitled to our own thoughts, reactions, opinions. But to judge the characters, situations, motivations in a piece of fiction as unrealistic because they don't match one's own life experience is simply off the mark. Virtually everything in the novel as well as the film is familiar to me, so I guess that mean's it's realistic...no?

If the story had been pared down to an examination of the central two characters, rather than lavished with grotesque, utterly implausible and terribly acted caricatures, then this film might have had some potential for being saved from itself. As it stands it has little.There is no great skill to being catty and negative, but seeing as Food of Love is, by its shoddiness and carelessness an open invitation to cattiness and negativity...Where to begin? Here are some criticisms: Amateurish, peculiarly dull, predictable, plodding, fraudulent, first-draft dialogue unshorn of the clichés by which any self respecting writer would be haunted, insensitive, prosaic, pedestrian and irritating. Acres of text could be written, if I had a little more energy, about the individual flaws (How about the accent of the piano teacher -- teetering on the brink of being new york Jewish in her first scene, definitely wispy and elderly Scots at the beginning of her second before being revealed, we assume when we learn her name, to be Russian, is used to deliver the sort of lines a piano teacher really *would* never say, reminding her student, for instance: "it's called the Well-tempered clavier not the ill-tempered clavier." The fact that such a dreadfully banal witticism was found funny enough, or perhaps enlightening enough to be included speaks volumes. Clearly no one with any serious interest in or knowledge of music could be bothered to turn up on the day that scene was filmed to ensure that they didn't put the first prelude from the 48 -- something a beginner might play, in the fingers of someone who is supposed to be a music student), with perhaps a few lines to note the strengths. The idea that a young sensitive gay pianist might be happy in the sexual or romantic clutches of leering, ugly, bald, rich, smug men who seem all to be in their fifties is to stretch the idea of a young man's rebellion far past its natural limit.No, I can't go on. I'm too furious that I paid money for it, on the recommendation of The Times, of all things, and must go and lie down; but before I do I will say this. Is this really what passes for an American art-house film? God help us all.

Here is the most apt example I've seen lately in which everything is just a bit off the mark. Although I'm not familiar with Leavitt's novel, I have read other pieces of his work and find it equally uneven. For example, his central theme here of music being the "food of love" (one of Shakepeare's most quoted lines) just never reaches a level of complete fulfillment within the context of this often pretentious and sappy melodrama. Although the original title ("The Page Turner") implies a subtle judgment that the main character is doomed to eternal mediocrity, and opening scenes of the film confirm that hint, "Paul" is nevertheless forced upon the audience as a worthy protagonist whose professional and personal fate is vitally important. That kind of maybe-he-is and maybe-he-isn't paradigm is plain confusing, and it shows. Plot weaknesses are also apparent throughout. Similarly, the very high production values of the movie are constantly being undercut by laughable presumptions that an American audience could ever accept British actors straining to sound correct in their roles within an obviously European setting being palmed off (sorry) as California. Or am I being too picky? Geraldine McEwan as a Czech (?) piano teacher sounds exactly like Robin Williams playing Mrs. Doubtfire. And Juliet Stevenson comes across as a sort of über-California caricature. Moreover, the background scenes of New York are clearly scissors-and-paste.Be that as it may, I give this one a 7 out of 10 for showing Barcelona as not only a fascinating place, but also as an excellent locale for making a movie.