Equals movie review & film summary (2016)

There are many thoughtful or amusing touches in "Equals," especially its portrait of love advocates who suffer in silence and occasionally trade war stories in support groups (one of them is Guy Pearce, characteristically excellent as a "been there, buddy" advisor to the hero). But there are no ideas to speak of in this movie. It's mainly a poster tagline filled out with characters and scenes: "In a world where love is forbidden, these two can't keep their hands off each other." "Equals" is unabashedly pro-emotion and pro-love, which is...great? I mean, yes, sure, that sentiment is great, or at least necessary, because otherwise the species would've died out a long time ago. But I don't know anyone who would argue with it, do you? Does love require a full-throated defense? Who is anti-love? 

Maybe it's best to look at "Equals" as a clever way of getting around the biggest obstacle facing most modern Western love stories, which is: how to restore the tingle of forbidden attraction when nearly everyone going into a film thinks of themselves as too enlightened to be daunted by the obstacles presented by the movie they paid to see? Most viewers no longer accept race, nationality, class or religion as barriers to true love, so how can a storyteller make attraction feel exquisitely forbidden again? "Equals" goes for the Vulcan solution, and while the movie feels a bit light and padded as a feature, it believes in itself completely, and there are moments when the sincerity of the lead actors and the director's addiction to the narcotics of Kristen Stewart's eyes, lips, neck and hands puts the concept over the top. 

Doremus, who directed the likewise slight-but-appealing "Like Crazy"—about a British exchange student (Felicity Jones) who falls for an American student (Anton Yeltsin) whose visa is about to expire—photographs Hoult and Stewart as if they were lovers in a Wong Kar-Wai movie: silhouetting them against windows and video screens, watching them as they surreptitiously look at each other, at times cropping parts of their bodies in closeup so that they become slightly abstract sculptural objects. 

There are a couple of sexual encounters here that have real heat; as in a Hollywood film from the late sixties, when censorship standards had been relaxed but there wasn't a ratings board yet, Doremus has mastered the art of being explicit without actually showing you anything. There's a moment midway through the film where Silas and Kia pass each other in their workspace, and the movie focuses on their hands as they pass each other; their hands almost touch, but not quite, and it's such a close encounter that you can feel the energy between them. If anyone asks me what this film is about, I'll mention that moment, and save the backstory for later. 

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