i believe it was stupid story when the wife pretend she is the spirit of a dead gay man in a gay chat room. how did she got all the information from? this is not a fantasy movie , it supposed to be a drama. and how did she left all the stolen information on the top of the desk so everybody can see? At the end i didn't like the end. the writer try to kill himself and then changed his mind and poison the wife and accidentally her two kids by poison plant. in the beginning his character was a nice guy who turned to a vicious murderer. a psycho writer? generally it could be a good movie but i think the story is unrealistic.sorry for my English . i hope you understand what i am trying to say

How to describe "The Dying Gaul." That is a challenge. It is very much like a play (which makes sense, seeing as it was adapted from one), and it makes one of the most skillful transitions from stage-to-screen that I have ever seen. It works like a play, but visually it thinks of itself as a movie. Confusing I know, but a person who has seen the movie will know what I'm talking about.In terms of what genre "The Dying Gaul" fits into, it's more of a drama/mystery. It has a slight noirish tone to it, but this is not "The Big Sleep." The beginning is a drama, but its transition to mystery is perfectly executed with such a subtle build-up that looking back, it's hard to believe that the beginning was from the same movie as the end of it, or that it all was accomplished in 101 minutes.Robert (Peter Saarsgard) has written a brilliant script after the death of his lover, Malcolm (Bill Camp). Movie producer Jeffrey Tishop (Campbell Scott) loves it, and wants to make it into a movie, but he insists that Robert change the relationship from homosexual to heterosexual. Jeffery's wife, Elaine (Patricia Clarkson) becomes interested in Robert, and then a few secrets are spilled which changes everything."The Dying Gaul" is really about the three characters. Everyone else has only a few token lines of dialogue at best that simply flesh out the story. The three actors-Saarsgard, Scott, and Clarkson, develop their roles well, and the three of them are fully three-dimensional. Ironically, while Saarsgard may have the most interesting character on paper, he's actually rather flat compared to Clarkson and Scott. Clarkson plays the housewife who still has a job even though she could easily live off of her husband's wealth, and she's not as clueless as many other movie housewives are.Campbell Scott, though, is the real joy of "The Dying Gaul." At first he's a money-obsessed movie producer (the kind that seem to fill Hollywood these days), but as the movie goes on, he fleshes out his character and becomes a pretty sympathetic man. Scott dominates this movie, and it shows how truly gifted he really is.As good as this film is, it isn't perfect. The music, particularly at the beginning is too loud and threatens to drown out everything else. The film also leaves a few questions open-ended even though doing so serves no purpose.Still, "The Dying Gaul" manages to throw in a few unexpected twists and surprises, and it is very watchable and highly recommendable.

A charming but duplicitous film producer offers a gay writer a million dollars for a highly autobiographical script, providing he changes the gender of one of the characters. Struggling with the implication of this compromise, and still grieving for his recently deceased partner, the writer embarks on a friendship with the film producer and his wife. However, when the producer and the writer become sexually involved, a twisted psychological game begins.Based on Lucas's own play, The Dying Gaul is a deeply disturbing examination of the cause and effect of betrayal and desire, clouding the definitions of predator and victim - each character is guilty of manipulation, of deceit, even cruelty, and Lucas cleverly plays with the viewer's sympathies. That this creates a hugely compelling and extremely unsettling story is in part down to the performances of his three leads - Scott deftly coats Jeffrey's steely, uncompromising centre with snake-like charm and seductive banter, whilst Sarsgaard brilliantly captures the fragile determination and bewildered desperation of someone living with grief. Perhaps the most challenging character in the doomed triangle is Clarkson's Elaine, and a lesser actor would have missed all the subtle nuances and shades that help us see why Elaine follows her chosen path. We SHOULD feel sorry for the betrayed wife, but that would be too easy here. In Clarkson's hands, Elaine's actions and motivations are both ghastly and deeply moving. Why neither Clarkson nor Sarsgaard were acknowledged or recognised for their work here is a mystery.This is not a film for those who need to be bludgeoned with simple explanations of the why and wherefore, but those who enjoy challenging, thought-provoking and slightly obtuse explorations of the human condition will be greatly rewarded here.

the one thing I did enjoy about this film was how the tiresome victim queen Buddhist cub who is constantly spouting new age-isms finally makes what is typically the most heartfelt use of them, as new agers will, as tools of aggression, when confronted by the wife he's been cuckolding. unable to say "I'm sorry" or anything so retro, speechlessly shrugging helplessly at first, until wife's tone changes, becoming accusatory, at which point he zealously spits out that old saw "You are responsible for everything that happens to you!!" meaning that her übercreepy gay husband has been talking' dirty to him, hum-pin' his thigh when he's all weepy, etc etc (ad nauseous...). That's enlightenment, if not entertainment! Ah, but wait, there's more! when wife fesses up that it is she who has messed with his head by going on AOL and pretending to be that sacred being "the lover who died of AIDS" (let's all cross ourselves now), well the next thing you know, she's responsible for cub's poisoning her with his gardening savvy, causing the death of not only her but her two kids!!!!!!! Hey, you reap what you sow (in the garden, as Chauncey would say). What goes around comes around! It's all good bro! The writer is so disinterested in what he is actually saying/meaning/how his film might in any way reflect the real world inhabited by humans/how it might make a mockery of his philosophy, I'm supposing, from what kinda crap makes up the rest of the film, that it's my guess that the irony here is lost on him. He probably himself is terribly "new age" and felt great about keep-in the faith in this film, but couldn't resist the, you know, "drama" to be had from taking all these loose in the incontinence sense plot threads and weaving together something as lurid as he possibly could, no matter whether any of it actually makes sense in any logical/emotional way. The whole film reminds me of that silly house they live in. Yeah wouldn't it just be lovely to have to walk down this huge flight of stairs when you arrive home after a long day. or to trudge up them on the way to work, how cool!!! Just so stupid and senseless really and calling attention to it's compositional hand. blah. The "Hollywood references" were another of the films biggest, well, howlers. The movie is clearly meant to be the wet dream of every screen writing queen so it's "who would you like to direct?" "Gus van Sandy" and the lovers of this film would no doubt agree "one of our finest gay directors!" "well, he's read it and he's interested!" as if homophobic Gus van Sandy would ever be interested in a film about a little cub and his "lover who died of aids"!!! well, maybe he would be if as the big bad studio wants, the film is made for str8s. Then his mile high misogynistic streak could really go to town killing this woman with KS and everything else for stealing away all the hot men! (in an interview he said once "I don't like to hang out with gay guys, I like to hang out with straight guys, sometimes I score." Yeah sometimes you are pack-in lots of coke and use your clout as a movie director, sing it bitch, loud and proud you fool. Gus van Sandy is an amazing filmmaker but a total ass who would probably grovel for the dick of the first Chelsea boy or we-ho queen to offer it to him and likely does frequently just like every other Hollywood monster out there). either Gus van Sandy or truffaut? OK whatever.and when the guy says he might kill his wife as in "crimes in misdemeanors" you'd think the producer had never seen the film. unless wife is in a position to blackmail him, but if she is we don't know anything about it.and we do get a sense of the auteur's disdain for violent video games, while he comes out with this garbage. well, it's all part of that old school queen Terrence Macaulay "lisbon traviata" self loathing killing each other queens kinda thing. . . . starts to make the pseudo tough guy Gus van Sandy Wm Burroughs kinda thing look almost appealing. blah.what's so great about Patricia Carlson anyway? casting her reminds me of Liberace's raising his piano bench to play Chopin, to give the audience to understand that "this is a high class number". She's a ham and I hate that blissed out expression she always has she's tired!And PS is cute but the way people on here are drooling about him since Kinsey (blah) you'd think he was James dean and Jeff striker rolled into one! he's just an OK looking gay guy actor. it's pretty funny to check out the discussions on here, people bending over backwards to preserve Robert's status as a (blah) "sympathetic character" ("maybe she didn't eat the salad maybe she crashed the car so the two men could be to getter!")the gay audience deserves this kind of insult, that' all,. that's the sad fact. no surprise this film is like closing night at half the gay festivals. blah