The Everlasting Secret Family (1989)

The casting is OK. The story is just OK. The camera work in OK. The best part of the movie for me was how they aged the one young actor over a twenty or so year span of time for the story being told. He did look very young and middle aged. If a person has had a sheltered or Norman Rockwell picture book life, some of this will be a bit shocking. I would have liked to have seen a bit more of the pushing the envelope. This cast could have handled a bit more of the walk on the dark side. It really was not any more daring in the action scenes than most movies of today which have boy/girl love scenes. Please lose the awful music.

The Everlasting Secret Family is truly a disturbing film to watch about a secret society of gay men which began with a secret relationship between a male Senator and a schoolboy. It began as something casual but the schoolboy soon finds it something that he likes and would do anything to maintain this arrangement. For sake of public appearances the Senator soon marries a woman and has a son with her but that does not affect the Youth (as that is how the schoolboy as played by Mark Lee is credited) in his determination on what he has to do. The film's denouement is something that no doubts satisfies the section of audience that this film caters to. As a straight man I did find this film very uncomfortable viewing and seeing this film once was more than enough for me. It is quite telling that most of the characters in this film does not have a name perhaps it presents a situation that resonates with the general gay population.

Affluent Australian senator & government minister (Arthur Dignam) spies an athletic teenager (Mark Lee) at an private school's track & field event. A chauffeured limousine is sent to the school in the days later to bring the teen to a hotel to have sex with the senator. This becomes a regular occurrence even though the public reputation of the senator would be destroyed were the arrangement to become public.As he becomes the senator's rent boy and enjoys certain extravagant privileges the youth is also expected to provide sexual favours to men whom the senator designates (timeshare?). The boy, who is never named, develops a haughty attitude even (or especially) as he is passed around by wealthy and powerful perverted old men. Concurrent to that is his membership in the secret society of which the senator is a member of high rank.The boy's place in the secret society appears, at first, to have a low ceiling. He fears he can hope to go only as high as a rent boy. Inevitably as he reaches adulthood and ages his currency will diminish after which he is told he may look forward to life as a chauffeur or some other form of blue collar servant. He seeks out a more beneficial arrangement with surprising results.Several mortifying political scandals (Profumo Scandal, Franklin Cover-Up) over the centuries have given examples which may have provided inspiration for what is shown in this film. But this really is a highly speculative account of imagined happenings in imagined secret societies which supposedly determine the major decisions that effect the lives of common everyday folk.The secret society myth is part of our modern folklore i.e. urban legends.

The Everlasting Secret Family is a fascinating Australian film that depicts a secret homosexual society that has infiltrated in a silent, subtle way the very upper strata of Australian politics and upper class life. It is a wicked, sexy tale and I won't go into any details of the plot lest I ruin the clever surprises that make this movie very entertaining.Suffice it to say, the acting is quite good, the direction fluent, and you'll enjoy the quirky twists in the plot. In a way, it's refreshing to see a movie where a gay underground puts the screws to a listlessly banal straight society.Unfortunately, the film is no longer available on video. Try to find a used copy. It will be worth the effort.