recommended

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

*SPOILERS I GUESS ?* Ugh i'm so torn about this movie because honestly i'm not very emotional (unless a dog dies) but it made me cry but i watched it twice, once i was 17 and today (i'm 21)and the 1st time i taught it was a beautiful piece of art and now i still think it's beautiful but it's TOO easy and perfect to feel like something that would really happen in real life! even in fairy tales they have problems and here their mother dies and even with the close relationship they both had with her their first tough is to have sex ... like ?! what surprised me the most is that we didn't have the chance to see their relationship grow, we saw them when they were 6 and 11 and then BAM they're 22 and 27 ! like what happened during their teenage years ? did they date other people ? did they have sex before ? did they wait till 22 and 27 to have sex for the FIRST TIME?!! and with a mother so loving it's weird to think that she never asked any of them if they were gay/straight ?like u can't have your son be 27 YEARS OLD without dating anyone and be like "oh it's normal" ! so really it's hard to focus on the beauty and poetry of the movie when so many gaps remain.

This movie is about a love that is instantaneous and grows as the lovers mature, eventually becoming a love so all-consuming you would think they would burst into flames at its intensity. I know this movie is about two brothers who are in the middle of this passion, but that is beside the point. Being related only emphasizes the insularity of the two boys' love, its uniqueness. This movie is really about a love so ideal that it TRANSCENDS convention and conflict. Thomas and Francisco were meant to love each other and nothing else seems to matter. The details of life - friends, family, career, arguments, jealousies - are dealt with superfluously, marginally. It doesn't matter compared to the opera that is the love between the two men. The only tension that can threaten that type of love is separation, its effects beautifully displayed by Francisco. The ending could be no other. The '8' comes from the conventions of storytelling in a movie - characters and scenarios that add the mundane details to a love that soars above them. Watch it because you love love stories, the love being more important than the story.

I'm not sure what to make of this film. It is undoubtedly the most romantic portrait of homosexual male incest ever put on the screen. The two (half) brothers in question stare tenderly at each other almost every second, say things like, "To understand our love, they'd have to turn the world upside down", and even exchange wedding rings (!!!). The film approves so much of this relationship that the only drama it can find is one brother's opportunity to study in Russia for the Olympics, which will separate him from his paramour for three years. There's some mild suspense as to whether this hiatus will push one or both brothers into a more socially acceptable (homo or hetero) sex life, then a rather abrupt ending. While it is refreshing that the movie avoids the usual Lifetime TV melodramatic approach ("We just...couldn't...STOP!!!"), it's rather bizarre that the brothers' relatives and friends never protest or even ask uncomfortable questions; everyone else in the movie just wants to avoid the subject. And the structure compounds the problem; the movie lingers on "poetic", eventually redundant scenes of the boys' childhood (long after we get the idea) then suddenly leaps forward several years (killing off two principal characters) to the start of their sexual relationship--we never really see the decision made, and the moment of no return seems to happen between scenes. The subject is raised, then glossed over with golden cinematography and a near-constant underscoring of "tasteful" neo-classical mood music (i.e., much piano noodling cushioned by aching strings) which stops at crucial moments. Is it seemly for an incest movie to be so inoffensive?

I got this movie out on DVD without knowing too much about it and I was absolutely blown away. It is such a touching and romantic movie. I know it has taboo topics but they are handled so gently and with such acceptance by the film makers and the the characters within the story. It truly moved me in a way a film has never done for me before. It is probably not for everyone due to some of it's taboo content, but honestly, it should be viewed regardless. It is such an exquisite portrayal and will really make you think. I cannot praise this movie more highly. Forget the mind-numbing exploitative offerings of The Hangover or Bridesmaids, and see what great film can accomplish.