Nuanced 1965 drama delicate romance in complicated time

This groundbreaking queer film, now available in a 4K restoration that revives its original black-and-white esthetic, never uses the words “gay” or “homosexual.”

It’s a marvel of subtext, a coming-of-age story in which the relationship between the two main male characters is kept quietly coded.

This discretion is understandable: Winter Kept Us Warm, written and directed by Brandon-born, Winnipeg-raised David Secter, was first released in 1965, when homosexuality was still a criminal offence in Canada.

In 2025, the film functions as a fascinating historical document, a significant marker in the long journey from the celluloid closet to contemporary queer representation.

Winter was also the first English-language Canadian work to screen at Cannes, and became an important (but often overlooked) influence on a generation of independent Canadian filmmakers, not just because of its radical subject, but because it managed to get made at all.

Modest but often ingeniously artful, Winter was filmed on a shoestring budget by a mostly student cast and crew who were basically learning on the job.

Beyond its considerable historic value, though, the film holds up because the story’s enforced subtlety shapes a delicate and deeply affecting character study.

Our two protagonists, both students at the University of Toronto, are presented in the opening sequences as a study in contrasts. Doug (John Labow, who later became a documentary producer) roars toward campus in a cool convertible, wearing sunglasses and accompanied by a jazzy score. He walks into the college residence like he owns the place.

Peter (Henry Tarvainen, who also went on to work as a producer) arrives by cab, awkwardly lugging a big cardboard box, rubbernecking at the big city and all its tall buildings. He’s unsure of where to go or what to do.

Doug is an extroverted senior, charming and popular, always surrounded by a gang of admiring male friends and often accompanied by his beautiful girlfriend, Bev (billed here as Joy Tepperman, she became the prolific Canadian novelist Joy Fielding).

Peter is an introverted, bookish junior, a scholarship boy from an immigrant Finnish family and a small Ontario town. He spends a lot of time alone in the library, and that’s where he and Doug get into a conversation about T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, the poem that lends the film its title.

Over the course of the school year, the two men’s seemingly unlikely friendship grows in intensity, but the dynamics shift, ever so finely, when it seems they might want different things.

Secter’s approach to the story’s queer undercurrents is necessarily oblique. It comes out in a certain way of framing collegiate roughhousing and locker-room towel-flicking, in a shower scene that fades to black, in a sentence left unfinished.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d swear you and Pete are…,” Joy says to Doug at one point. That’s about as explicit as things get.

There are a few clunky moments from inexperienced cast members in minor roles, but the lead performances are remarkably assured. As we follow Doug and Peter’s relationship, our initial impressions shift. Doug’s brash assurance could be a screen for a deeper insecurity, while Peter ends up being tougher and more confident than he initially appears.

The nuanced approach to character extends to the young women. Joy, who senses Doug’s declining interest without being able to pinpoint its cause, is given sympathetic treatment, as is Sandra (Janet Amos), a theatre student Peter meets during a production of Ibsen’s Ghosts.

Secter, who now lives and works in Hawaii, is clearly dealing with an almost non-existent budget and severe practical constraints. (Remember, this was long before struggling cineastes could shoot films on their iPhones.) He has a clear gift for working with actors, and his thoughtful framing and careful camera placement keep things visually interesting, so that even seemingly simple scenes are layered with meaning and intent.

The film catches a key juncture in the mid-1960s, poised between tradition (the young men attend dining hall dressed in academic gowns and often socialize in suits and ties) and coming social changes (they also go to coffeehouses and talk about the Vietnam War).

The film’s open-ended conclusion suggests that Doug and Pete are, like their era, at personal turning points. We are left to imagine each man’s future, and even how each might look back at this brief, poignant moment in their lives, with T.S. Eliot once again coming in, speaking of “memory and desire.”

Alison.gillmor@freepress.mb.ca