Ang Lee‘s so-called ‘gay cowboy‘ movie finds Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal falling in love in the Wyoming wilds There was incredulity and not a few puerile sniggers when news first leaked that Ang Lee, the most protean of Hollywood‘s A-list directors, was planning to make a movie about gay cowboys starring Heath Ledger (A Knight‘s Tale) and Jake Gyllenhaal (Donnie Darko). Was adapting Anne Proulx‘s novella as an arthouse movie atonement for the poor performance of the director‘s blockbuster Hulk? Were Ledger and Gyllenhaal, both beefcake pin-ups much swooned over by girls of all ages worldwide, bent on career suicide?

No one‘s laughing now that Brokeback Mountain has earned nearly universal rave reviews on its US release, won the top prize at the Venice Film Festival, four Golden Globes and Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. Lee fans might debate back and forth whether this is his best film yet, but there‘s much less contention over the fact that it‘s a supremely classy showcase for the talents of its two male stars. The story starts in 1963. Ennis Del Mar (Ledger) and Jack Twist (Gyllenhaal) check each other out in a parking lot in a long, wordless sequence. They are waiting to apply for a job driving a herd up into the Rockies over the summer. Once cut off from civilisation, the two subtly different men forge a strong friendship on the mountain of the title. One drunken night, this friendship transmutes into a physical passion neither has the words to discuss or the self-awareness to understand. "You know I ain‘t queer," Ennis sputters out in the morning. "Me neither," Jack replies.

All the same, they enjoy a summer of love that brands both their souls, a bond felt even after Ennis has married a nice girl, Alma (Michelle Williams, excellent), and fathered a couple of kids while Jack later pairs up with a rodeo princess, Lureen (Anne Hathaway, surprisingly saucy), with whom he has a son. The two men arrange to meet up for a fishing trip, and moments after locking eyes they‘re locking lips, overcome with longing, an electric scene spotted by Alma who, in one heartbreaking glance, understands why her marriage will never work out.

Snatching fortnights together when they can, Ennis and Jack carry on their sexual relationship in secret over several years as their lives slowly take different courses, both men‘s marriages hamstrung by their untold secret. Jack suggests running off together at one point, but Ennis, less at ease with his own nature but perhaps also wiser, can‘t forget what happened to a gay couple he knew as a child. In the end, Brokeback is a love story plain and simple, no more about being gay than Casablanca is about the difficulties of Swedish-American relationships. With simple and spare cinematic language, it explores the tragedy of lovers who can never be together, not unlike Lee‘s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in its romantic tristesse and majestic use of landscape as character.

On the distaff side, the pacing is a touch too languid. Lee, always a stickler for correct period feel, lingers too much during the film‘s 134 minutes over the mundane textures of Jack and Ennis‘ domestic lives, the look of a honky tonk bar, or the quality of light on a Rocky Mountain morning. But perhaps that torpor and level of detailing is required to take us deeper into this strangely beautiful if repressed lost world, one that might seem ever so remote to urban websurfing, broadminded metrosexuals today.