Queer re-view: GoldenEye

Brosnan’s opening mission ends with the death of his best buddy. But unbeknowst to him, the object of his bromantic affections isn’t really deceased: he’s just watching from the shadows. Will Bond manage to stay Onatopp of things? Will he leave it up to a Russian computer programmer to save the day while he runs off to have a messy break up with his best mate? And will we ever get to the bottom of why 007 spends so much time hanging around in men’s bathrooms?

If this is your first time reading a re-view on LicenceToQueer.com I recommend you read this first.

‘Inspired by GoldenEye’ by Herring & Haggis

“The name’s Bond, Flaming Bond?”

What is it with James Bond and men’s bathrooms?

Perhaps it’s a question we should ask Martin Campbell, the director entrusted with introducing the world to not one but two James Bonds: Pierce Brosnan in GoldenEye and Daniel Craig in Casino Royale. In both films, we get our first clear look at the new 007 in men’s bathrooms, or as we say here in the UK, toilets. [Brosnan’s films have a lowest-common-denominating tendency to prefer US vocabulary over British English variants, so I will do the opposite from this point onwards in order to ‘keep the British end up’ - I’m sure my American brothers and sisters (and non-binary siblings) will be able to cope. I credit you with more intelligence than the financiers of these films did]

Toilets are politicised spaces. In the last decade or so, the debate about whether people should only be permitted to use the toilet that corresponds with their biological sex has generated heated discussion (not to mention multiple lawsuits). Here in the UK it is becoming increasingly common for public spaces to either dispense with gender signifiers entirely or to provide facilities for everyone, regardless of their biology or gender identity. Even so, I doubt we’ll be seeing James Bond using a gender neutral toilet anytime soon.

Along with a changing room (locker room), a men’s toilet is about as homosocial an environment as you can think of. No women allowed. The Australian Sociologist Ruth Barcan observes that men’s toilets are sites where “heteronormative masculinity is defined, tested and policed”. If we apply this to GoldenEye, Bond entering the men’s toilet defines him as a man. That’s pretty uncomplicated. Keeping it uncomplicated is his lack of choice: where are the women’s facilities? Based on the film’s exclusively male pre-credits sequence, it doesn’t enter our heads that a Chemical Weapons facility even has a ladies’. But this is Western thinking: the Russian scientific community was generally more egalitarian than those in Western Europe. The ladies’ loo might just be out of shot of course, but fans of the GoldenEye 007 video game on the Nintendo 64 know differently. The game also starts the ‘Facility’ stage inside the men’s bathroom, reproducing the geography of the screen location exactly. As anyone who has played that game can attest: there is definitely no space made for ladies’ ablutions.

What about Carcan’s assertion that toilets ‘test’ masculinity? For a ‘homosocial’ environment, toilets are not, ordinarily, very social spaces. Men don’t typically go to the toilet to have a conversation. Historically however, men seeking other men have gone there for what might be broadly termed ‘social’ reasons. When homosexuality was illegal, a toilet was one of the few spaces they could go to meet their sexual needs, away from the censure of the rest of society. Of course - they didn’t always get away with it, and getting caught usually led to public shaming. Even famous actors were caught engaging in “lewd conduct” in public toilets, including Alec Guinness. In 1946, he was prosecuted and fined and his career was only saved because he gave the officials a false name. Without this foresight, we probably wouldn’t have his iconic performances in Kind Hearts and Coronets, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Star Wars and countless others.

There is a more family audience-friendly ‘testing’ of masculinity in GoldenEye’s toilet scene, although it is pretty one-sided: Bond surprises a defenceless Russian guard (he’s reading the paper sitting on the toilet with his underwear around his ankles) and punches him in the face, but only after he’s apologised for not knocking first. Such a gentleman.

“Beg your pardon. Forgot to knock.” is Brosnan’s first line as Bond. It establishes him as witty and urbane but also unafraid to get the job done by knocking another man unconscious while he’s, er, getting the job done.

Purely from a plot point of view, it’s sensible to have Bond sneaking into enemy territory through a space which isn’t ‘policed’ (not in the sense sociologists use the word, but as in ‘not patrolled'). Toilet infiltration is a hallmark of many an action film - and especially spy movies, with their inherently underhanded protagonists. When faced with an impregnable fortress, the hero has to go for the weakness in the enemy’s defences. The Mission: Impossible films push this to delirious extremes. Mission: Impossible - Fallout even sets a key sequence in a men’s toilet and has Tom Cruise and Henry Cavill punching several shades of stuff-that-usually-ends-up-down-a-toilet out of each other (in a film particularly indebted to Bond, the destruction of the stalls, urinals, etc strongly recalls Craig’s first fight in the opening of Casino Royale).

In cinema, ‘punching’ just like ‘shooting’ and ‘knifing’ should sometimes be considered in scare quotes. They can be seen as sublimated sexual acts - something less social acceptable is replaced with something you can show to the widest possible audience. The most ubiquitous cinematic sublimation of sex is a female (and sometimes male) character smoking a cigarette, especially in film noir. Think: Double Indemnity, The Big Sleep, et al. Clue: it’s not really a cigarette.

There’s nothing especially sexual about punching a Russian while he tries to catch up on the news or his horoscopes, but, as with any film’s toilet scene, the lack of ‘policing’ also gives GoldenEye’s first few minutes a sensation of ‘anything could happen’. 

As it turns out, it sets the tone for the rest of the film, which actively sets about deconstructing the James Bond we think we know. We’ve been here before, of course, and we’ll be here again. Despite attempts to assert continuity (at least until Craig comes on the scene), each first appearance by a new Bond is a chance to renegotiate what ‘James Bond’ means to the audience. In happened with Lazenby, Moore, Dalton and it happens with Brosnan. The difference this time though, is the changes are more explicitly articulated - usually by the characters themselves. Whereas early transitions were managed mostly through modifications in aesthetics (clothing in particular), accoutrements (watches, cars, gadgets, drinks) and performance, in GoldenEye, it’s the dialogue that helps to redefine what James Bond means.

At times, it’s as if the screenplay is breaking the fourth wall, asking us: Who is James Bond in this post-Cold War age? By the end, we will (sort of) have an answer.

Despite M calling Bond a “relic of the Cold War”, I would argue that the cinematic 007 was never especially defined by the geopolitics of 1947-1991. The USSR was never truly the bad guy for a start. With incredible foresight (and business sense), Albert R. Broccoli made sure of this right from Dr. No. Ironically, it’s in 1995-set GoldenEye where Bond is most cavalier about killing Russian soldiers. Yes, they’re working for self-interested General Ourumov, but the scene where Bond rampages through the archives, shooting a multitude of men who think they’re fighting for Mother Russia, feels at odds with the approach of the sixteen films that preceded GoldenEye. Bond has killed Russian soldiers fairly recently (A View To A Kill’s Siberian opening, The Living Daylights’ airstrip finale where they are fighting for another self-interested general) but those killings don’t feel as gratuitous as GoldenEye’s.

The Cold War was always just a backdrop for Bond’s screen adventures. Bond had always been (and continues to be) more defined by social politics than anything geopolitical. His relationships with other people - girls, villains, allies - were paramount. GoldenEye marked a departure of sorts, being the first time the spotlight fell squarely on Bond himself.

Brosnan’s second line of dialogue as Bond is telling: “I’m alone”. It’s a line he utters calmly, despite being held at gunpoint by an unidentified figure in the shadows. When the figure steps into the light (similar to Bond emerging from the bathroom vent), it’s revealed that the silenced pistol belongs to Bond’s double: another double-0. We reassess Bond’s somewhat profound revelation about himself (“I’m alone”) as half of a coded exchange, pre-prepared to establish the identity of his contact: 006. But it’s clear as soon as Alec Trevelyan replies “Aren’t we all?” that the two already know each other. They have a deep and intimate friendship. Although Alec follows it up with “You’re late 007” he’s soon referring to his fellow agent as “James”, something only Bond’s girls and his closest allies (Moneypenny, Leiter, M in a good mood) get away with.

The pre-titles sequence of GoldenEye is the closest the Bond series has come to a ‘buddy movie’. Film critic Molly Haskell coined this term to describe any film where the the homoerotic relationship between two men carries the story in the same way that, typically, the romantic relationship between a women and a man would. Buddy movies are, as the use of US vernacular attests, more common in American cinema. There is a distinct lack in British film, something addressed (and satirised) in the Edgar Wright action comedies starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost (especially Hot Fuzz, which both celebrates and subverts action tropes - and which also stars Timothy Dalton).

Moments after the double-0 ‘buddies’ break into their target - the bottling plant at the heart of the facility - their relationship is threatened. The queer novelist E.M. Forster once remarked that: “If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.” Bond is faced with precisely this dilemma. With Alec’s life hanging in the balance, James throws down his rifle and surrenders. Although the audience is probably confident that Bond will find a way to save both his friend and the mission the decision is made for him: Ourumov appears to shoot Alec in the head. Bond retreats for cover and attempts to gather his thoughts: how to salvage the mission and get out alive. But Brosnan plays Bond as genuinely distraught at his friend’s death and he doesn’t break into a smile for the rest of the pre-credits, even when performing acts of derring-do. There are no witticisms to lead us into the title sequence this time.

Although the post-credits car chase shows that, after nine years, Bond has moved on, Bond’s and Alec’s relationship drives the film, even though the latter physically disappears until the halfway point. When Alec reappears, so does the dilemma: do I betray my country or my friend?

Even factoring in Trevelyan’s duplicity, there’s a feeling in this scene that Bond, surrounded by statues of a fallen regime, might choose his friend over his country. Bond himself had remarked earlier that “governments change; the lies stay the same” in relation to the Soviet Union. But could the same be said for his own government? Could Bond be losing his belief in ‘queen and country’? Is he becoming disillusioned?

A similar dilemma - Bond having to choose between his friend and his mission - is also at the heart of Casino Royale. In Craig’s first outing, the ‘friend’ is his (sort of) girlfriend: Vesper. He has to decide whether to plough on with the mission or not - but doing so will mean he will literally have to plough over the body of Vesper with his Aston Martin, who has been left lying in the middle of the road. But it’s the same drama at the heart of GoldenEye.

Bond has the decision taken out of his hands by someone else yet again. An unseen henchman tranquilises Bond just as Trevelyan has almost goaded him into cutting the conversation short with his Walther PPK.

It’s only when Alec is hanging off the bottom of the satellite antenna, Bond’s hand holding onto his foot being the only thing preventing him from falling to his death, that Bond ultimately makes up his mind: betray his country or his friend?. “For England, James?” Alec knows he is moments from death but he taunts Bond until the end. The answer, gallingly for Alec, is neither of these. Bond makes his motivation clear: “No, for me”. 

For Bond to be himself, he needs to let go of the past, which also means letting go of his friend - literally. Alec is irredeemable, that much is clear. He’s too far gone down the path of evil. We don’t doubt that as viewers and we are urging Bond to let go. But I’m sure I’m not the only queer viewer who imagines an alternative path for Bond and Trevelyan. Perhaps prior to their fated pre-credits mission they could have formed a deeper connection and things might have turned out differently. Such fantasies are the realm of slash fiction and this is a family-friendly site so I won’t hyperlink to any but, trust me, a quick Google search will reveal there are plenty of these (including several which are definitely NOT family-friendly).

It’s not impossible to imagine a Bond who is in love with his fellow male 00-agent: an equal. It would certainly appeal to Bond’s narcissism to wake up next to someone who is his mirror image. The filmmakers make sure Sean Bean and Pierce Brosnan are not just behaviourally similar but aesthetically. When Trevelyan appears back from the dead, his facial scarring helps make it clear that he’s diverged down a dark path since we last saw him. The mirror is cracked.

Brosnan had played a queer character before, or at least someone who was pretending to like men in order to get the job done. In his first film, 1980’s The Long Good Friday, the twenty three year old Brosnan played a hitman who uses his physique to entice a gay gangster before luring him into the changing room and stabbing him to death. Brosnan’s acting career began the way his Bond career did - in an unpoliced homosocial space, rife with the potential to ‘define’ and ‘test’ characters.

Friends of 00-Dorothy: 007’s Allies

It’s not just Bond who gets redefined in GoldenEye. Despite recasting M as a woman, Judi Dench’s iteration proves herself every bit ‘the man’ as her predecessor - perhaps even more so. Dench is quite simply fabulous as the matriarch who has the “balls” (a favourite word of hers, which also crops up in the next film) to send her favourite ‘child’ off to die for a good reason. Unlike Bernard Lee’s and Robert Brown’s versions of M, Dench’s will warm up to Bond over the films that follow, while still retaining that professional distance. 

Lee’s M was never a fan of Bond’s womanising ways and Dench’s is no exception here, calling him a “sexist misogynist dinosaur” to his face (although she will not be above ordering Bond to “pump” Paris Carver for information in Tomorrow Never Dies). As for M herself, we learn very little about her aside from that she prefers bourbon to her predecessor’s Cognac, which could either be read as an attempt to masculinise her (bourbon has slightly more manly associations) or win favour with the US audience. 

Perhaps the most stereotypically masculine thing about M in GoldenEye is her willingness to trust her analysts over Bond’s (stereotypically feminine) hunches and feelings, something that leads Chief of Staff Bill Tanner to call her the “evil queen of numbers”. However, this is balanced out to a degree. When chastising Tanner for his sarcasm, she refers to her children, which identifies her as a literal mother as well as Bond’s mother figure. Would ever a male M be defined as a father? Would a male M ever be permitted to look visibly moved and tell Bond to “come back alive” as he leaves the office? Probably not.

Less (apparently) worried for Bond’s well-being is Moneypenny, who makes it very clear that she doesn’t sit at home waiting for Bond to come into the office to deal with emergencies. Samantha Bond channels decades of Moneypenny’s frustrations into her performance, pointedly make it clear that she is dressed to the nines for the delectation of her date (who took her to the theatre, a very un-Bond-like pastime) and not 007. But while she tells Bond “you never had me” she leaves him with an ultimatum that leaves the door open: “Someday you have to make good on your innuendos.” It’s a stunning role reversal that leaves Bond feeling appropriately cowed.

Bill Tanner makes his first onscreen appearance since For Your Eyes Only and, as he was in that film, he’s here to be the mouthpiece of continuity. Michael Kitchen plays against type as an uncharacteristically ‘square’ character. As well as being charged with delivering sizeable chunks of exposition, Tanner is the onscreen representation of anyone who might rankle at working under a female boss.

Jack Wade is who the CIA send when Felix Leiter isn’t available (presumably because he’s still recovering from disagreeing with a shark in Licence To Kill). He’s very much played for laughs and, from a queer point of view, it’s interesting that Bond confirms his ally’s identity by demanding to see his bottom - in broad daylight no less. Quite why anyone in MI6 or the CIA thought this was a good idea is anyone’s guess. Imagine if M had suggested 006 and 007 do the same in the pre-credits sequence!

Like Bond, former-KGB agent Valentin Dmitrovicz Zukovsky is trying to find his way - and new identity - in a post-Cold War world. He operates out of a gaudy nightclub, surrounding himself with beautiful girls, but he only has eyes for country and western ‘singer’ Irina. Except, as soon as Bond casts aspersions on her ‘talent’, Zukovsky ditches her. And in truth, Zukovsky is more interested in Bond’s crotch. He’s not the first character (or last) to get Bond to do what he wants by threatening him with the loss of his manhood. As Natalya would say: “boys with toys”.

Shady characters: Villains

It makes sense to start with Xenia. In fact, it would be unwise to make her wait. Although she is technically the villain’s henchperson, their second in command, she comes first in many people’s minds. She certainly presents an indelible image. I’m not the only one to highlight the drag queen qualities of her costuming and and Xenia dominates every frame she’s in. The character oozes queer appeal and I’ve written about my personal obsession with the character already, in both film and video game forms. I won’t repeat that material here but there’s always more to say about one of the most memorable villains in Bond history (herstory?).

Let’s start with that name: Onatopp. As a teenager, when I saw GoldenEye in the cinema for the first time, I ‘got’ that it was a double entendre and vaguely alluded to her dominance in the bedroom. But, sex education being as poor as it was when I was at school (and with the internet barely a thing), I had no idea what the word ‘top’ meant in gay culture. Now, if you bring up the whole ‘tops and bottoms’ thing with most of the gay people I know they will give you a look of pure disdain. A minority of them are quite proud of their identity as one or the other or both  (and there’s certainly nothing for anyone to be ashamed of) but if anyone asks me (as quite a few have) ‘who’s the man and who’s the woman in your relationship?’ I launch into a lecture that covers one or all of the following points: 1. Neither me nor my husband is biologically a woman. 2. We’re gay which means we’re into men - that’s kind of the whole point. 3. Neither of us identify as a woman although our masculinity isn’t so fragile that we aren’t afraid to celebrate some or our more stereotypically feminine traits (FYI: I like baking, Antony likes painting his nails).

Of course, when people ask me that question, they’re probably getting at something else. And, if they dare to follow their original question with a more explicit probing, my answer is: none of your business. Xenia, however, makes it everyone’s business to know her bedroom preference. Short of changing her name by deed poll, there’s little she can do to hide it.

For one of the queerest characters in the Bond canon, Xenia has a surprising drink preference: she takes her Martini straight up. Of course, having her Martini undiluted by anything signifies she’s at least on a par with Bond when it comes to her ability to hold her booze. Depending on how the bartender takes the “straight up” instruction (they may stir, shake or take the spirit straight from the freezer) might even put her ahead of Bond. Bond’s famous instruction to “shake” actually leads to a weaker drink because of all the melting ice chips.

Xenia and Bond are competing to see who is the bigger ‘man’ in their every encounter: from the battle over the baccarat table to their fight in the hotel swimming pool and changing room (a mixed sex one presumably? In an April 2020 watchalong screening of the film, Brosnan himself found something “camp” about this changing room fight). 

By the time we get to the standoff on the train, Xenia is intimating to Bond that she will enjoy Natalya’s ‘strawberries’’ as much as he would, sucking her fingers. The gloves are off (though Xenia keeps hers on). It all culminates in a Battle Royale in the jungle which Bond only wins by using her own weapons against her.

Bond’s and Xenia’s first meeting is an outright competition to see who has the biggest engine, or ego, or something else, depending on whether you’re a psychologist or not. To be fair to Bond, his Aston Martin is somewhat outclassed by Xenia’s Ferrari. But that’s not the point. Like Fiona Volpe in Thunderball, Xenia is a speed demon behind the wheel. Whereas Connery is intimidated by a woman being a more proficient driver than him, Brosnan cheerfully concedes defeat. In truth, the alternative is one or both of them ending up splatted against a farmer’s tractor, but Xenia seems prepared to take the risk all the same. The tractor helps Bond to save face, as does his gentlemanly deference to etiquette: “Ladies first”.

But how much of a typical lady is Xenia? 

Xenia is positioned as male throughout the film. At one point she even dresses up as a man - a pilot. After shooting dead the Tiger helicopter pilots she dons one of their flightsuits and helmets, conveniently disguising her gender. It’s somewhat ironic that the real pilot of the helicopter in the film wore makeup and a wig to look like Xenia. So, just to recap: it’s a female character being played by a man made up to look like a woman. It’s a Twelfth Night-style gender-swapping confusion Shakespeare would revel in.

The most ‘mannish’ thing about Xenia is her unapologetically promiscuous sexuality. In cinema generally, and even in some Bond films, it’s still uncommon to see female desire depicted. Most mainstream films are still stuck in the 1950s in this regard: women, cinema dictates, should only have sex for the purposes of conceiving children. It’s a frustrating double standard.

Xenia is definitely unafraid to have a good time. A very, very good time. The catch is: she can only gain sexual pleasure from killing her partners. The film can hint at the biology of how this is even possible. The finer points of erotic asphyxiation and erectile tissue are not suitable subjects for a James Bond film. Complicating this is that she doesn’t distinguish between men and women (even in the version of the film which cuts her girl-on-girl fight with Natalya this is abundantly clear and it was blatant in the film’’s publicity photos). In the film’s most disturbing sequence, Xenia massacres the staff of Severnaya - including both men and women - and gets off on it, orgasmically firing her machine ‘gun’ (phallus substitute) into the writhing bodies. Seconds later, when she emerges from the kitchen thinking she’s killed someone hidden inside a ventilation shaft, she says she had to “ventilate” someone. It’s a grim pun and a horrible metaphor for penetration. Later, when Trevelyan’s (very phallic) train is speeding towards Bond’s tank, the driver having been ordered to “ram” Bond’s obstacle, Xenia is similarly excited: “He’s going to derail us”. Even Xenia’s own demise, having the life squeezed out of her in the fork of a tree, causes her to scream out with a mixture of pain and pleasure.

Whatever the logistics of killing (or being killed) for sexual pleasure, this defining trait (calling it a ‘quirk’ would be a definite understatement) of Xenia’s makes her an extension of the ‘spider-woman’ type of femme fatale found in film noir: a woman who lures in people using her sexuality and then kills them after she has what she wants. 

Risk-taking is another stereotypically male trait that Xenia has in abundance. Her fight with Bond in the swimming pool changing room ends with her telling him “You don’t need the gun Commander.” As we see time and again, guns are rarely just weapons. It’s Bond who makes the phallic connection explicit, warning her that “That depends on your definition of safe sex.” In 1995, AIDs was still a big killer. The Bond movies of the late 1980s were conscious of this and limited the number of Bond’s conquests accordingly. It’s still there in GoldenEye too - Bond ‘only’ beds two women, compared with the three in each of the next two films. Conversely, Xenia takes pleasure wherever, and with whoever, she can, even if sometimes it’s only on the other end of a ‘gun’.

Xenia can make Trevelyan seem almost anodyne by comparison, especially on the rare occasions where they share scenes together. But, not to be outdone, he has ample queer attributes of his own.

Unlike Xenia, who believes herself to always be the best at everything, he has a definite inferiority complex. His fatal, final mistake is to wait to shoot Bond just so he can tell him “I was always better”. He’s always measuring himself against 007. There’s probably a reason why the writers designated him 006 and not 008: he’s as close to 007 as anyone can get but he will never quite be as good.

As with many of the villains, Trevelyan is what psychologist Carl Jung would have called ‘the shadow’ of Bond. This time, the villain takes it to another level. He first appears literally stepping from the shadows, holding a pistol to Bond’s face. The lyrics of the title song (which I always read as being from Trevelyan’s perspective) even refer to him watching Bond “from the shadows as a child”. Trevelyan goes as far as claiming to have had a more tragic childhood than Bond, telling his former friend that his parents had the “luxury” of dying in a climbing accident whereas he was orphaned because his father killed his mother and then killed himself.

Trevelyan’s motivation is, on the surface, revenge for this childhood trauma, which he pins on the British government for betraying his parents to Stalin. But when you stop to think about it, it doesn’t quite hang together. His parents survived Stalin’s firing squads but, presumably, his father couldn’t live with the survivor’s guilt. If 006 had been played by an older actor, they would have probably gone with a more straightforward cause and effect: Stalin killed Alec’s parents after the British government betrayed them. Sean Bean was in his mid-thirties at the time, which would have strained credulity if they had gone with this clearer cut backstory. When must his parents have died: mid-1950s at the latest? Casting an actor six years younger than Pierce Brosnan gives 006 a younger brother quality but it also makes it necessary to muddy the character’s motivation.

So what really drives 006? Sibling rivalry? Class envy? Male pride? Sexual jealousy? All of the above?

If anything, 006 makes 007 appear the more ‘blokey’ of the two. It’s Bond who tells Alec to “buy me a pint” during their banter in the pre-credits sequence. Although Bond does occasionally drink a beer on screen (especially recently, due to product placement), it’s hard to imagine him ‘going for a pint’ with anyone. A Martini maybe, or a Negroni. Even Champagne. But a ‘pint’?

Perhaps it’s because I was used to hearing Sean Bean with a broad Sheffield accent on TV’s Sharpe, but I found it jarring, when I first saw GoldenEye, to hear him getting his tongue around the vowels of the Queen’s English. That he doesn’t always succeed in taking the boy out of Sheffield works for the character. It helps sell the idea that he’s hiding something. It also gives us the feeling that he’s struggling with his identity - caught between two worlds. This is made literal by him taking on the pseudonym Janus, named for the two headed Roman god, handily glossed for those without a classical education by Bond himself in the film. It’s quite clear that Trevelyan/Janus did have a classical education, or wanted one. He certainly craves the finer things in life. His armoured train neatly encapsulates the character’s split Russian/English identity: on the outside it’s unyielding Russian military hardware. On the inside, it’s soft and refined. It appears to have been designed by someone who has spent a long time admiring the excesses of the English aristocracy. It’s like a National Trust property on wheels. If anything, like the plummy accent, it shows him trying a bit too hard to disguise his humble origins.

Even his plan, to electronically rob the Bank of England and then wipe out the evidence with an electromagnetic pulse, is, as Bond points out, the action of “a common thief”. Trevelyan’s chagrin is palpable and he goes on the defensive, attempting to make his plan sound more ambitious than it is. But is he angry because someone has shown his plan to be low class or because he has, once again, failed to secure Bond’s approval (and love)?

Trevelyan comes closer than any villain, I would argue, to persuading Bond to join his scheme. The archetypal ‘seduction scene’ doesn’t take place over a dinner table this time, or with Bond strapped to something. Instead, it takes place in the highly symbolic surroundings of a statue graveyard. Trevelyan once again steps out of the shadows, appearing to Bond who is in full view. Bond seems to be free to make his own decisions, although we suspect (thanks to a shot of Bond glancing around him) that Trevelyan has backup in the shadows.

Trevelyan uses his advantage to perform the most complete character assassination of Bond we get until Vesper’s on the train in Casino Royale. In the parlance of drag culture, he reads Bond to filth. This includes satirising his loyalty to the mission above all else by labelling him “Her Majesty’s loyal terrier”. Later, when Bond has been captured infiltrating his base, Trevelyan tries to show he knows the workings of Bond’s mind: “Please, James. Spare me the Freud. I might as well ask you if all the Vodka Martinis ever silence the screams of all the men you've killed.”

One of the men Bond supposedly ‘killed’ was Alec himself, but it’s not a fair accusation. In the pre-credits sequence, Bond genuinely thought his friend was dead. He reset the timers on the bombs out of necessity: with his friend apparently gone and with only a slim chance of completing the mission in one piece he did the only thing he could. It’s this decision Alec fixates on, even giving Bond the “same three minutes” when locking him in his soon-to-explode railway carriage.

At some point, we start to wonder: did anyone ever love you Alec? Are you just trying to find a reason to hate Bond? And everyone else? Will “mad little Alec” (to use Bond’s phrase) ever be happy, even when he’s fried London, topped up his bank balance and proven himself superior to Bond in combat?

The odds of him finding solace in the arms of a woman are not strong. His body language with Xenia is distinctly sibling-like and there’s no hint of impropriety. When he forces himself, reptile-like, on Natalya the frames the experience as the “victor” claiming his “spoils”. It’s still all about Bond.

And to be fair to Trevelyan, it’s not as if Bond doesn’t lead him on. Several times (the statue graveyard, the train) he has Alec in his sights - but he refuses to fire. In the latter of these scenes, Trevelyan even holds onto Bond’s foot, which foreshadows the role reversal at the end of the film. 

The closest Bond comes to confessing his feelings is telling Trevelyan “I trusted you”. Trevelyan throws the word “trust” back his face as if it’s not enough: the equivalent of telling someone you don’t love them, you only like them.

The final time Trevelyan is at Bond’s mercy, hanging off the antenna, he presents Bond with a binary choice: will Bond kill him for the mission or save his life because Alec is his friend? When Bond chooses to kill him for personal reasons, it’s the ultimate humiliation for Trevelyan. Bond loved him, yes, but he’s breaking up with him and moving on. Bond gets to break up with Trevelyan on his terms, not the other way around. 

Adding insult to (life-threatening) injuries, Trevelyan is still alive when Bond’s sabotage of his base comes to fruition, the radio telescope literally crashing down around him. A spectacular use of the Kuleshov effect (using a sequence of shots and letting the audience make the connections between them) makes us feel Trevelyan’s pain as the antenna (the largest phallic object in sight) powers into him. Spare you the Freud Alec?  

Other villains of note include General Ourumov, whose betrayal of the Russian government seems to be entirely motivated by greed. He has a somewhat camp stance and there’s some hypermasculine posturing. M says he “sees himself as the next iron man of Russia”, which inevitably means he has something to hide. 

Boris Grishenko, the traitorous computer programmer, is a quotable delight. Although played by bisexual man Alan Cumming (although he wasn’t out at the time), the character is ostensibly heterosexual, even using ‘knockers’ in a (failed) attempt to seduce his colleague Natalya. Or is he posturing as a straight man? Certainly, he conflates computing with sexual prowess, asking Natalya “was it good for you too?” after he shows off a nifty bit of hacking. Similar to the love/hate relationship between Trevelyan and Bond, Boris feels threatened when Natalya outdoes him in his specialist field, proving herself to be a better programmer. She is also a better fighter than Boris. He cowers under his computer desk when she attacks him, much to Trevelyan’s amusement. Does Alec enjoy seeing a man emasculated in this way? Does it make him feel more manly and help him feel better about his own inadequacies?

You go gurls!

Natalya makes most Bond girls look lazy. Not only is she a superb computer programmer but she survives a massacre, single-handedly finds her way back to civilisation from a frozen hellhole (okay, some dogs help, but still) and finally gets to save the world while Bond is too busy working out his ‘bromantic’ issues with Trevelyan.

The same people who struggle to take Tanya Roberts seriously as a seismologist and Denise Richards as a nuclear physicist have no such issues with Izabella Scorupco as an expert in programming. Perhaps it’s her ‘functional’ clothing that makes her more convincing to a mass audience? Later, of course, because convention dictates it, the previously ‘frumpy’ Natalya transforms into a beautiful butterfly, courtesy of clothing more becoming of a typical Bond girl. It’s a relief that the filmmakers resisted the impulse to put her in glasses in the first half of the film to signify her intelligence, the usual way of attempting to disguise an undisguisably attractive female character, before getting her to take them off and let her hair down when she takes on a more traditional damsel role.

But Natalya never succumbs to damsel status. The closest she gets is when Trevelyan points his gun at Bond’s head. But rather than yield, she recycles Bond’s disingenuous line from when the situation was the other way around: “Go ahead. Shoot him. He means nothing to me.” 

Like Trevelyan (and to an extent Bond), Natalya’s motivation is revenge: but rather than avenging a murdered lover she’s out for justice for her fallen programming comrades. 

Unlike most Bond girls, she doesn’t lose agency in the final act. In fact, she gains more and more. She reprograms the GoldenEye weapon, ensuring it will burn up on re-entering the atmosphere; she pretends to be unconscious to lure in a henchman guarding the antenna and, finally, she hijacks a helicopter by holding the pilot at gunpoint, saving Bond’s life by arriving just in the nick of time to rescue him.

As if that wasn’t enough for the gay men watching in the audience to identify with her, she also sees straight through Bond to what’s eating him: his obsession with another man. Natalya observes that Trevelyan was “your friend… and now... you will kill him”. She’s not impressed with his heroics - his blatant attempts to cover up the pain he is feeling at having to hunt down his friend. Bond argues that his cold behaviour is “what keeps me alive.” She retorts: “No. It’s what keeps you alone.”

Natalya Simonova: computer programmer; Cardigan Wearer of the Year 1995; ‘Russian Minister of Transportation’ and world-saving Bond girl who ends up physically on top of Bond (take that Xenia!).

We salute you comrade.

Camp (as Dr. Christmas Jones)

The lyrics for the title song are some of the most suggestive since Diamonds Are Forever. It’s unclear how much of the film’s story songwriters Bono and The Edge (half of U2) were familiar with when they wrote the song but it perfectly externalises Trevelyan’s repressed, bitter, recriminatory, sexually frustrated thoughts to perfection:

Goldeneye, I found his weakness. Goldeneye, he'll do what I please
Goldeneye, no time for sweetness. But a bitter kiss will bring him to his knees.

It’s Trevelyan’s power fantasy, deliciously delivered by gay icon Tina Turner. Although the song’s ‘she’ persona refers to “other girls” in the second verse, it’s clearly not Xenia talking; this is Trevelyan’s inner monologue, his feminine side. Despite the reference to a “golden honeytrap” (or ‘gold and honey trap’ in some versions of the lyrics), it’s a bad fit for Xenia for who “revenge” isn’t a “kiss”. It’s Trevelyan who was “left behind” by Bond (at least in his addled mind) and who now has Bond in his “sights” with his “GoldenEye”. Well, quite.

GoldenEye’s other camp musical number is the Minnie Driver Russian-accented slaughtering of Stand By Your Man. Curiously, it never made it onto the soundtrack. I wonder why?

Bond’s new car, the BMW Z3, is what might have been termed a “hairdresser’s car” by a previous generation of flippant Top Gear presenters. Brosnan himself said, twenty fives years later, the vehicle “didn’t do it for me”. Did it do it for anyone? It’s the four-wheeled equivalent of Chekov’s gun: we’re told it has missiles behind the headlights but they never get deployed. Talk about a failure to launch. At least the iconic Aston Martin DB5 has been retrofitted with a chiller which is just the right size for a bottle of Bollinger. [If this is a real optional extra I would like it on every car I own going forward please]

Sometimes we associate camp with frivolity. But the opening title sequence manages to be both camp and deeply subversive. The most provocative part comes when the pistol emerges from the woman’s mouth. Customarily in Bond, women are the targets of guns, with the weapons being rubbed around their lips and various other body parts in rather unsubtle approximations of sex acts. Here, a woman’s lips part to reveal a pistol. They fire on the Soviet flags which then blow away in the wind. Just a ‘cool image’ (courtesy of Daniel Kleinmann in his first stunning title sequence) or a feminist acquisition of the phallus? Considering the iconoclastic nature of the whole title sequence - they are literally breaking down the established patriarchal order, in the form of statues of men - I would bet heavily on the latter.

The film’s iconoclastic apotheosis comes during the tank chase. For many, the destruction derby around St. Petersburg is one of the most impressively mounted action sequences in any Bond film, balancing tension and humour to perfection. For others, it is tipped into camp by the Roger Moore-style gag of Bond driving around with a statue on top of the tank. Is Pierce Brosnan’s Bond the kind of 007 who would think nothing of careening straight through a marble plinth to get where he’s going, even if it means riding around topped with a statue of a man on a horse? We’ll have to wait until Tomorrow Never Dies for Brosnan’s Bond to feel truly comfortable in his skin/immaculately tailored-suit. But the answer, for now, is a resounding YES.

Queer verdict: 004 (out of a possible 007)

It’s fitting that Brosnan’s first Bond adventure has an obsession with taking apart cherished institutions - the girls, the allies - and reassembling them in refreshing ways. But despite stiff competition from some powerfully queer villains, the institution which is called into question above all is Bond himself. We may know his name, we may know his number, but what’s really going on beneath that slick, Brioni-clad exterior?