If the 2009 hit I Killed my Mother from French Canadian director/actor Xavier Dolan appealed to your sense of disaffected noir, here’s more from the 22-year old prodigy. Dolan again takes centre stage in a film about infatuation, but this is altogether less dark, far funnier, and although more experimental, instantly identifiable as a threesome many will recognise… At the heart of Dolan’s film, which makes determined efforts to broaden the gay experience into the realm of the universal, is a love triangle. Francis (Dolan), in love with Nicolas, the laid-back new boy in town, must compete for his attentions with his best friend, the quirkily beautiful Marie, who comes over all Audrey Hepburn-retro in an attempt to catch the eye of the half asleep Nicolas.
As the three share time in clubs, parties, in the country (and in bed), the exquisite pain of the unknown and the torture of the unconfirmed begin to take its toll. Who loves whom, and who is going to lose out? Against the backdrop of the main narrative, a series of vox-pops pepper the film, telling stories of unrequited love. A brilliant soundtrack – from Bach’s Cello Suites to Dalida’s Italian version of Bang Bang – is a major attraction, as is Marie’s wardrobe and the unexpected, splendidly off-beat finale. Delightful, playful cinema.
Buhli Msibi’s poem I Break the Boxes provides the title for this wide-ranging, touching, often funny documentary highlighting the lives of black lesbians in South Africa. The title is appropriate; by telling the tales of six high profile women, the sheer breadth of experience in the black lesbian community is revealed, the profiled women all having redefined their set parameters in one way or another. They are a well-thought out mix of voices and bear compelling witness to an epoch that has seen gay rights go from zero to hero. There are the mother figures, Mary Hames of UWC’s Gender Equity Unit and Dr Yvette Abrahams of the Gender Commission for Gender Equality, who set the scene with stories of the anti-apartheid activism years (and falling hopelessly in love). The traditional leader, Fikile Vilakazi of the Coalition of African Lesbians, one of the country’s most eloquent spokespersons on the rights of gay people, offers a compelling argument against the gay-is-white argument; “if you say being gay is not African then you insult me, because you are saying I am not African”. Another strong voice is Out in Africa’s own Theresa Raizenberg, activist and film buff, who remembers the early ABIGAIL years and the changes since. The youth is represented by Jozi FM DJ Charmaine ‘Fino’ Dlamini and soccer star Portia Modise, both completely out and succeeding in their fields, despite being largely male-dominated sectors. A warm, compelling and satisfyingly affirming film.
Courtesy of the filmmakers and Forum for the Empowerment of Women.
It Gets Better is a global video campaign targeting sexual minorities who experience discrimination in secondary schools and beyond. In 2011, a small group of University of Cape Town students and staff teamed up with civil society and celebrities to create some of South Africa’s first It Gets Better videos. The team, ranging from Desmond Tutu to the Ikey Tigers rugby captain, lets eKapa know that if you experience discrimination, there are people and groups who will support you. A selection of these short films will be shown before the features.
From the producer/directors of The Celluloid Closet, Common Threads and Paragraph 175 comes a highly stylised biography of beat poet and writer Allen Ginsberg, masterfully portrayed by Spiderman bad boy James Franco.
Freedman and Epstein’s film centres on the 1957 obscenity trial of Howl, Ginsberg’s extended, surrealist poem that became the symbol of a burgeoning counterculture. The published book – Ginsberg baying at the state of his world – was regarded as a disgrace by the Establishment and hauled before the courts as promoting promiscuity. So it was; promiscuity of both thought and language was one of the declared aims of Ginsberg and the other beat writers (Jack Kerouac is played here by Todd Rotondi). The film’s aim, ostensibly to assert Ginsberg’s homosexuality as central to Howl’s genius, is brilliantly achieved – the haunted poet’s unrequited love for Kerouac is shown to be as much the foundation of Howl as Eisenhower’s New Look world of nuclear armaments and growing imperialism. Parallel to the trial narrative, a live reading of the poem and one-on-one ‘interviews’ with Ginsberg, are recreations of pivotal episodes of Ginsberg’s life at the time. Kerouac again features heavily, as does his eventual lifelong partner, Peter Orlovsky. The film’s masterful animation is a movie in itself, helping to conceptualise and illustrate Ginsberg’s complex imagery. Monk Studios threw over 100 people at the project and the results are epic, recalling Pink Floyd’s The Wall as well as Japanese line drawing and a whole lot more besides. Allied to Franco’s wonderful delivery of Ginsberg’s words the effect is electrifying, and deserves as big a screen as possible. Nominated at Berlin and Sundance this year, it also stars Mary-Louise Parker, Jeff Daniels and Mad Men’s Jon Hamm.
If Big Gay Musical pressed all your light ‘family’ entertainment buttons, then here’s more fun from the same director. Hot, talented Adam heads to Hollywood to make it as an actor but encounters all the stonewalling, disappointment and bitchiness that a thousand other starlets have endured before him. And like them, sights get lowered until, well, what’s so bad about the porn industry anyway? After a false start and far too much crystal meth, love comes calling in the shape of a famous sitcom actor. But there’s a cost – did someone say Rock Hudson? By his side through all the biceps and Botox is his self-obsessed fag hag Candy, intent on fame at all costs, even if it means selling niffy underwear online. Adam’s fun, campy journey through the underworld of gay Hollywood takes him to closeted producers, sleazy directors, has-been femme fatales and a whole gym full of gorgeous buff boys. Look out for great cameos from Hollywood legend Bruce Vilanch as a porn director with a heart of gold, and E!Online über-gossip Alex Mapa as himself – only far, far bitchier.
An ex-con is released from jail and heads home to his wife and son in a working class Puerto Rican area of the Bronx. Things are clearly not the same as when he left – his wife is distant and his son is positively remote. It’s obvious both have moved on during his absence, but what’s really going on?
Green’s film is a powerhouse of extraordinary performances and well-wrought scenarios, stirring up a cauldron of sensitivities. Central is the tussle between Enrique (Esai Morales from Miami Vice and NYPD Blue) and his son Michael (brilliantly played by transgender actor Harmony Santana). Michael’s quiet journey towards, ultimately, gender reassignment has begun, with his mother Angela (Judy Reyes from Fame) a silent but supportive defender. In contrast Enrique’s forceful, simplistic view to life, especially masculinity, shatters the unspoken status quo that mother and son have established, breaking open Pandora’s Box. Other issues tumble out, exposing hypocrisies long buried. Better even than the superb cinematography and layered script are the performances. Harmony Santana, one of only a handful of transgender actors in the world, is utterly riveting as Michael (and Vanessa), and scenes of his evening transformations are gentle, beautiful and deeply affecting. Morales too manages to balance Latino butch with moments of delicacy, and Reyes weighs love and fear with the expertise of a master. It is not hard to see why Gun Hill Road was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Green’s social drama speaks to many people on many levels. Unmissable.
On the phone at a gay helpline Jesus is the ideal operator, cool, kind, caring and full of helpful information. Beyond the helpline his life is apparently just as peachy – he’s good looking, young and has the support and love of his boyfriend Johnny. But things start to fall apart when, suspecting something is wrong, he goes to a clinic and has an HIV test. The result sends him into a tailspin that leaves him at the front door of a large drag queen, Sister Alysa Trailer. Kicked out by his lover, Jesus moves in with the good Samaritan and starts a journey towards his new life. He is to learn however, that you can’t begin afresh until you’ve dealt with the issues of the past. Set against Seattle’s wet, moody backdrop, Rain’s film refocuses attention on the consequences of casual, unprotected sex in an era where HIV is no longer as visible as it once was. It also reasserts the importance of community – while the worst of the physical manifestations may not be evident, he suggests, the psychological and social issues within the gay community remain as serious as ever.
Courtesy of the filmmaker.
Two women, strangers, find themselves in a hotel room in Rome, a million miles from everything familiar and known. In the classically beautiful, neutral space, anything is possible and the two embark on a journey of get-to-know-you. As Alba and Natasha work their way through layers of half-truth, subterfuge and deception, it becomes clear that things are not strictly as they seem. Truths finally emerge – as unexpected as the cinematography is often beautiful. Filmmaker Medem, a Basque Spaniard, winner of a slew of Goya awards for previous work, based his film on In Bed, Chilean Matías Bize’s much-vaunted straight version on the same theme. The all-women twist to Medem’s film is intriguing in the subtleties it throws up, and his goal seems to be to suggest that women are as reluctant to open up to vulnerability as men are, but use different techniques to camouflage the fear. Expect lush cinematography, an opera-loving waiter, intriguing back stories of both women and a novel way of revealing those lives.
And yes, two gorgeous women naked for an hour and a half does the film no harm either.
This Sundance feature opener takes a different slant to the generic lesbian coming out movie. Director Dee Rees chooses, much as Rashaad Green does in Gun Hill Road (also showing at the Festival), to root her story in a specific community, this time black working class Brooklyn. The film becomes doubly interesting – offering an insight into a young black lesbian’s journey, as well as a spy cam into an aspirant lower middle class black family ringed by convention, expectation, religion and tradition.
Alike’s (Adepero Oduye) parents are typical of the neighbourhood – Arthur is a stressed out policeman and Audrey a housewife and aspirant community leader, heavily involved in church and charity. The two no longer see eye-to-eye, Audrey’s relentless righteousness pushing away her easier-going husband. Mother and daughter fare no better; Audrey’s iron grip on her daughter is tested to the limits as Alike takes her first tentative lesbian steps. Into the mix is thrown Laura, Alika’s bull-dyke friend, and the very cool Bina, who may just prove to be a friend with benefits. The path to true love and family peace is never easy however, and as Audrey ratchets up the pressure, the unexpected happens, forcing a new, but unexpected twist.
Both Adepero Oduye’s tough, layered performance as Alike, and Bradford Young’s gritty cinematography (he won a Sundance Award for it) are special, and the film’s other highlight is the music – most notably Khia’s brilliant My Neck, My Back (Lick It).
Courtesy of the filmmaker and Focus Features International.
Dee Rees is Guest of the Festival and travels courtesy of the US Embassy.
Made to expand on Openly Positive’s recently published book of short stories of the same name, Whisper Not is a documentary about the people whose stories about life with and beyond HIV feature in the collection. As the title suggests, the book and the film are all about speaking up – no whispers, just great tales of love, lust, sex, triumph, fun, laughter and change. Or, as Openly Positive’s Derrick Fine says, “the four Ls – life, love, laughter and longevity.” There are 15 authors in the book and 14 of them share their stories in the film; an all-inclusive crew of men, women, straight, gay, black, white, young and old from South Africa, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Malawi and the DRC. There’s 85 year-old Jan de Groot and his struggle to tell his girlfriend, and Ann Ray Ray, still married – and in love – despite her husband’s unfaithfulness. Or Christo Greyling, who had two HIV negative children — after contracting HIV. And Nomfundo Xotyeni, a lesbian out to slay the belief that lesbians, especially black lesbians, are immune to HIV. And the best bit? Go order the book and read the words of the people you’ve now met.
Courtesy of Openly Positive and STEPS.
Arguably the gem of the festival, Carrillo’s brilliant little moment in time plays out in a parked car, as two strangers get ready to have a quickie in the back seat. It’s not farce – but farcical – not preachy – but illuminating – and very, very funny. You’ll want to own it.
Carlos decides to take the plunge and see whether the urges he’s been having amount to him being gay or just open-minded. His plan of action? Hire a rent boy and see whether he’s attracted to him or repelled. Cristian is all kinds of handsome, but, in that oh-so typical Spanish way, things get turned on their head. As the afternoon progresses, roles are reversed and power dynamics remapped. A sparkling, sexy little film, not all it seems to be and yet so much more, with top-drawer acting and production values.
From the director of The Butch Factor and producer of various E! Online’s True Hollywood Story’s comes a muscle-laden look at the world of gay beefcake and why we love (and hate) it. Christopher Hines is best known for THS episodes on Sharon Stone, diet fads, plastic surgery nightmares and Laci Peterson, so his pop culture credentials are impeccable. For The Adonis Factor Hines assembles a cast of hundreds to discuss, dissect and diss the world of buff boys, chic thin, bears and all they hold dear – “If you want to sleep with the poster boy you have to look like the poster boy.” The stories of a number of gay men, both buff and not, are told, illustrating the roots, stress, addiction and consequences of body obsession. Chief among them is comedian and ever-present glitterati pundit Bruce Vilanch, whose trademark repartee masks myriad truisms about the emasculated queer, bulimia, steroids and the hunt for unattainable masculinity. If that sounds dry, fear not – Hines’ film counter-punches with plenty of eye candy and is fast-flowing, sometimes pithy and always – as befits a cockumentary about buff boys – thick with footage of every circuit party, shirtless rave, porn fliek and gym in the big ol’ US of A.
