June 18, 2015
Frameline Brings SF Cinematic Bliss
Kilian Melloy READ TIME: 10 MIN.
Frameline turns 39 this year, and the world's greatest LGBTQ film festival displays some brilliant new tricks in a program that is probably the most women- and transpeople-friendly ever. Below are some quick picks for the first week of a festival that runs June 18-28 at the Castro, Roxie and Victoria Theatres in San Francisco, and at the Elmwood and Piedmont Theatres in the East Bay.
Henry Gamble's Birthday Party doesn't waste any time getting down to the things that really matter to its pink-skinned, red-haired, slightly devious birthday boy, Henry (Cole Doman), about to turn 17. The very first words from Henry's lips as he lies next to hunky straight boy Greg (Joe Keery) demonstrate the wonderfully slutty mindset of this son of a freshly ordained pastor.
"How big is yours?"
"Soft or hard?"
"Hard."
"Oh, I don't know, the last time I checked it was, like, six inches, but that was, like, in early seventh grade, so it probably grew, it's like seven or probably eight."
"Do you want to measure it now?"
"I'm not hard."
"Oh."
"Are you?"
"No."
"How big are you?"
"Oh, like, six-and-a-half."
The opening six minutes, complete with a discreetly staged but very earnest jack-off, seductively embeds us into Henry's world. It's an everybody-knows-everybody's-business community of coastal Southern church folk who don't seem to suspect just how close the clean-cut birthday boy is to living out the urban homo fantasies promoted in XY magazine.
The Southern-raised writer/director Stephen Cone's delightfully frisky exploration of queer-trending New South church folks "The Wise Kids" (Frameline 36) won him a slew of liberal fans. Now he returns with an equally ecumenical dose of playful antics. "Henry Gamble's Birthday Party" offers randy kids around a backyard pool with easy access to boxes of wine. It promises to be one of the most uninhibited 87 minutes at Frameline 39.
I Am Michael We get another odd glimpse of gays and church folks flirting with a highly improbable harmonic convergence in director Justin Kelly's festival-opening drama. James Franco stars as a famous queer-youth magazine publisher who shocks his friends and readers by rejecting his devoted boyfriend and his life's work to take up Bible study and the life of a happily hetero-married small-town pastor. Kelly and Franco strive mightily to soften our hostility to a real-life character whose "moment of truth" represents a symbolic and hurtful slap in the faces of an army of devoted activists.
To a once-big-time fan of XY magazine, "I Am Michael" was simultaneously fascinating and hard to watch. It's a kind of parallel universe to the lives and careers many of us have pursued, with the climax as a kind of train wreck in which a difficult-to-understand individual walks into a new life that's usually depicted in queer film as black comedy or derisive satire. (Castro, Opening Night, 6/18)
The Summer of Sangaile Lithuanian director Alante Kavaite manages in 84 breathless minutes to give us a richly poetic visual timeline of a teen girl's battle to overcome her deepest fears and go for the best that is in her. At 17, Sangaile is at times little more than a jagged bundle of nerve-endings. It's when Sangaile meets an older, more adventurous young woman, Auste, that life starts to make dangerous sense. In the course of a truly magical summer, the girls touch everything in each other and in their small world - the local airfield, the massive electrical towers feeding the grid, Sangaile's posh home, Auste's richly decorated, modest apartment. They risk their bodies, their friendship, and their futures to overcome a fear of flying dangerously high. Director Kavaite juxtaposes Sangaile's impulsive cutting her arms with her breakthrough moments tumbling through the air in a small plane that seems so close to crashing.
Like all great cinema experiments, "The Summer of Sangaile" reminds us of other masterworks: Brewster's bid to fly within the Houston Astrodome in Robert Altman's towering Brewster McCloud, and early stabs at film poetry from Texan dierctor Richard Linklater such as the incendiary "Dazed and Confused." (Castro, 6/23)
Summer Nights French director Mario Fanfani ponders the double life led by a seemingly staid bureaucrat in the provincial city of Alsace. The year is 1959, and France is embroiled in a bitter war against Algerian guerrillas, while on weekends Michel is living large as a transvestite artist in an underground club. Michel's glorious transition into his psychic double, the refined bourgeois lady Mylene, says a lot about the sexual, gender and identity wars that have roiled the Western world for the past century. As the West stripped itself of colonies, it also started confronting religious and imperial barriers to new definitions of liberty, fraternity and equality.
Michel/Mylene is given a delicious dual spin by the agile French actor Guillaume de Tonquedec in a performance that for some may recall the transgressive MC in Cabaret. (Castro, 6/24)
Fun in Boys Shorts This "appointment TV"-worthy gay male shorts program returns with 80 minutes of quick strokes, some of which assume a kind of New Yorker cartoon wit and spot-on gotcha wit.
Fun in Girls Shorts The girls get their "really big show" in this 87-minute, deli-like sample plate of lesbian humor.
That's Not Us William Sullivan directs this Fire Island-set improvisational couples comedy, constructed from the scripts the three couples created to show how tough it is to keep romance alive, no matter how attractive your partner might be. (Castro, 6/21)
Those People Director Joey Kuhn zeroes in on a combustible male erotic trio, inviting comparisons to the characters and privileged environs of Evelyn Waugh. (Castro, 6/19)
In the Grayscale Chilean director Claudio Marcone draws us into the early mid-life crisis of a Santiago architect when he leaves his hetero marriage for a fling with a male tour guide. (Victoria, 6/23/; Castro, 6/28)
A Woman Like Me No filmmaker expects that her last work, perhaps her most vital, will be an empathetic portrait of her own death from breast cancer. Alex Sichel begins her report to us before we glimpse her face with a piece of Buddhist mediation on death. "The point is, we're all going to die. It sounds so obvious, but that's the point that I won't accept. Somehow I'm going to be the exception. It's crazy!" Completed by sister filmmaker Elizabeth Giamatti, "A Woman Like Me" speaks to mortal beings across the universe. (Roxie, 6/20)
The Royal Road Jenni Olson's evocative film poem to California's most fabulous highway, the 600-mile-long El Camino Real, begins where all good films about film should, by quoting the master Billy Wilder from his 1950 masterwork Sunset Blvd. The image of William Holden's character floating upside-down and very dead in Gloria Swanson's mad character's swimming pool is too good to improve on, and so far nobody has. But Olson makes a very imaginative and tres literary stab by beginning her journey with the chapter heading, (1) "My Hollywood Love Story." Yes, friends, we all have them, and Olson's don't disappoint.
Many moons ago it took me four hours to complete the drive from an East San Jose radio station to my Castro-area flat. I was working on a radio doc on the slain San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk. I was so exhausted I had to pull over every 30 minutes for a quick cat nap in my news car. Imagine my pleasure when Olson's "The Royal Road" proves a speedy delight, without rest stops or sleepy moments. (Castro, 6/19; Elmwood, 6/22)
How to Win at Checkers (Every Time) Thai director Josh Kim explores the impact his country's military draft lottery has on one working-class family. (Castro, 6/20)
All About E Australian director Louise Wadley builds her feature around the life of a top Sydney club DJ. (Castro, 6/22; Piedmont, 6/24)
Alto Mikki del Monico's debut feature has a uniquely queer-friendly angle on a New York mob-family tale. (Roxie, 6/23)
Beautiful Something Joseph Graham offers multiple takes on Philadelphia boys in love. "Beautiful Something" becomes a night in the lives of gay characters of all ages, with time flashbacks that resemble those in the Gus Van Sant classic "Elephant." (Castro, 6/22)
Portrait of a Serial Monogamist Canadians Christine Zeidler & John Mitchell explore Toronto's lesbian scene from the perspective of a high-voltage TV producer who enters each affairette with a pre-written breakup speech. (Victoria, 6/20; Roxie, 6/27)
Seashore Brazilians Filipe Matzembacher & Marcio Reolon follow the plight of teen boys Martin & Tomaz when the death of Martin's grandfather initiates an exploration of their huge country and the boundaries of their friendship. Hitting a roadside rest stop, the boys engage in some frisky horsing around, with accompanying salty language.
"You're not running away!"
"Get off!"
"Faggot!"
"Animal."
"Animal? Don't you know how to curse? Silly."
"Stinky."
"Sour dick."
"Hairy butt."
The talk soon turns to miniature golf, with all the infantile/teen slang of getting it in the right hole in the fewest possible strokes. The fact that these very cute teen boys are rapping in Brazilian with is odd cadences adds juicy frisson to what could be a real festival hit. (Victoria, 6/21; Castro, 6/25)
Two 4 One Adam, a successful transitioning MTF transman, suddenly finds himself drawn back into his old life and old body when an ex-girlfriend, Miriam, asks him to help her get pregnant. Adam takes a very long walk off an unexpectedly short pier when the insemination process renders him pregnant at precisely the moment when his new male identity is about to be rewarded with an engineering job at a very macho-centered firm. Canadian Maureen Bradley covers the gender waterfront with this quirky comedy on transgender identity that's challenged by home-insemination baby-making. (Victoria, 6/20; Elmwood, 6/25)
After Love Austrian director Marc Jago presents a noir-influenced B&W love triangle involving revenge in the world of rent boys and call girls. (Roxie, 6/24)
Carmin Tropical "They say your actions and the past always return hand-in-hand. And I say it because having to come back and explain things I once did isn't among my priorities. I don't think anyone should be judged for their mistakes, especially when you're not old enough, or are too inexperienced to understand something called life."
Rigoberto Perezcano directs one of the festival's darkest dramas, about the murder of the central character Mabel's best friend. This exciting mixed-genre fiction piece revolves around the life and feelings of Mabel, a Mexican transwoman. (Roxie, 6/19)
Floating! The story kicks off with two German lesbians, Jana & Katha, in bed discussing which of them is to be inseminated to produce their desired bundle of joy. Before you can blink, Katha has been abducted by friends and co-workers to a lake resort, where she meets Momo, their potential male sperm donor. Uncomfortable with this - Katha wants to raise the kid in a brave new world where there are no male daddies - Katha soon finds herself intoxicated on good wine and surprisingly drawn to an old male flame. Director Julia C. Kaiser explores the semi-comic crises that bedevil this "perfect" lesbian couple on the verge of marriage and childbirth. (Roxie, 6/21)
Liz in September "Death is God's greatest betrayal!" This portentous catchphrase whirls through the mind of Eva as she drives from Caracas to join her husband and son for a summer vacation retreat. Car troubles intervene, and the kindly gas station/repair guy directs Eva to stay with a feisty group of lesbians while he puts her car up on the rack. Venezuelan director Fina Torres updates Last Summer at Bluefish Cove for a Caribbean cluster of friends. Liz is the one unattached girl at what promises to be a party-down affair. (Castro, 6/19; Piedmont, 6/22)
Guidance Canadian director Pat Mills' feature-film debut observes the pratfalls of a former child star, David Gold, as he assumes the identity of a high school guidance counselor named Roland Brown. This droll satire builds on the firm premise that English Canada itself is an absurd domain. In the opening scene we observe our hero recording a commercial on self-esteem for straight women in a seedy studio. David's take is interrupted by the engineer.
"David, cut, cut. David, are you drunk again?"
"No, I just had a little drink at lunch."
"It's 9:30 in the morning."
"So? I don't judge when you eat lunch."
"Okay, I was going to wait until after the session to tell you this, but apparently our female customers would like the voice of a heterosexual man feeding them their affirmations!"
"Excuse me?"
"Think about it. These women want a straight man to tell them how to love themselves."
"I'm not gay, I just have a gentle voice."
"David, you're gay. Accept yourself as you are, and all your problems will disappear."
"I don't have any problems. I don't have a drinking problem."
"And your denial problem."
"I've never liked working with you."
"Okay, you're fired!"
A character who bottoms out in the first two minutes of a dark comedy is worth sticking to for the whole nutty 80-minute ride. Anyone who hires this guy as an example for the youth deserves everything they get. Rated H for hilarious homo satire. (Castro, 6/23)
Jason and Shirley Stephen Winter dramatizes the tensions behind the scenes of a '60s cinema verite classic. In 1967, Shirley Clarke scandalized and excited New York's underground cinema buffs with Portrait of Jason, an Oscar-winning provocation based on 12 hours of interviews with a queer African American. Jason Holliday appeared to lay it all out for the Jewish woman director: a lifestyle fueled by booze, pills and outsized ambitions. With a cast headed up by Bryan Webster and Sarah Schulman, Winter attempts to demythologize the grand act of mutual manipulation. (Victoria, 6/23)
Kilian Melloy serves as EDGE Media Network's Associate Arts Editor and Staff Contributor. His professional memberships include the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association, the Boston Online Film Critics Association, The Gay and Lesbian Entertainment Critics Association, and the Boston Theater Critics Association's Elliot Norton Awards Committee.
