Out Twin Cities Film Fest Welcomes Queer Cinephiles at Saint Anthony Main

Elite members of the film world may have been rubbing elbows at the globe’s most prominent film festival in Cannes as recently as last week, but for filmmaker Chris Durant and his team of volunteers, the only film festival that truly matters right now is being held not an ocean’s length away, but within our collective backyard.

Today, Durant and his crew open the doors of Minneapolis’ Saint Anthony Main Theater to present the Second Annual Out Twin Cities Film Fest.  The only film festival in the Twin Cities area committed overtly to offering a platform for local and international LGBTQ filmmakers, last year’s inaugural screening of the OTCFF was best characterized by its modest selection of films, screened within the intimate confines of the historic Heights Theater.  With a larger venue and a greater volume of submissions and volunteer support, however, attendees can anticipate a far more ambitious effort in this Festival’s sophomore year.

“There are four days this year whereas [last year’s Fest] only had two,” says Durant, who is serving his second year as Festival Director.  In all, this year’s Fest has scheduled ten features, over a dozen short films and four music videos to be screened throughout the four days.  Of those submissions, Durant laments that only seven titles come from Minnesota filmmakers.  “This is either because not many local queer filmmakers are aware of the festival,” Durant explains, “or not many films were made this year.” Durant elaborates that maintaining the tone and the quality of the Fest also required the preclusion of a few local submissions.

The OTCFF additionally will offer platforms for several filmmakers to speak to Festival attendees.  Slated to speak Saturday evening is adult filmmaker Buck Angel.  Director Mike Skiff is also scheduled to make an appearance; he will host a Q&A following the screening of his film Kink Crusaders.  Attendees who hold out to the Festival’s final day will be treated to a screenwriting workshop, led by Au Pair, Kansas writer/director JT O’Neal.  Au Pair, Kansas is set to close the festival following O’Neal’s workshop.

Last year, the Film Fest was notable for showcasing a great deal more than just movies, and this year should be no different.  “This year’s festival is truly about community and ‘Making It Better,’” Says Durant, referencing the theme to this year’s OTCFF, itself an obvious play on the “It gets Getter” mantra that many in the community have supportively embraced.

Indeed, if the announced lineup for this year is any indicator, OTCFF 2011 appears as resolute in its commitment to the progress made in the Twin Cities LGBTQ community outside of the cinema as it is committed to the filmmakers being showcased.  Scheduled at tonight’s opening, which is free to the public, is a screening of the Bill Brummell and Geoffrey Sharp timely film Bullied.  The film will be bookended by the announcement of the Rainbow Health Initiative Photo Contest winners and a tribute to the family of Justin Aaberg, who killed himself last fall due to homophobic bullying at school.

The Film Festival will also offer a platform to Minnesota State Rep. Steve Simon, famous most recently for his memorable quip in opposition to Minnesota’s Marriage Amendment.

Holding a sophomore film festival with this kind of scope and ambition is sure to cause as many obstacles as it does opportunities.  Durant concedes the journey to realizing this year’s festival has not been easy, with challenges ranging anywhere from obtaining sponsors to finding out how best to utilize the talents of a much larger body of volunteers.  But Durant remains optimistic about the quality of films he and his team have lined up for this year’s attendees.  “We have sought out a wide array of amazing films and events to make this festival provocative and diverse.”

Will the Second Annual Out Twin Cities Film Fest make good on its goal of “Making it Better” through community and through cinema?  We will have to see what this weekend has to offer.

The Out Twin Cities Film Festival will be playing at the Saint Anthony Main Theater from June 2 and June 5.  The Official Event Schedule is available here.

For more information on the Out Twin Cities Film Festival and to purchase tickets, visit the Festival’s official web site.

Movies of 2010: The Year in Queer

I am having a really hard time deciding if 2010 was a great year for queer characters in movies or if it was a typically dismal year.  On one hand, I cannot remember the last time queer characters seemed so prolific; of the near-eighty movies I spent money to see, almost a quarter of them contained at least one distinctly non-hetero character.  On the other hand, most of these characters were white gay men.

Lesbians had their share of representation in the year’s most commercially popular LGBT-themed movie (The Kids are All Right), but many people rejected and problematized its characters.  Some documentaries (Stonewall Uprising) tried to bring important historical milestones to the limelight, but failed to bring anything new to the table.

And let’s not even talk about the prominently released movies featuring any bisexual or trans-identified characters or queer people of color, mostly because there were none.

However, if you looked hard enough in 2010 – and I mean really hard – you could find movies trying to represent other facets of the queer community.  They were out there, but they were hardly accessible.  Now that it is 2011 and many of last year’s movies are now easily available on Netflix, perhaps you can tell me whether or not it 2010 was a year worth remembering for queer folks.

I have compiled a list of some of 2010’s more noteworthy titles – good and bad – and have assessed exactly how “queer” they are, based both on how prominently queer characters are featured and on the sophistication of the filmmakers’ tackling of gender and sexual politics. Then, I awarded each movie with a ranking on my patented “Queer-O-Meter,” which ranks a film on a scale of 1 (Michele Bachmann) to 10 (Todd Haynes).

So, without further ado, let’s talk about some of 2010’s movies:

Black Swan (Dir. Darren Aronofsky)
What’s the Deal: The journey of an infantilized ballet dancer’s descent into madness as she allows her sanity to be consumed by the lead role she takes in Swan Lake.
Is it any Good? Directed with the sort of raw, uninhibited brushstrokes you might see in a Jackson Pollock, Aronofsky’s latest is a ludicrous mixture of the horrifying and the downright silly.  Yet the approach – coupled with Natalie Portman’s incredible performance – adds an element of lunacy that is glorious, visceral and tragic.  It is the best film of the year.
Queer-o-Meter: 4. I fretted over the much-ballyhooed sex scene between Portman and her co-star Mila Kunis, as it very well could have encapsulated the male-fantasy cliché that overshadows most “lesbian” sex scenes in movies.  But their entanglement, while undoubtedly erotic, is really more about the transposition of Portman’s basest physical sensations to the lead role that ultimately dooms her.  The scene works, but not for the reasons you might believe.

Burlesque (Dir. Steve Antin)
What’s the Deal: An aspiring singer (Christina Aguliera) moves to L.A. and finds herself the lead performer at a neo-burlesque club, which happens to be run by a woman who looks an awful lot like Cher.
Is it any Good? Disappointingly middling, it’s certainly not the campy train-wreck I was hoping for.  I wanted the movie to be “Showgirls” bad, but it is far too earnest to be taken either seriously or with irony. Rewatch Cabaret to see this material done with some real passion.
Queer-o-Meter: 5. There are some sassy gay characters in this movie, and they are mostly left on the sidelines to say and do sassy gay things.  But Cher’s first screen appearance in years (she sings too!) is bound to make Burlesque worthwhile for some.

Chloë (Dir. Atom Egoyan)
What’s the Deal: Catherine (Julianne Moore), convinced her husband is cheating on her, hires a prostitute named Chloe (Amanda Seyfried) to seduce him and subsequently recount their sexual escapades.  Catherine is surprised to find herself both repelled to hear these stories as well as aroused.
Is it any Good? I’m no film historian, but something tells me that when you make an erotic thriller, it’s probably best to ensure your movie actually contains erotic elements. The story is plagued with red herrings and Seyfried posed a more threatening screen presence in Mama Mia! than she does here.
Queer-o-Meter: 6. Moore’s increased sexual awakening in light of her husband’s infidelity results in her sharing with Seyfried the movie’s steamiest sex scene.  It’s a shame we are almost asleep by the time the movie reaches that point

Easy A (Dir. Will Gluck)
What’s the Deal: A high-school student takes payment from her male classmates, agreeing to say she had sex with them.  Unsurprisingly, her reputation at the school quickly turns sour, branding her as a social pariah.
Is it any Good? You can’t fault a movie like this for its ambition; it touches on teenage sexuality, the hypocrisy of those extolling “moral values,” and the importance of family and community when talking about sex.  If the movie handles all this material a bit clumsily at times, I can forgive it thanks to Emma Stone’s terrific lead performance.
Queer-o-Meter: 8. Based loosely – with considerable self-awareness – on The Scarlet Letter, there are not too many PG-13 movies out there dealing with sexuality so frankly and honestly.  Some gay characters are featured, but Easy A more broadly touches on how easily our bodies, when perceived as instruments of sexuality, are policed by forces who would rather restrict our erotic expression.  Mainstream movies with this kind of truth are true rarities.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Dir. Niels Arden Oplev)
What’s the Deal: Based on the Stieg Larsson über-hit, the movie follows a soon-to-be incarcerated journalist spending his remaining days of freedom to investigate the years-old disappearance of a wealthy Swedish entrepreneur’s niece.  He gets help from a mysterious computer hacker named Lisbeth Salander.
Is it any Good? Much of the pleasure to be had from this movie is its pulpy, sinewy approach to the police procedural.  Pulpy and unapologetically brutal at times, this Swedish film is as much fun as any other Hollywood flick you were likely to see last year.  The sequels are not as great, but they have a terrific character at the center.
Queer-o-Meter: 9. Lisbeth Salander, as played by Noomi Rapace, is quite simply one of the most fascinating movie characters in recent memory.  So much of her identity manages to transcend the labels we use in life to compartmentalize others.  Lisbeth is also an ideological force of nature, taking her own feminist brand of revenge on the villains and misogynists who see her as less than nothing.

I Killed My Mother (Dir. Xavier Dolan)
What’s the Deal: A semi-autobiographical tale of a gay teenage boy as he deals with the chaotic relationship he has with his mother.
Is it any Good? Think of it as some kind of cross between The 400 Blows and Mommie Dearest.  I swear I mean that as a compliment.  The tumult between mother and son in this movie can be a touch overblown at times, but the 20-year-old Dolan’s eye is impeccable.  Practically every frame of this festival hit is breathtaking.
Queer-o-Meter: 9. The imagery of Almodòvar clearly inspires Dolan in this movie.  I also love the thin veil the son uses to mask his sexuality from his mother.  When he is finally outed, the truth shocks his mother.  But we truly wonder whether her ignorance is a result of being shut out, or if she never really bothered to reach out to her son at all.

I Love You Phillip Morris (Dir. Glenn Ficarra and John Requa )
What’s the Deal: Based on the true story of Steven Russell (Jim Carrey), a man who comes out to his family as gay, follows the life of a con-man in order to maintain both his affluent lifestyle and his relationship with the love of his life, the titular Phillip Morris (Ewan McGregor).
Is it any Good? Dark, but never mean-spirited, there is an undeniable sweetness at the core of this movie.  As often as Steven’s criminal acts appalled me, his romance with Phillip is quite moving.  This movie works because this central love feels so right.
Queer-o-Meter: 7. When rationalizing his life as a con-man, Steven asserts that “being gay is expensive!”  Such a generalization might have irritated me, but such stereotypes are oddly fitting in the pitch-black comedy of Phillip Morris.  The movie’s final con, rather brilliantly staged, counts on the internalized homophobia of an entire criminal punishment system in order to work.  Commentary on heterosexism in film is rarely pulled off so subversively.

Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work (Dir. Ricki Stern and Anne Sundberg)
What’s the Deal: A year in the life of the 75-year-old comic legend as she moves from job to job in order to maintain her lifestyle and her relevance in popular culture.
Is it any Good? If you have money, Joan Rivers will whore out her talents for you.  She does not think that is a bad thing, and I ‘m not sure I do either.  Her journey in this documentary is terrifically compelling, and she earns through her work ethic an entirely new level of respect from me.
Queer-o-Meter: 4. Joan has been a gay icon for years and years, and she loves her gays right back.

The Kids are All Right (Dir. Lisa Cholodenko)
What’s the Deal: Two children track down the man who provided sperm for their two lesbian parents twenty years ago.  The biological father (Mark Ruffalo) begins a relationship with the kids, much to the moms’ chagrin.
Is it any Good? You might expect to find a plot like this in a second-rate sitcom, but Cholodenko and her cast do wonders with the magnificent people they create.  The characters, at once loving and flawed, are written and performed with enormous complexity.  There are no villains to be seen here, and no character comes out of the movie emotionally unscathed.
Queer-o-Meter: 3. This is a really tough call, because the central lesbian relationship here is about as white-bread heteronormative as you can get.  That’s caused a lot of progressive critics to laud the film’s “gays are just like us” sexual politics, but it’s also caught a great deal of flack from queer groups for celebrating what they see as the movie portraying same-sex couples as almost offensively inoffensive.  That argument is valid, but I think for it to hold water the case would need to be made that the movie celebrates its own whiteness and ostensible non-queerness.  I would counter, given the painful journey these characters ultimately take, that the movie is a deceptively nuanced critique of those same values Cholodenko’s critics blast her for apparently promoting.

La Mission (Dir. Peter Bratt)
What’s the Deal: Set in San Fransisco’s Mission District, a traditional, latino widower reacts angrily upon learning his son is gay.
Is it any Good? The film sheds light on a community rarely given any attention in the movies, and the world Bratt creates feels truly lived-in.  Unfortunately, he handles the coming-out story with less elegance; the dialog in those scenes feels as if it was pulled directly from a “Coming Out to Your Family” pamphlet.
Queer-o-Meter: 7. Maybe a viable market for movies like La Mission has not yet been defined, or maybe I simply did not peruse the theater listings rigorously enough.  Regardless, I am dismayed that this is the only film on my list featuring queer people of color. Perhaps that is what makes the perspective taken in La Mission more refreshing than it should be.  I appreciated seeing the issue of coming out tackled in a non-white setting, and the deconstruction of the father’s masculinity and homophobia feels genuine.

Patrik, Age 1.5 (Dir. Ella Lemhagen)
What’s the Deal: A happy gay couple eagerly awaits the arrival of their new adopted son, but a clerical error results in their unwitting agreement to adopt a homophobic fifteen year old boy.
Is it any Good? Like The Kids are All Right, the plot behind Patrik feels lifted from the most hackneyed sitcom.  Unlike Kids, Patrik never transcends its plot contrivances to establish characters worth our investment.  Every emotion, every lesson and every tear feels like a cog in a machine meant solely to get the characters to the happy ending the writers always intended.
Queer-o-Meter: 3. The movie’s message, above all else, affirms the notion that gay couples are capable of doing everything straight couples can do.  Nothing about Patrik’s sexual politics feels radical, but the movie does score some points for exploring the underlying conflict between the two dads honestly.  How the movie actually chooses to resolve those conflicts is a completely different discussion.

Prodigal Sons (Dir. Kimberly Reed)

What’s the Deal: An autobiographical documentary from transgender filmmaker Kimberly Reed, who returns to her hometown with her new identity.  Reed also follows her mentally unstable adopted brother, who learns his grandparents are Rita Hayworth and Orson Welles.
Is it any Good? Quite.  The film may be an autobiography, but it is hardly a vanity project.  Reed trudges deeply into her family’s painful history and she comes out no less transformed by the experience than any of her other family members.  It’s a tough sit, but it’s a redeeming one.
Queer-o-Meter: 8. Working with her brother, who still loves her as much as he challenges her, Reed ultimately realizes that while she spent her entire adult life reclaiming her identity, her past remains a part of her that cannot be forgotten.  You will not find a more personal story of a queer protagonist this year.

The Runaways (Dir. Floria Sigismondi)
What’s the Deal: A biopic of the all-girl teenage rock group the Runaways, centered principally around Cherie Currie (Dakota Fanning) and Joan Jett (Kristen Stewart).
Is it any Good? If you have seen one musical biopic, you really have seen them all.  But you aren’t likely to have seen one shot quite like The Runaways.  Sigismondi’s music-video style of filmmaking actually lifts this somewhat dry material, giving it a distinctive look all its own.  Stewart and Fanning are also particularly well-cast in the lead roles.
Queer-o-Meter: 9. There is a lot of girl-on-girl action to be had from the two leads, whose relationship defies any sort of easy explanation.  I appreciated the near-ancillary approach to their sexual bond, as it feels consistent with the cultural revolution the Runaways were hoping to incite as a group.

Sex and the City 2 (Dir. Michael Patrick King)
What’s the Deal: Do you really need me to tell you?
Is it any Good? A third-grader’s diorama would be more successful in recapturing the spirit of the TV show than this movie is.  This franchise is almost unrecognizable at this point; a shallow, insufferable love-letter to consumerism and ethnocentrism.
Queer-o-Meter: 2. SatC2 opens with a gay wedding, and we get to see some of the show’s peripheral gay characters.  It’s a nice gesture, but it cannot obscure the fact that Michael Patrick King actually gave a very uncomfortable-looking Liza Minelli a cameo, forcing her to bellow out not a showtune, but Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies.”  Hasn’t Liza been through enough?!

Scott Pilgrim Versus the World (Dir. Edgar Wright)
What’s the Deal: Scott Pilgrim falls in love with the enchanting Ramona, but in order to win her heart, he must defeat her seven evil exes.  Note I did not say “seven evil ex-boyfriends.”
Is it any Good? Very good.  Wright, who directed Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, is a true master of genre deconstruction, and his talents are beautifully suited to this material.  The film feels like a video game in the best possible way, and its ode to geek culture is as affectionate as it is accurate.  If a better screenwriter was around to flesh out the romantic leads, this movie might have been great.
Queer-o-Meter: 8. One of Ramona’s seven evil exes also happens to be her evil ex-girlfriend.  She comes and goes just like every other boss battle in this movie, but the movie’s strongest supporting performance comes from Kieran Culkin as Wallace, Scott’s gay roommate.  Unafraid to express himself sexually, Wallace changes boyfriends more frequently than he changes socks.  His character is a far cry from the cartoonishly effeminate sexual eunuchs passing for gay best friends in most Hollywood flicks.

Stonewall Uprising (Dir. Kate Davis and David Heilbroner)
What’s the Deal: A painstaking recount of the raid that inspired the legendary Stonewall Riots, as told by those who were actually there: drag queens, barflies, bystanders and even some police officers who participated in the raid.
Is it any Good? Years from now, when schools will finally allow the likes of Harvey Milk and the LGBT rights movement to be considered a part of American history, Stonewall Uprising will make for a terrific historical chronicle.  For those of us who already know the story, however, the movie offers nothing new.
Queer-o-Meter: 5. This watershed moment in queer liberation is portrayed in an entirely positive light, but there is nothing in the filmmaking here that brings any interesting context to the queer liberation movement we are a part of today.

Review: Absurd Plotting Stalls Swedish Gay Comedy

For the very concept of Ella Lemhagen’s Patrik, Age 1.5 to work, you must be generous in your assessment of the main characters’ intelligence.  The Swedish film, which will be playing at Minneapolis’ Lagoon Cinema for the remainder of the week, relies on a pivotal yet entirely obvious plot twist so early in its running time that failure to buy into the script’s logic will at best prove a minor irritation in an otherwise well-intentioned family dramedy or at worst pull you out of the film entirely.  For me, the latter occurred.

Göran and Sven are a committed, loving gay couple who move into a small neighborhood filled with the kind of conservative, smug carbon copies that have been occupying the suburbs since Richard Yates’ 1961 novel Revolutionary Road.  Göran is a physician who is moving his practice into town and apparently the driving force behind the couple’s quest for white-picket marital harmony.  Sven brings a bit more reluctance and emotional baggage to this marriage.  He was once married to a woman, has a non-relationship to his daughter, and struggles with drinking and smoking.

Sven and Göran are eager to expand their family, with the movie starting right after the prospective Dads are deemed eligible for adoption.   But with no countries actually willing to offer their children to a homosexual couple, their options grow desperately slim.  When Göran finally receives a letter containing a profile of one “Patrik, age 1.5,” they are eager to accept despite warnings that their son-to-be comes from a troubled family.  To their surprise and dismay, a much older boy also named Patrik finds his way on the dads’ doorstep (conspicuously absent is a social worker to accompany the kid).

Convinced the adoption agency sent them the wrong Patrik, they set out to resolve the mix-up right away.  Adoption officials eventually reveal a clerical error had been made, and Patrik’s profile ought to gave read “Patrik, Age 15.”  Rather than subject him to an indefinite period in government-run foster care, Göran agrees to take in Patrik until another, more accommodating family might be found for him.  Given Patrik’s juvenile record, this news comes much to Sven’s chagrin and ultimately jeopardizes what was once a happy marriage.

What makes the premise behind Patrik, Age 1.5 so difficult to swallow is that at no point do Sven and Göran so much as entertain the most feasible – and actual – explanation behind the adoption Agency’s mix-up.  Perhaps it was fervent denial that inspired the dads’ inability to connect the dots.  Maybe it was sheer stupidity; I am not positive.  What I do know, however, is how transparently Lumgarden (who also wrote the screenplay) intended the future dads’ incredulity to trigger the script’s progression from one milestone to the next, and not vice-versa.

That decision to acquiesce character development for the sake of plot progression continues throughout the movie’s duration, and that is what ultimately robs Patrik, Age 1.5 of its ability to incite laughs and jerk tears with any kind of emotional authenticity.  We are told about Patrik’s “troubled past” and Sven’s reluctance to embrace fatherhood again.  But we are only given such notions, really, because the dialog tells us how to feel.  Apart from resorting to cheap metaphor (the allegedly sober and decidedly unhappy Sven’s late-night escapades to enjoy a drink and a smoke) or utter contrivance (a conveniently placed child video-monitor always manages to capture exactly what Patrik is feeling throughout the movie), very little in the script or the performances give a visceral sense of who these characters are.

It’s really a shame Patrik did not do enough to flesh out its characters.  Some of the ideas presented have a genuine sweetness at their core, and there are points where characters come to the verge of finding closure with a truly bittersweet honesty.  Too eager to wrap up on an unambiguously joyous note, however, the movie rewrites its characters’ motivations in order to attain the kind of happily ever after treacle usually reserved for most American romantic comedies.

Unlike the two moms in the funnier and more moving The Kids are All Right, the characters have no real sense of control or accountability for the decisions they make in light of their circumstances.  With Patrik, every action and reaction from the characters feels predetermined, ostensibly written, and disappointingly tepid.

Review: Movie About Two Moms is Better Than All Right

A great deal of fuss has already been made of Lisa Cholodenko’s lesbian family dramedy The Kids are All Right.  Setting precedent as arguably the most pedigreed American film to feature queer women who don’t wield ice picks or set Manderlay ablaze in a jealous fit of rage, this Sundance hit has piqued the interest – as well as scrutiny – of queer audiences who hope finally to see their lives reflected substantially in a major motion picture.  Whether or not the movie succeeds in giving audiences a socially responsible portrayal of a happy, healthy homo family could be debated extensively, but apparent cultural baggage is easily the movie’s least interesting point of discussion.  What make The Kids are All Right a truly compelling work are its thematically complex narrative, its beautifully written characters, and the intelligent performers who orchestrate the material with delicacy, empathy, and wit.

The performers in question are led by Julianne Moore and Annette Bening, who respectively play Jules and Nic, a long-married couple living in an impeccably-kept home with their two children.  Jules and Nic, whose mutual love is never in question, grapple with issues bound to occur after twenty years of marital bliss; the sex is not as thrilling as it once was, their fundamental perspectives on parenting have diverged, and as their children move increasingly close to adulthood the alarming notion of the empty nest looms overhead.  Both women have their own midlife coping mechanisms:  Jules has recently begun her own landscaping company and Nic indulges herself with more glasses of wine than she probably needs.

The titular kids here include Joni (Mia Wasikowska), the moms’ studious and college-bound daughter, and Laser (Josh Hutcherson), a teenage boy whose antics with his ill-behaved best friend – drug-using, Jackass-worthy skateboard stunts – embody the classic perception of awkward teenage boneheadedness.  With Joni turning 18, Laser increasingly pressures his big sister to take advantage of one of her unique new adult privileges: to determine the identity of their mothers’ sperm donor.  Joni relents, and she finally tracks down their biological father Paul (Mark Ruffalo), an amicable albeit id-driven restaurant owner with minimal responsibilities and seemingly little desire grow up.  Eventually, Paul makes a connection with the recently-acquainted fruit of his loins, and their budding relationship adds a new, alien complexity to Jules and Nic’s family dynamic.

Though The Kids are All Right ultimately moved me, I cannot say I was enamored right away.  Perhaps due to the aforementioned cultural baggage, there exists an impulse on Cholodenko’s part to portray this unconventional family and their problems as utterly conventional.  This impulse makes for some rather labored exposition, the brunt of which happens in the movie’s first dinner table sequence.  Cholodenko and her co-writer Stuart Blumberg scribe just the perfect exchanges and banter to inform you exactly who these characters are and how they tick.  It is a moment of such precise button-pushing that I began to worry The Kids might in the end have little else to offer but manipulation and maudlin sentiment.

But Chodolenko eventually entrusts the actors with her characters, and they are the ones who truly give the movie its potency.  The way they carry each line tells more about the characters and their history than any amount of wobbly exposition possibly could.  Indeed, there is not a weak performance in the bunch.  As the familial interloper, Ruffalo’s Paul is an entirely genial presence, and even if the film ultimately works out of his favor, at no point is he dismissed as the film’s antagonist.  The film’s young performers nail their roles as well, and work quite effectively as the film’s moral center.  Wasikowska – whom we last saw playing Alice in the most recent Tim Burton debacle – is as sharp as the character she plays, and Hutcherson adds emotional resonance to the movie’s most underwritten role.

As great as the supporting cast is, however, the true standouts are the moms.  Bening feels like she is playing a more nuanced variation of the driven woman she developed for American Beauty, and Moore further establishes herself as queer filmmakers’ most powerful ally in the acting world (see The Hours, Far from Heaven, and A Single Man for further evidence).  There is an important moment relatively early in the movie – where Nic and Jules, over lunch, recount the day they met – that beautifully exemplifies the two actresses’ chemistry.  Their story is told with a perfectly recited cadence and feels lovingly rehearsed, as if the couple had spent the previous twenty years determining exactly how it ought to be told.  Lesser actors would have treated this as throwaway banter.  Bening and Moore find a layer of texture I am not sure the writers ever perceived.

It is exchanges like the lunch sequence that bring The Kids are All Right its sense of purpose.  It is less about the ideas it presents than it is about the characters and the world they have made for themselves.  All five principle characters feel truly and painfully real, neither explicitly demanding our sympathy nor imploring us to take sides in their conflicts.  That’s quite a feat, taking into account how each character at some point commits a selfish and hurtful act against somebody else.  Perhaps this is why the lack of resolution and general messiness of the admittedly hopeful denouement feel perfectly suited to the story that preceded it.  I truly believe that one day Jules and Nic will come to terms with all the problems they face in this story.  But it will take a lot more than a 100-minute movie for them to find out where they stand.

Thank goodness the actors and filmmakers chose not to compartmentalize their characters and the issues they face; their sense of warmth and empathy has resulted in one of the year’s best films so far, queer-themed or otherwise.

Review: Stonewall Doc Reflects (Poorly) on the Birth of a Movement

In the early hours of June 28, 1969 at the Stonewall Inn, an assortment of dandies, dykes, drag queens and other queers reached their breaking point, and something finally snapped.  As the New York police stormed the squalid innards of the Greenwich Village bar, some two hundred Stonewall patrons opted not to cooperate with authorities, and a routine raid quickly escalated into a full-on revolt that spilled over into the streets and arguably provided the jump-start needed to energize a movement now forty years in the making.  The rest, you might say, is history.

That is the history Kate Davis and David Helibroner recite in their new film Stonewall Uprising, a dutifully chronicled and somewhat perfunctory document of the outburst widely touted as the breakthrough moment for the modern LGBT social movement.   The film, which is currently enjoying a limited run at Minneapolis’ Lagoon Cinema for the next week, is probably best-suited for those not terribly familiar with the movement’s history.  For bone fide Friends of Dorothy already familiar with the historic event, it might feel like little more than an 80-minute drive down the rutted Yellow Brick Road of queer history.

Most would argue that to fully appreciate the significance of the Stonewall Riots, it should be made clear just how bad things were for gays and lesbians in New York.  Uprising spends almost half its running time familiarizing the audience with a queer subculture then growing in the slums of New York City, amidst constant police interference, an unsympathetic local government and a national media climate hell-bent on protecting society’s vulnerable from the dangers of the homosexual.  With rather effective bluntness, Davis and Helibroner pepper their doc with numerous grainy public service announcement excerpts and reflective interviews to affirm just how difficult life could be for a New York homo circa 1969.  The service announcements – uniformly branding the homosexual as the precursor for society’s degradation – are played for the absurdist chuckles of an audience that presumably knows better, but once they become juxtaposed against interviews from spectators and participants of the Stonewall Riot who were forced to endure such a climate, the reality and frustration start to settle in.

Eventually the movie begins recounting the riot itself, which is delineated through occasionally riveting interviews and faux archive footage and photographs created exclusively for the documentary.  The dramatized material did not completely work for me, though I do not hold it entirely against the filmmakers for this; the Stonewall Riot notoriously lacks substantial visual media sources and, to their credit, the directors are upfront with their decision to employ this “new” footage.  Still, other great documentaries – namely 2008’s Oscar-winning Man on Wire – put this technique to great use, and Davis and Helibroner fail to give these sequences any sort of visual distinction.  Ironically the transitions between staged and genuine footage were distracting in their seamlessness.  The directing team ought to have stuck with their talking head interviews to convey their narrative – sometimes telling can be more effective than showing.

More importantly, though, Uprising fails to do more than provide an easily-digestible retelling of the night’s events that wouldn’t be out of place in a high school classroom or on the History Chanel. I doubt I would be making a radical claim if I asserted that the LGBTQ rights movement has progressed far enough that a more polemic take on the riots would prove both for a more interesting argument and more challenging filmmaking.  Few out there – including me – would question the near-mythical significance of Stonewall as part of this movement.  But like most myths, they warrant deconstructing.  When witness justified the use of violent force toward the end of the movie, they insist “Sometimes in history, there is a place for violence.”  That may very well be true, but that is exactly the kind of loaded statement this documentary might have explored.  There are other questions the directors could have delved into.  What were other LGBT activists throughout the country doing to shape the movement?  Why is Stonewall not considered worthy of inclusion in a standard-issue history textbook in schools? Forty years removed from the event, have we as a movement and a people begun to lose sight of what all those rioting queens ultimately gave us?  Disappointingly, none of these questions seem to be of any interest to the filmmakers.

Even with the many missed opportunities, one moment in Uprising made the movie worth my (well, my boyfriend’s) well-earned cash.  One of the interviewees, a raiding NYPD officer, recalling how rioters had his team pinned down.  His story is essential; as he recounts the dread he experienced at the hands of his drag-donned assailants, we finally get a sense of a very real anger conveyed by a group of people who had finally reached point break.  The officer, whose interview provides the movie’s final moment, also gives the doc its most profound display of retrospective wisdom.  Reflecting on the job he was obligated to carry out, he laments, “they were breaking the law…but what kind of law was that anyway?”

Sex and the City 2: Our Review

Stealing a page from such revered epic masterpieces like The Godfather and The Deer Hunter, Sex and the City 2 kicks off with a wedding.  Is it too deplorable of me to have fantasized how this sequel might have further emulated those classics by mimicking their denouements as well?  I cannot be the only person to have shelled out $10 for this debacle to be remotely tickled by the idea of these horrid people reenacting Deer Hunter’s climactic Russian Roulette finale, can I?

I apologize for making such a mean-spirited digression before this review even begins, but that was by far the most interesting reaction I could muster from the equally mean-spirited Sex and the City 2, a droningly empty and singularly painful sequel to a 2008 movie I actually sort of dug .  But the movie is not actually bad for the same boring, sexism-and-ageism-fueled reasons you might have read in other reviews.  The unbridled sex talk is still there, and I am glad it is; if anything, more movies need women – particularly women some years removed from their twenties – talking so vividly about their sex life.  What makes SatC2 so truly deplorable is the contemptuous view it has for its audience.  It is a faux glam-kitschy, gloriously vapid and borderline anachronistic tribute to awful human beings who languish – without the slightest trace of irony – in lifestyles of masturbatory excess and single-minded materialistic fetishism, proceeding tacitly to scold the audience for having the gall not to be as wealthy or as beautiful as they are.

In spirit of the beloved half-hour program that preceded the movies, each character has her share of issues to face, many of which having been wreaked upon them as punishment for the simple crime of having too much money.  Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) worries about her already fizzling two-year marriage to Big (Chris Noth) after he requests a two-days-a-week sabbaticals from their marriage in their separate condo (in this crappy housing market, the tortured souls are forced to hold on to two homes).  Charlotte (Kristin Davis) feels threatened over the braless endowments of her bosomy Irish nanny.  Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) struggles with the banality of unemployment upon telling off her chauvinist boss and a pre-menopausal Samantha (Kim Cattrall) employs the power of countless hormones and meds to kindle that eternal fire nestled safely inside her loins.  It’s a true wonder that Bergman never thought to ponder the philosophical depths of these issues back in his heyday.

Needing some much-deserved escapism from their bourgeois purgatory, the girls opt to resolve their problems by doing what they do best: buy shit until their problems go away.  In a move that makes the Arthur Fonzarelli’s shark-jumping exploits feel like an exercise in Italian neorealism, Carrie and company inexplicably find themselves embarking on an all-expense paid sojourn to a luxury resort in Abu Dhabi.  To his credit, director Michael Patrick King – who might as well have titled this Sex and the Emirate – shoots the girls’ exotic new setting with a near-pornographic glee; the resort actually manages to boast more dynamic characterization than any of the four protagonists.

The city looks great, but then the movie arbitrarily decides it wants to make a statement on the oppression of women and sexuality at the behest of religious zealotry.  I do not doubt the noble intentions behind making such a bold statement, but I cannot help but question the sincerity of the filmmakers when the emotional climax of this proclamation involves a character furiously brandishing condoms in a city marketplace teeming with outraged bystanders – a scenario played entirely for laughs, I might add.  And so the dubious message SatC2 devolves into a half-hearted, lazy critique of non-western sexual politics that meanders dangerously into condescending territory.  King may just as well have shoehorned in scenes with the gals screaming “Hey!  Look how enlightened we are!”

I know what you are asking: what does Abu Dhabi have to do with any of the aforementioned conflicts for any of these girls?  I cannot answer that for you, but if you are worried about the problems introduced at the beginning of the movie not being resolved before the final credits roll, never you fear; each sub-plot is wrapped up with all the concision and ease of a Band-Aid application, supplying for us a neat little coda of happy endings having little to do with the travails these girls experienced in the 147 preceding minutes.  But I suppose that is not really a big deal – after all, who needs lessons and story arcs when there are clothes to be bought and shoes to be worn and oodles of privilege to be flaunted?

Movie Review: Prodigal Sons

Defining our identity is a lot trickier than we sometimes care to admit.  After going through so much to determine who we are – through coming out, transitioning, or even starting a family – the time it takes to discover oneself can never be finite, nor can it be punctuated with any sense of assurance or finality.  Identity is as connected to our past as it is to the events that are yet to befall us.  It is guided by what we know and thwarted by what we do not know, and it is kept alive by those who occupy our lives.

Or that at least seems to be what Kimberly Reed is saying in her film Prodigal Sons, an autobiographical documentary that tells the story of Reed and her brother grappling with the other’s identity, and consequently being challenged to reflect on their own.  It begins as a story about confronting the past and transforms organically into an unexpected new step forward in Reed’s coming-out process.  It is a consistently enthralling, occasionally unnerving, unencumbered and wholly unique – if not perfectly structured – piece of storytelling.

Kim is an openly transgender filmmaker who returns to her hometown in Montana some time after having transitioned into a woman.  She lived a relatively happy childhood growing up as “Paul,” despite knowing her body did not match who she was on the inside.  This reunion marks the first time in years she is to see her older brother Marc, to whom she has been estranged for a decade.  Marc leads a challenging life; he is adopted, he had less success in school than Kim, and suffered a debilitating car accident in his mid-twenties, resulting in debilitating mental and emotional issues beyond his control.  Marc, whose current life is practically defined by its lack of identity, latches to the happier days of his past to endure.  Needless to say this causes the primary rift between Marc and Kim, whose transition involved putting everything about her life as “Paul” behind her.

The shift Prodigal Sons makes from a family drama to a story of reclaiming identity is apparent roughly halfway through the movie, when Marc uncovers an astounding truth in his genealogy.  I will not give away the big reveal, but it is an remarkable twist to those who know nothing about the movie going in.  It is at once a giant step forward for Marc as some much-needed light is finally shed on his past.  Ironically, however, the reveal happens far too late in Marc’s life for him to do very much about it.  The limitations of his ability to respond in any way to these circumstances make life all the more frustrating for him.  Marc’s capacity to control his emotions spirals downward, and his emotional outbursts begin to take a more extreme and violent turn.

From the filmic sincerity with which she expresses her identity to the humility she employs when uncovering her family’s inner demons, Reed’s work as a documentarian (this is her first feature film) is gentle and nuanced.  It feels like Prodigal Sons was the story she had been born to tell, and she is surprisingly ambitious in the way she handles so many themes within a single text.  In fact, her ambitions are rather overwhelming for a movie boasting a mere 86-minute running time.  The parallels she constructs so successfully take a back seat once the film reaches its final act, and Reed seems less interested in delineating the way she and her brother reshape their identities than she is in extensively portraying Marc’s dramatic, violent meltdown.  It is a sloppy, self-indulgent choice on the director’s part, and it risks shifting the focus of the story from an intricate narrative to something unfittingly tawdry.

Despite the messy denouement, Reed still succeeds in formulating a riveting documentary about family and identity; it is as intensely personal as last year’s French doc Beaches of Agnès and is upsetting in a way akin to 2004’s devastating Tarnation.  Prodigal Sons may not come to any kind of neat and tidy finale for any of its characters, but its narrative feels appropriately conclusive.  Even as the end credits roll and you ask what kind of a future this family has in store, you realize you do not really need to know the answer.

Transgender Director Brings Craft to the Twin Cities

Quickly, off the top of your head, name your favorite feature-length movie helmed by a transgender-identified director.

If you are having trouble coming up with an answer, I doubt anybody will hold that against you; trans-directed titles are not exactly making a big splash at your local multiplex.  What makes it so great to be a queer cinephile in the Twin Cities, however, is every so often we are afforded the opportunity not only to hear some truly unique voices in the film world, but we get have the rare chance to give a much-needed boost to the filmmakers of our community.

Prodigal Sons, an autobiographical documentary by trans-identified director Kimberly Reed, makes its Twin Cities debut this week at Minneapolis’ St. Anthony Main Theater.  While explicitly marketing itself as a chronicle of Reed’s adopted brother Marc and his journey to discover the startling truth behind his lineage, the film perhaps more implicitly touts itself as one of the very few feature films by an openly transgender director to garner a semi-prominent national release schedule.

In the film’s press release Reed indicates that, despite efforts to keep the documentary focused on Marc’s story, the movie transformed organically into a story that was as much her own as it was Marc’s.  “I knew I’d end up in this film,” Reed says, “but I had no idea it would become the personal journey it did.”  Reed elaborates that the uniqueness of her film comes from “its exploration of the universal truths every family grapples with.”

Most moviegoers are probably too busy trying to pencil in some time to go see Avatar for their fiftieth time, but I sincerely hope I will not be the only one this week who gives Prodigal Sons a chance.  I have not seen the movie yet, though the premise has certainly piqued my interest.  Right now, however,  I am less concerned about the actual quality of the documentary than I am about the implications of forking over $8.50 to support a small film that probably has only a week or two to make any kind of a financial or cultural dent.

I may not know if Prodigal Sons will be any good, but I do know that once I purchase my ticket, the product of an artist’s painstaking work will have earned more than simply another $8.50.  Reed will also have earned the voice of at least one more audience member who can bring her film – regardless of how good it is – into the greater discussion of both documentary and queer cinema.  Just imagine the influence this kind of expanded discussion can have on the possibilities of future directors within our community.

When queer filmmakers are trying desperately to break into an industry that determines success through Return on Investment and box office receipts, the simple act of buying a ticket can mean everything.

Prodigal Sons is now playing at the St. Anthony Main Theater in Minneapolis.  Single tickets cost $8.50 apiece, but group discounts are available for larger parties.  Click here for this week’s showtimes.

The Column will be posting its review of Prodigal Sons later this week.

The Movies of 2009: A Year in Queer

We may live in a post-Brokeback America, but the truth is that Hollywood still does not really like us queers very much. Sure, a few movies that prominently feature queer protagonists pop up every once in a while – sometimes to considerable success, like last year’s Milk. However, most titles manage to evade wide distribution, due likely to middling reviews, the box office performance of previous queer films and the resulting fear of studio executives to take a risk on anything less than conventional.

2009, a year plagued by a faltering economy and the prominence of Beck/Palin wingnuttery, was no different. Many of the overtly “queer” movies released this year disappointed (Outrage), were denied a prominent release (A Single Man), or underperformed (Brüno). Still, finding queerdom in the cinema this year was not a completely lost cause.

While LGBT culture struggled this year for more visibility at the multiplex, queer sensibilities still snuck their way into a lot of mainstream films. Some movies featured overtly queer characters, while others offered queer-friendly deconstruction of social mores around sexuality and gender. Queer subtext was prevalent in the movies we saw; you just needed to look for it.

I have compiled a list of some of 2009’s more noteworthy titles – good and bad – and have assessed exactly how “queer” they are, based both on how prominently queer characters are featured and on the sophistication of the filmmakers’ tackling of politics of gender and sexual politics. Then, I awarded each movie with a ranking on my patent-pending “Queer-O-Meter,” which ranks a film on a scale of 1 (Michele Bachmann) to 10 (Todd Haynes).

So, without further ado, let’s talk about some of 2009’s movies:

Antichrist (Dir. Lars von Trier)
What’s the Deal: In the wake of their son’s death, a therapist brings his wife out to a remote cabin in the woods to treat her for her crippling depression. Together they uncover some terrifying and truly gruesome truths about themselves.
Is it any good? Depends on what your definition of “good” is. Charlotte Gainsbourg and Willem Dafoe (who are only known as “Man” and “Woman”) are terrific in the leads, but the script eventually transitions from a fascinating deconstruction of loss and depression to a bizarrely cynical exercise in self-torture. While some of it worked for me, there is no way I will ever see it again.
Queer-O-Meter: 6, though“queer” is the wrong word to describe Antichrist. From the mutual loathing between Man and Woman to some disturbing imagery that employs misogyny and horrifically graphic genital mutilation, the movie takes an aggressive step beyond the scope of simply challenging heteronormativity. It is – for lack of a better phrase – the strongest case against heterosexuality seen in the cinema all year.

Broken Embraces (Dir. Pedro Almodóvar)
What’s the Deal: The latest film from the beloved queer Spanish director, Broken Embraces,is basically a love letter to the cinema and the talents of Almodòvar’s muse, Penelope Cruz.
Is it any good? Almodóvar, who made Talk to Her, Bad Education, and Volver, has had a hell of a decade, but this is probably the least essential of his recent movies. Still, you cannot deny the sheer warmth and passion in the director’s technique. Penelope Cruz has never been more ravishing.
Queer-O-Meter: 4. Some queer characters make a lasting impression, but the daring exploration of sexual and gender taboos that define Almodòvar’s other flicks is relatively absent. Embraces is a movie made more for the cinéphile, telling a story where the movies become both an agent of joy and a tool of destruction.

Brüno (Dir. Larry Charles)
What’s the Deal: Sacha Baron Cohen’s follow-up to the absurdly popular Borat, Brüno tells the story of a gaudily faggy German fasionista looking to elevate himself to celebrity status in the United States.
Is it any good? It is clear that Baron Cohen had a harder time duping his subjects than he did in Borat. Brüno feels more written and considerably less spontaneous than its predecessor and, as funny as it can be, I continue to have a hard time defending the deceptive tactics of team Charles/Cohen.
Queer-O-Meter: 9. Featuring talking penises, kinkier-than-kink sex, and a mechanically accurate scene involving fellatio and the ghost of Rob Pilatus, Brüno’s greatest success is its ability to deconstruct stereotypes and to push a (presumably) hetero audience well beyond its zone of comfort. GLAAD’s assessment of this movie’s potential harm to the LGBT social movement couldn’t have been more off.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Dir. David Yates)
What’s the Deal: Yeah right, like you don’t know what this one is about.
Is it any good? J.K. Rowling lapdogs were predictably upset by the movie’s departure from its literary counterpart, but those of us in the real world will find this a solid installment in the Potter franchise. Still, Prisoner of Azkaban remains the best Potter flick.
Queer-O-Meter: 2. Albus Dumbledore, Hogwarts’ presumably queeny tendencies – professes his love for knitting early on, but the heart of the story – Harry Potter in love – follows the same tropes of every other breeder-oriented teen romance you have seen.

Humpday (Dir. Lynn Shelton)
What’s the Deal: Two straight friends decide to film an amateur gay porn film – starring themselves – and submit it to the upcoming Humpfest film festival.
Is it any good? In a word? Simple. In another word? Brilliant. The movie manages to avoid the pratfall of hipster progressive didacticism and proves to be an honest and hilarious breakdown of male friendship and sexuality.
Queer-O-Meter: 9. The characters in Humpday ask themselves some rather difficult questions, and are made to come to terms with their own identity by means other than the heterosexist privilege of assumed acceptance. So rarely in the movies does the discourse of sexuality ever feel this refreshing and truthful.

I Love You, Man (Dir. John Hamburg)
What’s the Deal: PaulRudd comes to the realization that his only real friendship in his life is to his fiancée, and thus sets out on a mission to find some male friends.
Is it any good? In the same vein as all those Judd Apatow comedies we have seen, the comic pacing in I Love You, Man is reliably by-the-numbers. Still, the movie carries a certain endearing sweetness that is irrepressible.
Queer-O-Meter: 6. Think Humpday sans intent to fuck. There is nothing revolutionary about the movie’s gender politics, but there is a certain perversity to watching a guy courting prospective male friends via heteronormative dating conventions.

Outrage (Dir. Kirby Dick)
What’s the Deal: A documentary following the rise in prominence and eventual downfall of several closeted conservative politicians.
Is it any good? Single-minded in its anger at the hypocrisy of queers who earn political capital at the expense of other queers’ rights, Dick’s movie is appropriately…wait for it…outrageous, but it makes no conclusions about its subjects that you haven’t already made.
Queer-O-Meter: 2. Dick clearly is an ally to the queer community, but the political discourse he constructs is nothing revolutionary.

Ponyo (Dir. Hayao Miyazaki)
What’s the Deal: Ponyo, a goldfishwho lives in the sea with her overly protective father, falls for a human boy and decides to leave the sea to be with her love.
Is it any good? Miyazaki, who frequently collaborates with Studio Gibli, is unprecedented in his ability to transport viewers to breathtaking and fully immersive worlds. His work in animation is as essential as anything coming from the wizards at Pixar.
Queer-O-Meter: 6. I spoke to somebody at last year’s Gaylaxicon who lamented Ponyo for being heteronormative in the way its principal character embraced the “human” world and abandoning the exotic other. I, however, saw a poignant story of a sheltered individual raised by a protective and fear-driven parent in a world she did not belong in; resolute in her resolve to be with the one she loves. Sounds kind of queer to me.

The September Issue (Dir. R.J. Cutler)
What’s the Deal: Anine-monthlook in the life of Vogue editor Anna Wintour, as she and her subordinates assemble the largest issue in the history of the magazine.
Is it any good? It is a great documentary in a year rich with great documentaries. Wintour – who inspired the Meryl Streep character in The Devil Wears Prada – is a delightfully frigid, subject, but even more fascinating than the Vogue legend is the incredulous magazine staff under her command.
Queer-O-Meter: 4. Like Outrage, the documentary’s structure boasts no real innovations, but viewers have much to appreciate in the extravagant fashion and flamboyant energy on display. September is essential viewing for the future queer fashionistas of the world having trouble finding their calling.

Sherlock Holmes (Dir. Guy Ritchie)
What’s the Deal: A cinematic resuscitation of history’s most famous detective and his…ahem…partner in crime-solving.
Is it any good? The director of Snatch realizes an appropriately gritty presentation of 19^th Century London, but the mystery at the heart of this story, while ambitious, is disappointingly flaccid. In the end, the whole thing feels more like a 120-minute episode of Scooby Doo.
Queer-O-Meter: 7. You don’t have to be as smart as Sherlock to detect the underlying homoeroticism between the two protagonists, with Robert Downey Jr. playing a charmingly disheveled Ernie to Jude Law’s finicky Bert. Had this relationship been given the proper attention it deserved, there might have been a movie worth seeing.

A Single Man (Dir. Tom Ford)
What’s the Deal: George, coping (poorly) with the sudden loss of his lover, lives out his last day on earth, which he plans to punctuate with the insertion of a pistol into his mouth.
Is it any good? Despite the vivid imagery and elaborately contrived production design, it is the performances by Colin Firth and Julianne Moore that truly cannot be missed. Their onscreen chemistry hints at a kind of personal history that even the most talented screenwriter cannot properly convey.
Queer-O-Meter: 10. Aptcomparisons have been drawn between this film and Haynes’ Far from Heaven. Indeed, Ford’s simultaneously idyllic yet tempestuous production of an oppressively homophobic existence mimics Heaven’s near-academic ability to blend weighty issues into a uniquely queer diegesis. More notably, not since at least 300 has the beauty of the male form been celebrated and idolized with such gleeful fetishism.

Taking Woodstock (Dir. Ang Lee)
What’s the Deal: A young gay man,desperate to save his family-run motel, finds himself hosting the definitive rock concert of American history.
Is it any good? Not the masterpiece we come to expect from the director who made Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Lust, Caution, but not entirely deserving of the vitriol it has received from critics. Still, I could have done without all of those embarrassing Jewish stereotypes.
Queer-O-Meter: 5. Lee, who also directed gay-themed movies like The Wedding Banquet and Brokeback Mountain, is better known for his cerebral, Bergman-like emotional discipline than he is for his queer sensibilities. Nonetheless, it is interesting to see a queer character in the movies with a clearly established – though never explicitly defined – sexual identity. Oh, and Liev Schreiber as the cross-dressing, gun-toting chief of Woodstock security is a blast.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
What’s the Deal: The epic continuation of the definitive battle between good and evil, as the Autobots take on the dastardly Decepticons in the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah…
Is it any good? At the risk of indulging in too many superlatives, the second Transformers is as much a cinematic abomination as its predecessor. It is bloated, messy, and absolutely no fun.
Queer-O-Meter: 0. Not only is Transformers completely devoid of any kind of queer subtext, it whores itself out to an ideal in which everything wrong with America – heterosexism, gender stereotypes, white supremacy et al. – is lionized, fetishized, and rewarded.

Whip It (Dir. Drew Barrymore)
What’s the Deal: A high school teenager, dragged unwillingly by her mother to compete in one beauty pageant after another, secretly pursues her true passion, enlisting in a roller-derby team.
Is it any good? At its core, this sports flick as been seen countless times before, but what elevates Whip It above convention is Barrymore’s tensely filmed roller derby sequences and Ellen Page’s reticent feminist virtuosity.
Queer-O-Meter: 5. This is the Hollywood movie that fans of the Minnesota Roller Girls would want to see. While the politics at play here never depart from the “girls are just as tough as the boys” gender binary, the girls in Whip It do take as hard of a beating in the ring as any other male-centered sports flick. What’s more, we even catch a glimpse of some (non-exploitative) girl-on-girl action.

Review: Trans Flick Transcends Expectations

While watching Alain Berliner’s Ma Vie en Rose, I was reminded of a fabulous story that aired on NPR last year about two boys from different families who each revealed to their parents they wanted to live as a girl.  While one family brought their child to a specialist who urges patients to grow more comfortable with their biological sex, the other family saw San Francisco therapist Diane Ehrensaft, who encourages some families to allow their children to transition to their preferred gender.  When asked in a related interview if “transgenderism” was manifested socially or biologically, Ehrensaft concluded: “I think that our gender identity is not defined by what’s between our legs but by what’s between our ears – that it’s somewhere in the brain. It’s pretty much hardwired.”

But in the face of neighbors’ collective scruitiny, can a parent’s love stand up to a narrow sense of comfort and a yearning for security?

Ma Vie en Rose begins as Ludovic Fabre’s family, having recently moved to a quaint Parisian suburb to accommodate the father’s new job, throws a small party to meet the new neighbors.  Much to everyone’s surprise, Ludovic appears at the party garbed in their* sister’s old clothing and jewelry.  Monsieur and Madame Fabre manage to rationalize the incident to the neighbors as some kind of jest, but as Ludovic continues to nix masculinity as an identity, they decide to take measures to quell their son’s desires.

Ludovic, like almost any child whose family decries them as less than normal, acquiesces to their parents’ wishes to live as a boy.  Ludovic is reluctant to conform, and the attempt to match Ludovic’s personality with their genitals is half-hearted to say the least.  While observing with almost scientific earnestness the other boys’ actions, Ludovic attempts to emulate man-boy machismo by playing “Cowboys & Indians” and grabbing their crotch.  To Ludovic, this feels less like a declaration of masculinity than it is some weird act of vulgarity.  Ludovic is further stymied when they attempt to kiss a girl playmate, to which she objects, “I don’t kiss girls!”

Once efforts to become a boy prove futile, Ludovic – who self-identifies as garçonfille – comes to the realization that being a boy was never God’s intention.  This leads to a delightful fantasy in which God, while literally handing out chromosomes, accidentally gives Ludovic one too many “X” Chromosomes, and literally throws the wayward “Y” Chromosome into the garbage.

As Ludovic grows more convinced of their true identity and increasingly resistant to coercive change, it causes a considerable amount of frustration chez Fabre.  The increased scrutiny coming from neighbors and colleagues compromises the job security of Ludovic’s father.  As a life of normalcy grows distant, Ludovic’s mother quickly loses her patience.  And so Ludovic’s family must come to a choice: accept their child or somehow force an unwanted identity upon them.

Ma Vie en Rose has a great deal on its mind, but it is seldom made explicit.  The suburban neighborhood depicted in the film is designed with an impeccable quaintness; there is a narrowness to the way the everything has been constructed, from the cozy artifice of the neighbors’ homes to the clinical perfection of each family’s front lawn.  This community depicted is less a physical space than it is a tacit promise of security; where normalcy can maintain itself comfortably and with little disruption.  Ludovic – the lipstick-wearing, penis-denying, effeminate Frankenstein that they are said to be – is a perversion to this tranquility, and when Ludovic’s parents are forced to challenge their perceptions of their child’s identity, it comes at the expense of the comfortable life they have taken for granted.

However, Ma vie en Rose is not the predictable story of a lynch-mob versus some local gender-confused monster.  Director Alain Berliner focuses mostly on the internal struggle between a child shaping their identity and their parents’ journey of acceptance.  There are no monsters and there are no villains; only divergent perspectives and the unwillingness to listen. Berliner presents authentic characters who are at once compassionate and selfish, empathetic and bewildered, joyful and frustrated.  Ludovic’s story is a hopeful one; it believes that familial love can indeed prevail, even if a family member might need to leave their sense of comfort behind to support a loved one.

Ma Vie en Rose is the third film that has been selected for the U of M’s International GLBT Movie Festival, and it is the first one I could actually see having the power to change people’s minds and hearts.  It is so far, and by far, the festival’s strongest selection.

Click here to read a summary of the U of M International Film Festival, followed by a brief review of their first film.

Stay tuned for a review of the Argentinean film A Year without Love, which will be showing on Friday, on the University of Minnesota’s Minneapolis Campus.  The time and location of the screening will be announced soon.

Visit http://blog.lib.umn.edu/intlglbt/home/ to discuss on an online forum the films being screened, or email intlglbt@umn.edu with any questions.

*While Ludovic’s feelings about their gender identity are made clear in the film, it is never made explicit, as far as I know, that they identify exclusively as female.  I do not want to make that assumption, and chose to refer to Ludovic using gender-neutral pronouns.