July 13–20, 2000
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Festival Shorts
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A Boy Named Sue |
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* indicates director/guest in attendance.
Beat
No literary movement has been so obsessively profiled — out of all proportion to its artistic sihgnificance — as Beat; there must be more movies about Neal Cassady drinking himself to death and William Burroughs screwing Arab boys in Tangiers then there were actual books by actual Beat writers. So what does this new docudrama bring to the smoke-filled party? Not much, pardner. Kiefer Sutherland apes Burroughs’ mannerisms more solicitously than Peter Weller did in Naked Lunch (not necessarily a good thing), but most of Beat is devoted to the romance between Burroughs’ wife, Joan (Courtney Love, without a trace of Versace), and the mainly forgotten Lucien Carr (Norman Reedus) — also loved by the rather timorous Allen Ginsberg (Ron Livingston), though Carr’s homosexual-panic murder of a man who makes a persistent pass at him in the opening scenes makes Ginsberg a little antsy about pursuing his passion. Perhaps the most damning criticism of Beat is that, as portrayed, these characters could be any writers, any time: There’s no hint of the ruckus they’d go on to create, or the promise they’d leave unfulfilled. —Sam Adams (July 14, 9:45 p.m. & July 15, 12:30 a.m., WT)
Benjamin Smoke
Directed by Jem Cohen (who made the similarly amorphous Fugazi doc Instrument) and Peter Sillen, this scattered documentary goes after an elusive subject. Benjamin (real name Robert Dickerson) is a gay, HIV-positive man who sometimes dresses in drag and sings like a cross between Tom Waits, Vic Chestnutt and Patti Smith. He’s often addled, whether because of a fondness for speed and pills or because of progressive dementia, and the filmmakers are so concerned with setting the mood that they’re pointlessly stingy with information. (There are, for example, several references to The Opal Foxx Quartet, but no explanation that Benjamin used to front the band.) And ending with Patti Smith, even though she’s paying tribute, strikes entirely the wrong note, as if Benjamin needed a rock star’s approval to justify his art. He’s got it, though; a look at www.benjaminremembered.com reveals an in-the-works tribute album set to feature the likes of Indigo Girls (whom Benjamin slags off in the film) and R.E.M. Here’s hoping that serves his memory better. —S.A. (July 18, 7:30 p.m., WT)
A Boy Named Sue
recommended
Not many of us get to witness the process of a sex change firsthand, but this superb documentary by Julie Wynman lets us do just that. The unflinching eye of the camera follows Sue/Theo’s transition from butch dyke to "big old bi-transman with a pussy," capturing the medical as well as emotional steps of the sex/gender change. Interviews with Theo’s friends and his insightful femme lover, Lisi, track how the changes in his body affect his relationships. Artfully shot and intensely gripping, Theo’s story focuses less on the whys of the sex change than the hows and, possibly most frightening and confusing, the "what next?". —Sara Marcus (July 20, 5:15 p.m., WT)
The Bradfords Tour America
U.B. Morgan and Jann Nunn decide to go undercover as conservative, Christian Americans in order to travel undetected through the heartland, interviewing Christians about their views on homosexuality. A noble idea, but Morgan and Nunn are more fascinated with their own transformations into a respectable RV-driving couple than with their subjects’ opinions. Only five interviews even make it into this documentary (including one frightening tirade from Fred Phelps of the repulsive Westboro Baptist Church), and the filmmakers seem uninterested in probing the roots of ordinary people’s homophobia. Maybe they’re trying to reclaim and deflate the hurtfulness of homophobic strains of Christianity by trespassing into it and mocking by participation, but when they take part, smirking, in ceremonies like baptism and laying on of hands, they come off looking as petty and intolerant as the folks they meet. —S.M. (July 15 *, 5:15 p.m., WT)
Call to Witness
While this documentary effectively introduces us to three Lutheran congregations fighting to keep lesbian and gay pastors, it could probe more deeply. The film focuses on pastors and their supportive congregants, with occasional statements by stonewalling (not Stonewalling) national representatives of the denomination. But since the real story here concerns changing attitudes, it would help to hear from congregants who wrestled with the question of whether or not to stick with their pastors. How such people decided to stay or go would seem to be the key to understanding the barriers to reform. —Stuart Semmel (July 18, 5:30 p.m., WT)
Chutney Popcorn
Nisha Ganatra’s amiable comedy is so ragged even its breezy pop soundtrack can’t provide the necessary momentum (though it’s great to hear local pop merchants the Trolleyvox score two spots on the soundtrack). There’s great material here, as Ganatra’s character wrestles with a traditionalist Indian mother (Merchant-Ivory vet Madhur Jaffrey) and a noncomittal girlfriend (Jill Hennessy), while her sister’s successful marriage is threatened by a failure to conceive. But screwballs live or die on timing, and in changing directions as often and with as little grace as it does, Chutney Popcorn merely seems frazzled. —S.A. (July 15, 7:30 p.m. & July 16, 12:15 a.m., Prince Music Theater)
Criminal Lovers
recommended
One of two films Frenchman François Ozon cranked out in 1999 — the other, Water Drops on Burning Rocks, is also in the festival — Criminal Lovers shows him starting to slow down and apply his craft more selectively. Beginning with the brutal — and possibly unmotivated — murder of a teenager in a boxing gym shower, the film follows a pair of lusty teenage killers (Jeremie Renier and the fantastic Natacha Regnier) as they run from the law and straight into the hut of a woods-bound hermit, who promptly imprisons them and begins using them for his own purposes. The film’s as twisted and sick-minded as Ozon’s other films, but not as self-satisfied or hermetic. —S.A. (July 18, 9:45 p.m. & July 20, 5:15 p.m., PMT)
The Eyes of Tammy Faye
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Tammy Faye Bakker’s life didn’t end after the religious broadcasting empire she built with her then-husband Jim collapsed in scandal. This British-made documentary, narrated by RuPaul, takes us through the collapse of the PTL empire and through her rocky career since; a cringe-worthy pitch meeting with the producer of Cops sets the tone for her failure to break back into show business. (A talk show with Jim J. Bullock is a brief exception.) Eyes is sometimes too arch and superior to its subject, who mostly seems like a wreck, but the details of her rise from puppet show entrepreneur to TV evangelist have to be seen to be believed. —S.A. (July 19, 7:30 p.m., PMT)
Flawless
A drag queen (Philip Seymour Hoffman) gives a homophobic cop (Robert DeNiro) speech lessons after the latter has a stroke. Director/writer Joel Schumacher may be this year’s guest of honor now that he’s out of the closet, but that only means this repulsive film loaded with prancy stereotypes seems self-hating instead of gay-baiting. Best moment: Schumacher stealing the comeback from his own script for Car Wash, "I’m more man than you’ll ever be and more woman than you’ll ever get." —S.A. (July 14 *, 7:30 p.m., PMT)
Full Blast
A gay subplot is rather peripheral to this loosely plotted French-Canadian drama, directed by Rodrigue Jean. Steph (David La Haye) is a sawmill worker on strike in a dead-end coastal town. He spends his newfound free time getting into bar brawls, trying to resurrect a bar band, and (when not in the bar) bedding friends of both sexes. Dope-peddling and fish-stealing liven up the days. The dispiriting but well-acted film offers a convincing slice of an aimless, frustrated life, for what it’s worth. —S.S. (July 19, 7:15 p.m., RE)
Hard Love/How to Fuck in High Heels
Will these films be any fun to watch in a theater filled with strangers, where nobody really feels free to break out into gales of laughter? Most of the value my friend and I found in Hard Love, a low-budget lesbian porno about dildos, was in keeping a running commentary on the bizarre camera angles, laughing at the cute butch-femme couple’s inane dialogue ("Tell me how much you want it." "Oh, I want it real bad."), and fast-forwarding the couples who seemed too frighteningly intent on, well, coupling. I mean no disrespect. I know that dyke porn made by and for the ladies is an endangered species, and that connoisseurs of such things worship these two films by dyke porn pioneers Shar Rednour and Jackie Strano. But the heavy, pouty lipstick and luscious blond curls of How to Fuck in High Heels reminded me of my (male) roommate’s swimsuit videos, and I just had to turn it off. —S.M. (July 18, 9:40 p.m., WT)
If These Walls Could Talk 2
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Would that we could review this tripartite anthology film three separate times. Segment one, starring Vanessa Redgrave as an elderly ’50s lesbian faced with losing everything when her lover dies and her property passes to her clueless son (Paul Giamatti), is utterly heartbreaking, graced with fine performances. Segment two, with a forbidden ’70s romance between femme undergrad Michelle Williams and butched-up Chlöe Sevigny, ably rouses indignation with its depiction of doctrinaire feminism. But segment three, starring Ellen DeGeneres and Sharon Stone and directed by Anne Heche, is an utterly awful mess, antic and rib-poking and overplayed in the extreme. Is it rude to leave a free screening early? —S.A. (July 18, 7:15 p.m., RE)
The Jaundiced Eye
recommended
Taking its title from an Alexander Pope epigram — "All is yellow to the jaundiced eye" — this powerful documentary examines the case of Melvin and Stephen Matthews, a father and son accused of molesting the latter’s 5-year-old son. The film presents a strong case that the son’s testimony was influenced by inexperienced police interrogators and Stephen’s ex-wife’s boyfriend, who despises the fact that Stephen is gay. Such false-memory cases are a risky proposition at best, and you wish the film took the son’s accusations a little more seriously, if only the better to discredit them. Still, it’s a riveting story, if somewhat clumsily told. —S.A. (July 16, 5 p.m., RE)
Journey Into a Hate Free Millennium
This documentary about three hate crimes — the murder of Matthew Shepard, the dragging death of James Byrd, and the Columbine massacre — might work well in a high school classroom. But for anyone whose consciousness is already raised, it feels like watered-down Dateline. Interviews with victims’ family, friends and former teachers are affecting; musings by Elton John and Kathy Najimy don’t add anything. The title proves almost too apt: The film is so "hate-free" that little is done to fathom the killers, other than interview one former equal-opportunity hater (now a professional anti-hater). And is the free-floating rage of the suicidal Columbine killers really in the same category as focused racist or homophobic prejudice? —S.S. (July 20 *, 7:15 p.m., WT)
The Most Unknowable Thing
recommended
"I have learned in this family not to be surprised by anything," says Peg Miller. But the fact that her gay son David is marrying a woman is only one of many surprises she, and the viewer, receive in this intimate documentary. David’s sister Mary Patierno directed the film, intending to focus on her brother’s life as a person with AIDS. She wasn’t counting on David falling for his chiropractor, a free-spirited, motorcycle-riding mother of two, or on the tragic, unexpected twists the family’s lives would later take. We’re just as unknowing when we enter the Millers’ lives, but by the end, when AIDS finally, irrevocably takes over, Patierno’s unblinking portrait of David’s struggle with the disease is that much more devastating because of how well we’ve come to know him, flaws and all, and his consistently surprising family. —David Warner (July 19, 5:15 p.m., WT)
The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me
You can’t accuse David Drake of not earning his paycheck: In the film of his long-touring monologue (which I saw as a student at Swarthmore six years ago), he emotes with a force that would reach the back of the largest stadium-seated movie palace. Unfortunately, that’s not exactly what film acting calls for. Monologue might be the most theater-bound of all performance types, and director Tim Kirkman hasn’t a clue how to make it work on screen. He’s obviously watched Swimming to Cambodia a few times, but that’s not quite enough. —S.A. (July 16 *, 7:15 p.m., PMT)
Paragraph 175
recommended
From Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman (The Life and Times of Harvey Milk, The Celluloid Closet), this wrenching documentary looks at the internment and prosecution of homosexuals under the Nazi regime. To a certain extent, the parade of Nazi atrocities has almost become numbing, as each film repeats the atrocities of the one before it, but what makes Paragraph 175 (which is named for an anti-homosexual law passed in the 19th century) particularly affecting is that Germany has never acknowledged that such persecution took place. The film is a much-needed slap in the face of that repulsive denial, and a reminder that there are still stories left to be told. —S.A. (July 14, 7:30 p.m. & July 15, 2:45 p.m., RE)
Punks
In what’s been aptly described as a gay-male-of-color Waiting to Exhale, four best friends in West Hollywood look for love, support each other and stare at their collective reflection in dressing-room mirrors. There’s Dante (Renoly Santiago), a spoiled trust-fund club kid; Hill (Dwight Ewell), defined by bitterness and promiscuity; and Chris (Jazzmun), an arrogant drag queen. But our sympathies in this debut film by Patrik-Ian Polk focus on Marcus (Seth Gilliam), the oh-so-sweet and shy photographer who can’t do the casual sex thing even when it drops into his lap, and is quietly obsessed with hunky next-door Darby (Rockmond Dunbar). Get ready to sigh. —S.M. (July 15 *, 9:45 p.m. & July 16 *, 2:30 p.m., PMT)
Queer as Folk 2
recommended
The two-hour sequel (and fairly definite conclusion) to the British miniseries finds Stuart, Vince and Nathan once more prowling the streets of Manchester, but creator Russell Davies’ tone has grown sharper and taken on a dark edge. Stuart’s still shagging anything that moves, but he’s also finding homophobia more difficult to manage, and wondering how much longer he’ll be able to pick up anyone he likes at first glance. Just the right kind of sequel, QAF2 retains the original’s virtues while taking things in a new and surprising direction. See it now before Showtime fucks it up. —S.A. (July 14, 7 p.m. & July 17, 7:15 p.m., WT)
Sadness
recommended
Through slide shows, narration and reenactments, artist William Yang delves into the past and into the process of grieving. He shares memories and images of his friends who have succumbed to AIDS, and he journeys to North Queensland in Australia to learn the truth about his uncle’s long-ago murder. As he interviews family members about the case, Yang also explores his Chinese identity and his parents’ efforts to assimilate him and his siblings into Australian culture. —S.M. (July 16, 2:30 p.m., WT)
St. Pauli Nacht
recommended
The paths of many strangers — pimps, hookers, taxi-drivers, kids — cross one night in Hamburg’s red-light district. Director Sönke Wortmann (Maybe, Maybe Not), working with a script by Frank Göhre, cuts masterfully back and forth between narratives, using Pulp Fiction-style timeplay to give us the same moment from different perspectives. We garner hints of some greater karmic structure linking effect to cause, as phone calls and near-misses take on ramifications no individual character can guess at. A terrific urban (if not particularly gay-themed) tale. —S.S. (July 16, 7:15 p.m. & July 18, 12:15 p.m., RE)
What a Drag! (Pedale Douce)
Ah, the enlightened French! And yet somehow you don’t feel so confident about the Gallic vision of sexuality after sitting through this fairly tiresome farce. The much-revered Fanny Ardant stars as Eva, recruited as a beard by her best friend Adrian (Patrick Timsit), who needs a wife to impress a would-be business partner. Predictable if occasionally amusing misunderstandings follow, with the straightest of characters being taken for gay. But is all this two steps ahead of My Best Friend’s Wedding, or two steps behind? —S.S. (July 16, 12:30 p.m., RE & July 19, 5:15 p.m., PMT)
The Wolves of Kromer
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Wolves are closing in on the Welsh village of Kromer. The villagers lock their doors and cock their rifles — and worry that their children might grow up vulpine. Director Will Gould’s film adaptation of a play by Charles Lambert offers a creepy and clever wisp of a Roald Dahl-style fable. With humor and pathos, sexuality is mapped onto species (young gay men sport tails and fur coats) without the allegory ever (quite) getting too cute. The cast is all strong, but Rita Davies, as a marvelously evil household retainer, takes the cake. —S.S. (July 16 *, 9:30 p.m. & July 18 *, 5:15 p.m., PMT)
Venue Codes:
PMT: Prince Music Theater, 1412 Chestnut St.
RE: Ritz East, Second St. between Chestnut and Walnut Sts.
WT: Wilma Theater, Broad and Spruce Sts.
Tickets for all screenings are available in person or over the phone from TLA Video at 1520 Locust St., 215-735-7877. Ticket for screenings at the Prince Music Theater only may be purchased at the Prince box office, 1412 Chestnut St.
