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Also this issue: Cover Story A Man and a Woman Mother Knows Best |
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July 12-18, 2002
cover story
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Following are short reviews of movies premiering the first week of the Philadelphia International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, July 11-17. More reviews will follow in next week’s issue. General tickets, $8 apiece, can be purchased at TLA Video, 1520 Locust St., 7630 Germantown Ave., or 763 Lancaster Ave. in Bryn Mawr, from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., or by phone at 800-333-8521, ext. 2, up to one day before screening. Tickets may also be purchased at www.phillyfests.com up to 36 hours in advance. Day-of-show tickets are available at the venue from 30 minutes before the first screening.
All times are p.m. * indicates director or other special guest.
BOB & ROSE The new miniseries from the creator of the British Queer as Folk (see interview p. 16) stirred controversy at first because its story line -- gay man falls in love with straight woman -- sounded like propaganda for the ex-homosexual movement. But not to worry; it’s not likely that Jerry Falwell will ever use Bob & Rose as an instructional tape. Bob and Rose (in nuanced performances by standup comedian Alan Davies and Lesley Sharp, a kind of Brit Edie Falco) move gingerly into their unlikely love affair, and both must deal with friends and family who have more trouble with the relationship than they do. Bob’s mother (the wonderful Penelope Wilton) is a crusader for gay rights, and his best pal Holly (Jessica Stevenson) harbors an unspoken obsession with him that almost ruins everything. Finally, the series supports the radical notion that “anyone can love anyone,” and that there are all kinds of closets in which people hide their true feelings. And by the way, these characters -- flawed, funny, unbeautiful but deeply human -- are a lot more believable and a lot less infuriating than the shallow boys of QAF, either in the British or the execrable Showtime version. --David Warner (Episodes 1-3: Wed., July 17, 7:00; Sat., July 20, noon; episodes 4-6: Thu., July 18, 7:00; Sun., July 21, noon, WT)
BY HOOK OR BY CROOK Set to a soundtrack of riot grrrl grousing, By Hook or By Crook opens with a radical quote from Al Capone promising to kick the establishment square in the nuts. Unfortunately, no kicks, swift or otherwise, are delivered, and the establishment saunters away from the fight relatively unscathed. Harry Dodge, the owner of San Francisco’s Bearded Lady Café, and Silas Howard, of the band Tribe 8, direct and star in this feature film debut about gender-bending dykes Shy (Howard) and Valentine (Dodge). The misguided nomads, one manic and one depressive, wreak havoc in the seedy city. They hold up gas stations and steal cars, ultimately in search of a deeper sense of self. The story has been told a thousand times, only this time it’s told with queer characters, which isn’t particularly impressive. What is impressive, however, is their avant-garde approach to filmmaking, interspersing studio scenes with jerky Super 8 footage and grainy snapshots reminiscent of Harmony Korine’s work (Gummo), re-casting an ordinary story line as something extraordinary. The film rambles, which is likely its objective, since the mercurial characters also have no clear destination. By Hook or By Crook is commendable for its cinematography, but lacks cinematic importance. --Ashlea Halpern (Fri., July 12, 9:30; Tue., July 16, 7:30, WT)
THE COCKETTES For a lot of hippies, sexual liberation meant men could fuck around and women couldn’t complain. Not so the Cockettes. A loose conglomeration of San Franciscans with names like Scrumbly, Rumi and Dusty Dawn, these communards turned avant-theatricals staged camp spectacles at a midnight movie theater, incorporating all manner of genderfuck. (Divine was an early compatriot; John Waters offers approving testimony in the film.) Less a product of ideology than an extension of a free-flowing lifestyle, the Cockettes were mostly, but not all, gay men -- one former performer grouses that women shouldn’t have been allowed in -- following the leadership of a golden-haired visionary dubbed Hibiscus, “like Jesus Christ, with lipstick.” By most accounts, the Cockettes’ performances were more notable for what they represented than what they were -- New York audiences sneered at their shambling stagecraft; Warhol’s drag starlets mocked their bearded queens -- but Bill Weber and David Weissman’s entertaining doc provides more than a little evidence for the claim that they embodied “complete sexual anarchy,” in the best sense. --Sam Adams (Sat., July 13, 10:15; Sun., July 14, 2:30, PMT)
DADDY AND PAPA The most revolutionary thing director Johnny Symons ever did was also the most conventional: He became a father. In Daddy and Papa, Symons documents the struggles of gay men with children or hoping to adopt. In his own story, Symons and his partner want to adopt Zachary, a black baby whose fundamentalist Christian foster mom is worried that gay parents will “make him gay” or “do things to him.” Her fears are eased when she sees how loving Symons’ home is, but the other men Daddy and Papa portrays aren’t so lucky. Florida resident Doug Houghton is fighting state laws that forbid him from calling 8-year-old Oscar family, and 9-year-old Fanny must cope with her daddies’ divorce. Symons’ touching documentary ably depicts the arduous adoption process, the compulsory notion that gay men (and men in general) make unfit parents, and the controversy behind gay white men raising black children.
Oliver Button Is a Star, narrated by Tomie dePaola, the jolly author of the fringe children’s book by the same name, follows. The video uses a melange of animation, theater and vintage clips to tell the story of Oliver Button, a little boy who prefers taps to cleats. Although director John Scagliotti talks with three bona fide sissies and a tomboy about the playground politics of gender bending, the film -- loaded with melodramatic expressions and corny theatrics -- is clearly made with youngsters in mind, and it may leave older folks feeling a bit sheepish. --A.H. (Sun., July 14, noon, WT)
FAMILY FUNDAMENTALS Arthur Dong’s companion piece to his own Licensed to Kill is a bit easier to take, not that that’s saying much. While interviewing gay-bashers for his earlier film, Dong says he became intrigued by their tendency to pin their actions on a religious upbringing, and he began to seek out noted anti-gay figures -- with the added twist of focusing on those with gay children. Kathleen Bremner is a bouffanted grandmother who took up the anti-gay cause after her daughter, Susan Jester, came out as a lesbian (Bremner’s grandson is also gay, proof that God definitely has a sense of humor); Brett Mathews is the gay son of a conservative Mormon bishop, whose parents offer to participate in the documentary only if Dong agrees to turn it into an anti-homosexual tract. (He declines.) Perhaps most fascinating, though, is the one relationship not sanctified by blood, that between Republican politico Brian Bennett and notorious anti-gay zealot Bob Dornan, a former congressman from California. Though not related to Dornan, Bennett served as his chief of staff and campaign manager, and he was treated as a surrogate son -- until he came out. Bennett’s tearful recollection of that conversation, and of Dornan’s (later recanted) pledge to soften his rhetoric, actually makes you feel briefly sorry for the crazed Dornan, whose bigotry cost him one of the closest relationships he ever had. --S.A. (Sat., July 20, 4:30*, PMT)
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HELL HOUSE If you ever need more reasons to be skeptical about fundamentalist Christianity, Hell House will do the trick. For a decade, the Trinity Assembly of God in Cedar Falls, Texas, just outside Dallas, has been staging their own take on a traditional house of horrors, substituting biblically denounced "evils" for peeled grapes and cotton cobwebs. Think a Jack Chick tract come to life and you'll have some idea of the nightmare scenarios depicted, complete with cackling-demon tour guides to drive the moralistic points home, as if anyone could miss them. Through pitch sessions, script writing, casting, set construction and so on, George Ratliff structures Hell House like a backstage documentary, without spending enough time on the community that produces it or following up on one preacher's fervent demand to "infect the culture" with Christian values. (Among other things, that seems to include nicking fonts from The Simpsons' "Treehouse of Horror" and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.) Hell House is full of frightening, if insufficiently explored moments, like a Hell House chamber in which a girl who's just been dosed and date-raped is taunted by a demon with memories of childhood sexual abuse, then driven to suicide. (Her alleged sin is taking her own life, but it looks an awful lot like she's being punished for "allowing" herself to be violated.) Underscored by haunting music from Dallas boys Bubba and Matt Kadane (The New Year), Hell House offers plenty of horrors itself -- ones that have less to do with scripture than mass psychosis. --S.A. (Sun., July 14, 9:45, PMT; Thu., July 18, 5:00, WT)
LAN YU Stanley Kwan's prismatic drama refracts time like light off shards of a broken mirror. The narrative frequently jumps forward without warning, often skipping over major events, leaving the audience to divine a given scene's context based on internal clues or simply their own intuition. The effect is like trying to keep up with a friend who you always bump into when you're doing something else. Kwan crams what feels like an epic in 86 minutes, encompassing perhaps a decade in the relationship between Machiavellian businessman Chen Handong (Jun Hu) and virginal student Lan Yu (Liu Ye), whose romance should last, the former says, only until they "know everything about each other." Kwan's style, while entrancing, seems more complex than the story requires, but as a device for pulling the audience into a story they might otherwise write off, it does the trick. --S.A. (Sat., July 13, 12:15, R5; Tue., July 16, 9:45, PMT)
LIFETIME GUARANTEE: PHRANC'S ADVENTURES IN PLASTIC If you only know Phranc the flattopped folk singer, you haven't been keeping up. Meet Phranc, the Tupperware saleswoman, or as she puts it, "the all-American Jewish lesbian folk-singin' surfin' Tupperware lady." Forgoing the itinerant lifestyle in the name of family, it turns out Phranc has turned her considerable talents to selling plasticware so she can spend more time with her partner and daughter. Brandishing a guitar bearing the legend "This guitar sells Tupperware" (a twist on Woody Guthrie's famous boast), Phranc uses music, the force of her personality and an almost evangelical belief that Tupperware will improve your life to become one of the nation's top saleswomen. Success comes with a price, since the women at sales conferences in Las Vegas and Florida aren't as prepared for Phranc as the hometown folks, but it doesn't seem to shake her ineffable belief in the airtight containers that don't burp, "they whisper." Lisa Udelson's documentary is both charming and moving, mainly because of its subject's boundless charisma and the way even such a drastic change in profession doesn't seem to alter who she is one iota. She's less impressed with the income-generating abilities of Tupperware salesmanship than the empowering effect it has, particularly on working-class women and women of color. At the Florida sales conference, she marvels, "Where else do they honor women like this?" Musicians who stray from the road are often accused of selling out, but Phranc has sold in. --S.A. (Sat., July 13, 9:30; Wed., July 17, 5:00, WT)
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MACBETH: THE COMEDY The title character is played by a woman (Erika Burke) and the three witches are evil queens (in the Chelsea sense), so famous lines like "Unsex me now!" take on extra resonance. But this is no deep meditation on gender roles (thank goddess). It's a surprisingly enjoyable goof: Macbeth as if rewritten by the staff of The Onion. Director/screenwriter Allison L. LiCalsi toys with Shakespearean conventions to great comic effect, mixing snatches of the original ("Story and additional dialogue by William Shakespeare," say the closing credits) with pop-psych banalities ("I can't believe how this is escalating!"). Duncan, the doomed (and in this version, dumb) king stares dimly when a messenger poetically delivers news from the battlefield; his son has to translate. An assassin identifies himself (per Shakespeare's dramatis personae) as "Murderer Number One"; the intended victim turns to the second killer and says, "Let me guess. You're Murderer Number Two." The funniest running gag is visual; this being Scotland, everyone in the castle is mad for plaid, from boxer shorts, mufflers and flannel pajamas to the "Thank God I'm Scottish" placard on Macbeth's desk.--D.W. (Mon., July 15, 7:30*, WT)
NOTORIOUS C.H.O. Margaret Cho takes the stage like an animal bursting from its lair, though at times she doesn't seem to know what prey she wants to stalk. At times, Notorious cuts almost uncomfortably close to the bone, as when Cho goes into hilariously, if squirmingly, graphic detail about her sexual relationships -- her difficulty in getting off, the not-so-fine points of cunnilingus -- but also goes off on comic tangents that seem too much like isolated "bits," good for no more than a couple of laughs. To an extent, Cho seems stuck between meat-and-potatoes standup and the confessional one-woman territory she's tried to stake out for herself, the latter of which is far less forgiving of digressions. It's a more coherent show than Sandra Bernhard's, and Cho's 9/11 joke is a lot funnier, but it suffers from the same dilemma. When you set yourself up as a truth-telling "outlaw," being funny isn't enough. --S.A. (Sat., July 13, 7:30, R5)
P.S. YOUR CAT IS DEAD The late James Kirkwood called his 1972 comic novel P.S. Your Cat Is Dead a cross between Midnight Cowboy and The Odd Couple. Like them, Cat is about an unlikely friendship -- in this case, the bond that develops between a straight, chronically unsuccessful actor/writer and the gay Latino thief he hogties to his kitchen counter when he catches him burgling his apartment on New Year’s Eve. Speaking of unlikely, the director/screenwriter who’s bringing this ’70s chestnut to the screen is ’80s movie everyman Steve Guttenberg, not the first person who pops to mind when you think “gay cinema” (though he did look awfully cute in Cocoon, or was it Diner?). Guttenberg stars as hapless actor Jimmy Zoole, and it’s a good role for him, a chance to showcase his manic energy and sad-sack charm. And he gets a sly, sexy performance from Lombardo Boyar as the thief, Eddie. But plot contrivances, especially the arrival of an unbelievable trio of gay thugs, and some clunky dialogue (“I’m a wavemaker, and you have a fear of drowning”) blunt the impact of this amusing but slight feature. --D.W. (Fri., July 12, 7:30*, PMT)
RELAX IT'S JUST SEX Gratingly jokey, sloppily shot and haphazardly edited, P.J. Castallaneta's ensemble-cast comedy jumps from character to character without ever deciding on a consistent tone or theme. The humor is as low-stakes as can be -- the film starts with a phony filmstrip introducing "the lipstick lesbian" and "the gym queen." The actors seem to appear on screen in inverse proportion to their talent -- Paul Winfield, Seymour Cassel and Susan Tyrrell are there and gone far too quickly, just long enough to remind you what real acting looks like. --S.A. (Sun., July 14, 2:30*, R5)
RUTHIE AND CONNIE: EVERY ROOM IN THE HOUSE Ruthie Berman and Connie Kurtz make love seem worth the hassle. Best friends for 40 years, and lovers for the last 25, the two firecrackers sent the Jewish community into an uproar when they divorced their respective hubbies, ditched the kids, and fell in love with each other. Deborah Dickson's stripped-down documentary wastes no time with slick editing, and thankfully so. The couple's squabbling, musing, tee-heeing, and canoodling, laced with bits of throaty Yiddish, are far more effective at capturing the raw energy of their love than fancy splicing and dicing. Ruthie and Connie is sentiment without sap, inspirational but not motivational. And while the occasional shot is unnerving (like the handful of livid protesters shouting obscenities from the sidelines of a gay pride parade), the film's focus is decidedly triumphant, concentrating on Ruthie's convictions and slow unlocking of her own closet door.
Two shorts jump-start the program: "Meeting," which drags viewers through a French woman's rather dull daydream wherein hopes of clubland cunnilingus become reality when she shags the boss' wife; and "The House Sitter," a charming rundown on the dos and don'ts of neurotic felines (i.e., make sure you run the bathtub water for the boy cats), narrated by a playful lesbian couple. --A.H. (Sat., Jul 13, 4:45; Sun, July 14, 2:30, WT)
THE TRANNY PARADE The highlight of this trans-continental shorts showcase is Tim McMurtry's I Remember Mother, a surprising portrait of the South Philly-born drag queen who, until her death in 2000, at the age of 75 (or so), was the toast of New Hope. Mother looks as low budget as it undoubtedly was, but the story is its own reward: how Joseph "Mother" Cavellucci became the town's unofficial matriarch, helping to sustain a drag culture that includes not only other trans-sisters but the town's elected officials as well. (New Hope's mayor offers particularly moving testimony on Mother's contributions.) By all accounts a salty, sharp-tongued diva who on off-performance days could look like "an old Italian guy in a dress," Mother is the epitome of an irrepressible spirit who changed her surroundings rather than let them change her. (McMurtry is interviewed on p. 16.) --S.A. (Sat., July 13, 5:15* and 9:45*, PMT)
