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Also this issue: All the Small Things Arachronism |
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July 18-24, 2002
movies
Venue codes PMT: Prince Music Theater, 1412 Chestnut St. R5: Ritz 5, 214 Walnut St. RB: Ritz Bourse, Fourth and Ranstead sts. WT: Wilma Theater, 256 S. Broad St.
Following are short reviews of movies screening the second week of the Philadelphia International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, July 18-23. 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.
AMERICAN MULLET Had American Mullet broken ground five years ago and beaten the flurry of websites and books stroking the mullet phenomenon, it might have really had something. When director Jennifer Arnold took the reins of the lo-fi production, she wasn’t exercising filmmaking ingenuity so much as paying homage to an already puffed-up trend. American Mullet records its cross-country hunt for the taboo ’do, seeking out folks at seedy bars, bus stops and line-dancing saloons. While one lesbian rationalizes her mullet as an escape from the “capitalist machine,” with the added benefit of transcending gender barriers, it’s curious how the film manages to easily categorize mulletheads anyway: white trash, butch dykes, aging rockers, NASCAR fans, bikers, Mexicans, country-western crooners. The mullet has deeper social implications, in that a haircut can be a signifier of sexual preference or class status; Arnold should have asked the tougher questions about the significance of hair politics, particularly for minority groups, instead of cashing in on a dying novelty. To make a long hairdo short, American Mullet is dreadfully out of fashion. --Ashlea Halpern (Fri., July 19, 5:00, WT; Sat., July 20, 9:45, PMT)
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. --Sam Adams (Mon., July 22, 5:00, R5)
FOOD OF LOVE A lovely performance by British actress Juliet Stevenson as a high-strung California mom is the best part of this film based on David Leavitt’s novella The Page Turner. Kevin Bishop plays her son Paul, a gifted teenaged pianist who meets his idol, handsome piano virtuoso Richard Kennington (Paul Rhys), when he serves as the maestro’s page turner during a recital in the boy’s hometown. Later, on a trip with his mother to Barcelona, Paul finds that Kennington is there on a concert tour and purposefully tracks him down at his hotel, whereupon they embark on a passionate but short-lived love affair. The question of who seduced whom vexes the rest of the film; six months later, Paul is a student at Juilliard and already ensconced in a relationship with another useful older man, while we see that Kennington himself is vulnerable to the manipulations of his manager/lover (Allan Corduner). Spanish director Ventura Pons does a good job of evoking the conflicting forces of this rarefied world -- the needy mother (who at first thinks the maestro is attracted to her, not her son), the politics of the classical music business, the dueling tyrannies of youth and power. But even though Bishop drops trou with pleasing regularity, his one-note performance makes Paul’s destiny -- will he always be a page turner, a servant to the gods rather than a god himself? -- difficult to care about. --David Warner (Thu., July 18, 7:15, PMT; Sat., July 20, 10:00, R5; Tue., July 23, 7:15, R5)
GROUP A rousing mockumentary directed by Marilyn Freeman, Group takes viewers on a dysfunctional trip through a group-therapy session. This improvisational masterpiece, filmed from six camera angles so you don’t miss a single smirk or grimace, stews in estrogen through all the bickering, bitching, eye-rolling and hand-wringing that eight conflicting women can dish out. Initially the women seem typecast (i.e., the token conservative who doesn’t “get” homosexuality or the Christian who objects to the casual use of the “F word”), but as the film rolls on, the labels are harder to affix. She who appears to be a preachy, Bible-toting conformist is struggling with her own internal demons, particularly when we discover she’s fallen out of love with her cheating husband, left paraplegic after an alcohol-related crash. The fiery Pipi (Ladyfest founder and fat activist Nomy Lamm) is by far the session’s strongest character, playing a radical 24-year-old who had a leg amputated after she survived cancer at age 7. While her Smurf-blue hair is as upbeat as the giddy references she makes to her pre-op transsexual boyfriend, the raccoon rings circling her eyes tell of a deeper sorrow. Over the course of the 20-week sittings, Pipi admits to being raped, feeling overwhelmingly saddened by the dwindling dolphin population, and despising every member of the therapy group. Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein plays a mealy-mouthed crybaby trying to understand her father’s affair with a 17-year-old. Meanwhile, the confrontational Rita (Lola Rock N’Rolla) is a rude lesbian who gets off on antagonizing everyone (and their respective sob stories), leveling saccharine moments with a sneering verbal punch. But when the cameras are turned on her, Rita is quick to say that she “didn’t come here to have a bunch of people pat my hair while I cry on their fucking shoulder.” Don’t be surprised if you’re told to shush in the theater; this empowering flick feels so real, you’ll want to pipe in with your own story. --A.H. (Fri., July 19, 9:30; Sun., July 21, 12:15, R5)
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. (Thu., July 18, 5:00, WT)
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. (Tue., July 23, 9:30, R5)
ROUGH STUFF Movie shorts are like mischievous little brothers: They get away with a hell of a lot more than their full-length siblings. It’s this distinction that makes Rough Stuff, an evening of nine eclectic shorts narrated by Needles Jones, all the more difficult to judge. Of course, you must take time into account. A short has only a handful of minutes to make some profound statement, whereas longer films give the audience more leeway to decipher said subtle message. While this may explain the hammy displays in “Shut Up White Boy” (gang of Asian lesbians take turns torturing an obnoxious customer), it isn’t an excuse for total pointlessness, as exhibited by the sickening “Spit”: three full minutes of a tongue slurping, slobbering and sucking bubbly white saliva off a plate of Plexiglas. Like diamonds in the Rough Stuff, though, “Peanuts and Pumps” and “You Wish” draw upon silly tactics to spell significance. The former uses dizzying kaleidoscope effects when following beefy Delilah as she boohoos her way through a barroom brawl. The latter puts a man -- the repugnant Candy Kitty -- in a dozen subordinated positions (bikini around his ankles and ass to the sky, or frolicking through the snow in nothing but a pink teddy) otherwise reserved for women so the viewer may begin to see the ridiculousness of such marginalizing acts. --A.H. (Sat., July 20, 10*, WT)
THE TRIP Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda knew no better. Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis had no choice. The open road -- where the tumbleweed and desert stretch as far as the eye can see and the click of a cowboy's spurs echoes for miles -- has always been a magnet for every dreamer, loser, rebel and thief. Not a bad destination for closing night. The Trip, directed by Miles Swain, pulls onto that lost highway of hope with a full tank of gas, but unfortunately, sputters, gasps and runs out of steam halfway. Steve Braun, who bears a striking resemblance to both Brad Pitt and Full House's Kimmy Gibbler, plays the long-haired Tommy, a gay activist who spends his afternoons in the park handing out anti-Nixon propaganda to joggers. So it's a bit of a stretch when Tommy falls for Alan (Larry Sullivan), the buttoned-up Republican journalist working on a book about the evils of homosexuality. Yet the spark is undeniable -- hell, even Alan's frosted-lipped, hymn-chanting, Valley Girl twit of a girlfriend notices. After she jets, Alan and Tommy kindle a storybook love, that is, until the gay-bashing book goes to press without Alan's consent. The film is threaded with captivating footage from the socially turbulent '70s -- rallies, protests, smooching in the streets -- which alternates with menacing images of Anita Bryant and other iron-fisted fundamentalists. Despite heavy-duty politics, puns run rampant, mostly delivered by Alexis Arquette, Tommy's roommate and token flamer who sells himself to anyone with a hard-on. Though the end chokes up more tears than an after-school special on bulimia, The Trip is something of a disaster, not unlike a cross-country venture with Jerry Falwell riding shotgun. --A.H. (Mon., July 22, 7:30*, PMT; Tue., July 23, 7:15, R5)
VENUS BOYZ When Steven Tyler, who looks like a dude dressed like a lady acting like a dude, howled about dudes looking like ladies, he overlooked a major aspect of the drag underworld: ladies looking like dudes. Obviously he’s never met a Venus Boy. Venus Boyz, directed by Gabrielle Baur, records the drag king movement on all levels, from wild nights at New York’s Club Casanova to single kings bucking the system (or at least its dress code). Featured shims include Dréd Gerestant, one cool ladies’ man with a sidekick named Luscious, and German-born Bridge Markland, a king with an Uncle Fester likability who favors playing harmless, horny businessmen. The colorful documentary spins viewers through a workshop that teaches the art of constructing a fake penis (just stuff a condom with cotton balls) and mastering the swagger of the well-to-do macho man. The edgy camera work is dark and elusive, like watching city lights whiz by from the back seat of a taxicab, as we venture backstage and see women duct-taping their breasts flat, strapping on clammy dildos and painting on delicate mustaches. Venus Boyz illustrates both dynamics of drag, camp and performance art, while simultaneously challenging the male-female binary and pushing the need for a third sex. --A.H. (Sat., July 20, 12:15; Sun., July 21, 7:15, R5)
YOUNG SOUL REBELS Had the queen laid her watery-blue eyes on the leather-clad, balloon-panted bodies slamming and grinding in Britain's punk-turned-funk after-hours, she'd never be alive to daintily toast her own Golden Jubilee. Not if director Isaac Julien (Looking for Langston) had a say, anyway. In 1991's much-ignored Young Soul Rebels, Julien unites (and divides) Britain's black, white, gay and straight youth cultures in the face of 1977's political upheaval. Scored with primal, funky grooves and scathing three-chord ditties, Young Soul Rebels traces the dissolving friendship of two disc jockeys whose lives are rattled when a mutual friend, and closeted gay man, is murdered. With squinty-eyed bobbies on the tail of every could-be derelict in town and anarchists screaming foul in Trafalgar Square, this straightforward work is a landmark achievement in both gay and black British cinema. Though you can hardly decipher a word of the thick cockney, the dedicated followers of fashion -- soul-glow and vinyl pants in tow -- make second-guessing the dialogue all the more bearable. --A.H. (Sun., July 21, 9:30, RB)
