Sunday, September 27, 2009
A+E, In this Issue..., Movies, Reviews

OUT of this world

Our critic’s take on 15 key flicks at Out on Film

Tomas Michaelsson
Gustaf Skarsgård, Torkel Petersson and Tom Ljungman in “Patrik, Age 1.5”

OUT ON FILM
Landmark Midtown Art Cinema
Oct- 2-8
www.outonfilm.org

BY STEVE WARREN

Every time a “Milk” or “Brokeback Mountain” breaks out, the question arises as to whether there’s still a need for a separate festival for films about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered (LGBT) people. The 22-year-old Out on Film festival will probably be with us until that question is answered in the negative, which doesn’t appear to be anytime soon.

In previewing two-thirds of the festival features, I found them to be uncompromising with regard to their target audience, but some can be appreciated by open-minded viewers of all orientations. These include my two favorites, which would do well in general release.

CRITIC’S PICKS:

“Drool” is a dysfunctional family comedy in the “Little Miss Sunshine” vein, starring Laura Harring (“Mulholland Drive”) as an abused wife who packs up the kids and runs off to Savannah with her cosmetics-selling neighbor.

“Rivers Wash Over Me” is a Southern drama by John G. Young that’s the equal of early films by David Gordon Green. Strictly for art houses, it concerns a 15-year-old African-American boy transplanted from New York to a small Alabama town where being gay is less accepted.

BEST FILM FOR LESBIANS

“And Then Came Lola” loses points for being inspired by “Run Lola Run,” but will seem thrillingly original to those who never saw that German film. The story, which sends a woman running all over San Francisco, is told three different ways until it ends correctly.

BEST FILM FOR GAY MEN (TIE)

Both winners in this category are teen love stories that shift gears. “Dream Boy,” from the novel by Atlanta’s Jim Grimsley, jerks from the love story to one kind of horror story to another kind. You may get whiplash, but it’s worth it. In “Shank,” an English teenage thug hides his gayness until he falls in love with a French youth. After a sexy first act and a romantic second act, the third is somewhat disappointing.

OH, BABY!

“The Baby Formula” is a Canadian mockumentary about a lesbian couple “fathering” each other’s babies (it’s a little bit science-fiction).

There are also no less than two films about gay fathers (adoptive in one case) trying to bond with homophobic 15-year-old sons. “Patrik, Age 1.5” is the better one, about a clerical error that sends a teenager to a Swedish couple who were expecting an infant. “Chef’s Special” is by a Spanish Almodóvar wannabe who mixes (too little) broad comedy with (too much) over-the-top melodrama. The father who inherits the boy when his ex-wife dies is unpleasant and unattractive, yet wins the love of a hot, closeted soccer star.

DRAMAS AND QUEENS

Some offerings, like festival opener “The Big Gay Musical,” seem like they’d be old-hat to anyone who’s been out for more than six months. It takes place onstage and behind the scenes of an off-Broadway show, “Adam & Steve—Just the Way God Made 'Em.”

The touching drama “Hannah Free” stars Sharon Gless as a woman who’s kept from seeing her dying partner in a nursing home. “Ghosted” jumps back and forth between Taipei and Hamburg to tell a lesbian love story-slash-ghost story. It holds your interest by promising more than it ultimately delivers. “Hollywood, je t’aime” is a pleasant light drama about a depressed Frenchman who travels to Los Angeles for the holidays, or maybe forever.

WHAT’S UP, DOC?

“The Butch Factor” examines masculine gay men and those who assume masculine images. Most of what it has to say adds little to a conversation that’s been going on for decades.

“A Cross Burning in Willacoochee” suffers from a Southerner’s gift for gab as Roy Kirkland details the hate crimes against him and his then-partner, filmmaker Doug Sebastian, in a South Georgia town in 1993. It’s terrific visually, but needs cutting.

“Annul Victory” looks like the kind of cell-phone video that’s thrown up on YouTube moments after an event, not a well thought-out documentary about the protests that followed last year’s passage of Proposition 8, banning same-sex marriage in California. SP