Transgressive Gay Film Festival

            Every year around this time of “Pride” celebrations I try to set up a film festival in my apartment of movies that aren’t exactly what many would consider life-affirming or particularly queer-positive, but I consider radically gay. Not that I don’t appreciate the crowd-friendly type, but I have always gravitated to edgier fare. The movies more prone to make you squirm rather than flood your heart with gay pride. I love a movie that dares to paint outside the box and is unafraid to challenge the viewer. I always wanted to program a gay film festival just for lunatics. (And try to pick early, lesser-known, films by established directors). So, while these 30 selections may not be your cup of tea, if I can encourage you to search out any you might not know it will make me as gay as a hummingbird.

            Born in Flames. Director Lizzie Borden’s fractured feminist fairy tale is set in New York “10 years after the social-democratic revolution.” After an imprisoned black revolutionary’s questionable suicide, factions of radical women’s groups band together to form a formidable army. “We have the right to violence. All oppressed people have the right to violence!” With a weirdly prophetic, explosive finale at the World Trade Center. Among the cast is future director Kathryn Bigelow, Eric Bogosian, Mark Boone Jr., Flo Kennedy and legendary Wooster Group actor Ron Vawter.

            Mala Noche. Gus Van Sant’s marvelously offbeat debut feature (shot in black & white) is about a hapless convenience store clerk (Tim Streeter) in Portland, Oregon, and his doomed love affairs with Mexican street boys. Filled with wonderful deadpan humor and aching poignancy, this is a real gem of a film.

            Apartment Zero. Fascinating psychological thriller by Martin Donovan about a sexually repressed movie theater manager (Colin Firth) living in Buenos Aries, who takes in a sexy, mysterious roommate (Hart Bochner), who may (or may not) be a serial killer. Really moody, unique, and wonderfully strange.

            Thelma. Norwegian director Joachim Trier’s simmering, supernatural, psychological drama about Thelma (Eili Harboe), a lonely student in college in Oslo, raised by devoutly Christian parents, who strikes up a friendship with a fellow student Anja (Kaya Wilkins) and slowly falls in love with her. These powerful, deeply conflicting, emotions cause her to have a series of epileptic-like seizures, coinciding with spooky flocks of crows racing towards the windows of her school.

            Burnt Money. Based on a true story about two gay bank robbers in Argentina in 1965, director Marcelo Pineyro’s film includes an outlandish extended ending in which the lovers are holed up in an apartment shooting it out with the cops. This over-the-top sequence with the two making out and firing off endless rounds is exhilarating and wild.

            God’s Own Country. Here’s your chance to see the penis of Prince Charles on the TV series The Crown (Josh O’Connor). Director Francis Lee’s gritty, powerful film about a Yorkshire farmer named Johnny (O’Connor), who toils daily on his family’s farm and drinks himself senseless at night at the local pub, sometimes hooking up with men in the bathroom for sex. Into his life comes a Romanian immigrant (Alec Secareanu) ,who begins work at the farm when Johnny’s father suffers a stroke. Their early antagonistic, wary relationship evolves into an intense, sexual love affair. 

            Love is the Devil. Unconventional cinematography and superb performances bolster this jarring account of the disastrous relationship between British artist Francis Bacon (Derek Jacobi) and a hapless thief named George (Daniel Craig), who falls through Bacon’s skylight and into his life. Director John Maybury’s use of distorted lenses and other extreme camera-work creates the visceral feel of Bacon’s disturbing, visionary paintings.

            Porn Theatre. A day in the life of a French X-rated movie house where transgender patrons troll for tricks, and sex, rejection, lust and loneliness reign supreme. Explicit to the max but fascinatingly lurid. The director (Jacques Nolot), who co-starred in Francois Ozon’s Under the Sand, plays one of the sadsack porn patrons. 

            The Handmaiden. Spellbindingly perverse film from Park Chan-wook (Oldboy) set in 1930s Japan where a seasoned Korean pickpocket Sook-hee (Kim Tae-ri) is sent to work at a remote mansion and become the new maid servant to Lady Hideko (Kim Min-hee). This is all a plot by the Count (Ha Jung-wool) to woo and rob the wealthy heiress. The decadent uncle (Cho Jin-woong), with his collection of rare erotica, hovers over the house like a sinister spider, and Sook-hee finds herself drawn into a sensual relationship with the beautiful Hideko. Is this a sapphic Jane Eyre? Trust me, nothing is at it seems in this sinfully enjoyable melodrama that keeps pulling the rug out from under you at every turn. With sumptuous art direction and sardonic humor this is a real kinky treasure.

            Postcards from America. The poetry and some of the anger of artist David Wojnarowicz are evident in director Steve McLean’s attempt to distill segments of Wojnarowicz’s taut autobiographical works.  Three actors are used to portray him- Olmo Tighe as the young David, Michael Tighe in the teenage years, and James Lyons as the adult.  All are terrific. Not an easy move to watch, but there is an elegiac power to it, as there was in Wojnarowicz’s furious, dazzling work.

            High Tension. One of the scariest films about lesbian repression I’ve ever seen. French director Alexandre Aja tells the nightmarish suspenseful story about two college girls out in a deserted French countryside house for the weekend and a rusty old truck that drives up in the middle of the night with a creepy stranger inside (Philippe Nahon, the butcher from I Stand Alone) armed with a straight razor. What happens next is relentless and unbearably frightening. The strange sexual undercurrent that ripples beneath the surface will either startle you or piss you off.

            The Strange Ones. directors Christopher Radcliff & Lauren Wolkstein’s haunting, fiercely original first feature begins like a road movie of sorts, but the viewer is never allowed to get their bearings. Scruffy, handsome Alex Pettyfer plays a man driving a car down backcountry roads with a very young teenager (James Freedson-Jackson). You aren’t sure of their relationship but when they stop at a diner they are careful to avoid police officers who enter the establishment. And when they introduce themselves they claim to be brothers and give fake names. There’s also this strange sexual energy in the air that seems to mysteriously infuse each scene. Whatever power dynamic going on between the two of them seems to shift from moment to moment. Cinematographer Todd Banhazi fills the frame with evocative, lush, verdant forest vistas but there’s a sense of menace to all of it. As the film progressed I felt this mounting dread as the real picture slowly came into focus.

            The Delta. Dark undercurrents of menace and eroticism ripple beneath each frame of Ira Sach’s mysterious, almost hypnotic, first feature. Lincoln (Shayne Gray), a young, sexually conflicted Memphis teen, parties with friends and afterwards trolls the roadways and peep shows for gay sex. One night he hooks up with a strange Vietnamese boy named Minh (Thang Chan), with whom he tricked with in the past, and they set off on Lincoln’s father’s boat for a disturbing journey down the river.

            Two Drifters. Another twisted treat from director Joao Pedro Rodrigues (O Fantasma). This one focuses on a woman, Odete (Ana Cristina de Oliveira), who loses it when her boyfriend deserts her after she suggests they get pregnant. She suddenly becomes obsessed with Pedro, her dead gay neighbor who she barely knows, when she attends his funeral. She throws herself on his coffin, quits her job to hold vigil at his grave. And stalks the former boyfriend Rui (Nuno Gil), who is devastated over Pedro’s death and desperately trying to move on. 

            Totally F***ed Up. Gregg Araki’s great, Godardian study of teenage homo angst in L.A. starring James Duval. Partially-filmed with a hand-held camera and with title cards numbering sections. Its haphazard manner masks a tightly structured character study of a group of young friends who have rejected the stereotypes of gay culture and stagger through the minefields of modern life, sidestepping bombs like AIDs, drugs, alienation, fag bashing and suicide. A tough, heartfelt provocation.

            Heavenly Creatures. In the 1950s in Christchurch, New Zealand, the trial of two teenage girls (Kate Winslet & Melanie Lynskey) accused of committing an inexplicably savage murder rocked the country. Director Peter Jackson takes on this bizarre story with sardonic glee focusing less on the murder and instead on the girls’ “unwholesome” love for one another and the secret fantasy world that fueled their madness. The dialogue is lifted from the actual diary of one of the girls. The movie is like a macabre dance- it sweeps and spins and glides across the screen.

            Head On. Ari (incredibly handsome Alex Dimitriades) is a hunky 19-year-old Greek in Australia with a conventional working-class immigrant family. But while he dreams of fleeing the country for Greece he is secretly taking a walk on the wild side- drugging, dealing, gambling, and having sex with anonymous men in sketchy, dangerous places. Stomping around the city listening to hard rock on his Walkman he’s a self-destructive, walking ball of rage and lust in this sexy, unsettling film by Ana Kokkinos. 

            Sitcom. A fabulously perverse black comedy by Francois Ozon about a French family irrevocably altered when their father brings home a white lab rat for a pet. The son announces at the dinner table he’s a homosexual. The daughter jumps out the window and becomes a wheelchair-bound dominatrix. Etc. Like Teorema, or later Luis Bunuel, it’s sardonically surreal. 

            Hustler White. Provocative Canadian director Bruce La Bruce’s shocking, funny and defiantly trashy tale of an L.A. street hustler (played by sexy Tony Ward), and an arch, effete writer (hilariously played by La Bruce). Starting with Ward floating face down in a swimming pool, it’s a little like Sunset Boulevard, but with nipple clamps, gang bangs, scarification, mummification, gay porn and even amputee love. What saves it from being a guided tour of fetishland is the camp sensibility and biting sardonic wit.

            Swoon. Sensational film by Tom Kalin about the notorious Leopold and Loeb (Craig Chester and Daniel Schlachet) case of two privileged youths who murdered a teenage boy in the 1920’s on some half-baked Nietzschean pact. Clarence Darrow was their lawyer and successfully argued against the death penalty. With a haunting score by James Bennett and beautifully shot in black and white by Ellen Kuras, it mixes archival footage and anachronisms, yet faithfully tells the story as if filtered through a modern queer sensibility.

            Sauvage/Wild. A raw, powerful film by Camille Vidal-Naquet about a male street sex worker in Paris. Felix Maritaud gives a fearless performance as Leo, who spends his day on a lonely stretch of road with other male prostitutes. He lives rough- sleeping in parks and streets, and is obviously in bad health, with occasional bouts of hacking cough. There is a scene with a sympathetic female doctor that is achingly poignant. We see a number of for-cash hook-ups with strangers. One with two gay guys is particularly humiliating and scary. The film may seem like random sordid scenes from his ramshackle life, but it adds up, and there is something incredibly moving about the cumulative effect. 

            Pink Narcissus. The 1971 gay cult classic by James Bidgood follows the bejeweled dreams of pouty-lipped teen beauty (Bobby Kendall) as he imagines himself a matador, a harem boy and a leather-jacked cyclist. Bidgood’s erotic reverie has been an inspiration to many artists and photographers. A sexy, mad masterpiece.

            Grimm Love. When Harry Met Sally for gay cannibals. In this ultra-dark, disturbing, film by Martin Weisz, Keri Russell plays a graduate student in Germany doing her thesis on the murderer Oliver Hartwin (Thomas Kretschmann), who met a man over the Internet who agreed to come to Oliver’s country home and be killed and eaten by him. Based on the real true-crime story of Armin Meiwes who stood trial (twice) for the crime and actually admitted: “With every piece of flesh I ate, I remembered him.”  A difficult movie to shake off. “You’ve Got Mail” will never resonate the same afterwards.

            Paris 05:59: Theo & Hugo. The first explicit 18 minutes of this insanely good film by Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau is set in a French gay sex club. That’s where Theo (Geoffrey Couet) and Hugo (Francois Nambot) hook up. Aside from a nerve-jangling trip to a hospital emergency room, they spend the rest of the night wandering the streets of Paris until morning. In the style of movies like Weekend, there’s a freshness and honesty, but also with the touching romanticism of meetings fraught with possibility.

            Stranger by the Lake. Director Alain Guiraudie’s spellbinding erotic thriller is set around a notorious lakeside gay cruising area. The camera’s roving voyeuristic eye follows Franck (Pierre Deladonchamps), a regular at the vacation spot, who, one evening, thinks he sees the hot guy he has been cruising drowning someone in the lake. The film captures the illicit thrills and danger of the sexual hunt.

            I Killed My Mother. Xavier Dolan was 16 when he wrote the screenplay for this bittersweet tale about a boy’s fractious relationship with his mother. He was 19 when he directed and starred as Hubert, whose mother (the amazing Anne Dorval) totally gets on his nerves. Everything she does makes him crazy, and he envies the relationship his boyfriend (Francois Arnaud) has with his mother. A kindly female teacher tries to comfort and navigate him, but when he is sent off to boarding school against his wishes things really go south. This movie justly put Dolan on the map. It’s funny, smart, irreverent and wildly inventive. But it also has real heart to it.

            Come Undone. Troubled 18-year-old Mathieu (Jeremie Elkaim) returns to his family’s seaside summer home in the dead of winter after a stint at a hospital for depression. His time alone rekindles the memories of a year and a half ago- the summer he was vacationing with his ill mother and bitter sister and fell wildly in love with handsome Cedric (Stephane Rideau of Wild Reeds and Sitcom). In director Sebastien Lifshitz’s poetic and effective film what happened in the interim between Mathieu and Cedric goes unexplored, which can be a bit frustrating. But the film is about these two important moments in the boy’s life and it succeeds splendidly in capturing the budding eroticism and brooding introspection.

            Beau Travail. Claire Denis’ strange, beautiful evocation of Billy Budd set in a remote East African French Foreign Legion outpost. Denis Levant plays Sergeant Galoup, whose ordered existence is threatened by the arrival of a new recruit (Gregoire Colin), who is embraced by the troops and admired by the commanding officer. Denis refuses to explore Galoup’s repressed, obsessional animosity and the tragic consequences in any linear fashion. She shifts back and forth in time and shows scene after scene documenting the hermetically sealed rigors of Legionnaire life. The muscular bodies slamming into one another under the unforgiving glare of the desert sun. A haunting cinematic experience.

             Velvet Goldmine. A glittering, visionary, sequined queer fever dream by Todd Haynes starring Christian Bale as Arthur Stuart, a reporter sent to track down the mysterious whereabouts of former 70s glam rock God- Brian Slade (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) who faked his own onstage assassination and faded quietly into obscurity. Arthur’s journey reactivates memories of his own teen years when his sexuality and identity was informed by the low spark of high-heeled boys. Arthur retraces Slade’s meteoric rise from androgynous British lounge singer to Ziggy Stardust sensation, and unravels his tangled sexual relationship with his wife (Toni Collette) and Iggy Pop-like rocker Curt Wild (Ewan McGregor). 

            Knife + Heart. Set in Paris, 1979, Anne (Vanessa Paradis) is a successful director of gay porn films. She has had a messy break-up with her girlfriend Lois (Kate Moran) who is also her editor on the films, and Anne still calls her in the middle of the night when she has nightmares. But then a creepy killer (with a leather mask covering his face) starts stabbing to death her porn actors. Enraged by the inactivity of the police she films her own protest by way of a porn film she titles Homocidal. It all ends in a confrontation with the killer in a gay porn theater. Directed by Yann Gonzalez, there are some really interesting moments, and Vanessa Paradis is always wonderful, but to be quite honest, I’m not at all sure this movie works at all. But at least it tries something daring and different. And I’ll take a movie like this over a “gay-coming-of-age” comedy any day of the week. I prefer films that tease the way Arthur (Christian Bale) proposes to rocker Curt Wild (Ewan McGregor) in Velvet Goldmine: “I will mangle your mind!”