BFI Flare: Arrivals

Still smarting from my woeful performance in the Big Gay Film Quiz (42/80), I am dusting myself off and pondering what might have been. It was all going well until the final round on lesbian couples on TV. I don't watch TV, so it was mostly guesswork. PFFT. 

Sublet

So, to more films viewed online for BFI Flare and I am focussing on newcomers arriving on foreign shores, a theme that features in several films. Top of the list is Eytan Fox's Sublet in which Michael, a mature New York journalist, arrives in Tel Aviv to research the city for his travel column. By rather contrived means he ends up sharing his sublet with Tomer, a young, chaotic filmmaker who shows him around the city. Michael is in a long-term relationship with his insensitive partner who Skypes him sporadically and seems completely emotionally detached. Ugh. It's no wonder he develops an attraction to hot younger guy. But will they or won't they? Well, actually, that isn't even the crux of this wonderful film, which deftly explores intergenerational communication, misunderstandings and family attachments in a beautifully funny and moving way. I found myself crying at some of the revelations in the third act. As Michael John Benjamin Hickey conveys a world of repressed pain and bitter experience while his opposite number Niv Nissim has charisma to burn. 

Boy Meets Boy

Not quite so great is the extremely talky Boy Meets Boy, which starts promisingly with two guys hooking up at a Berlin club and spending the next day together. Harry is a British doctor who finds them, f*cks them and forgets them, while local boy Johannes has a boyfriend but isn't so keen on their open relationship. Over 12 hours or so they wander Berlin and talk.... and talk. Much of the dialogue appears off the cuff but some of it is so on the nose it's painful. For such a short film (69 mins) it really does drag on. And the ending is one of those Eh moments, like what the heck was that about? The two leads are pleasant enough, but it feels like director Daniel Sánchez López thought their chemistry alone would carry the film without an actual plot. It really does not. 

And then there is Kiss Me Before It Blows Up (Kiss me Kosher), whose title(s) promises so much more than it delivers. Honestly, the trailer is brilliant, suggesting a comic farce of culture clashes and lesbian romance. Shira and Maria are about to move in together somewhere in Israel when they accidentally get engaged and their families get involved, sparking chaos. The film's premise is that since Shira is Israeli and Maria is German, there will be laughs aplenty from their two families mixing. Cue trips to the Holocaust museum and jokes about Nazis. No, really. I love bad taste, but this is just cringe, with sitcommy dialogue and clumsy direction galore courtesy of writer-director Shirel Peleg. A pity, as it does attempt to shoehorn in Middle East issues, inter-cultural relationships and some history along the way. Great scenery, too. Juliane Köhler looks pained as Maria's mother, perhaps remembering her great performance in Aimee and Jaguar all those years ago and wondering why someone can't write her something better than this.