BFI Flare: Really Happy Someday

 This Canadian drama from J Stevens is a laconic meditation on changing bodies and minds as Toronto musical theatre performer Z struggles with the effects his intake of testosterone is having on his voice. Over the 90 minutes, his relationships with his agent, his girlfriend and his boss at the local bar all undergo stress and strife. 

After a failed audition, Z hires voice teacher Shelly to try to get back the upper range he has lost and over their sessions, he repeatedly expresses frustration at the shift in this crucial musical instrument. At one point, he exclaims, "I fucked up!" and bemoans how taking T has caused him to lose control of the one thing he could count on. 

My question was why did he not know this would happen? Surely if you are about to embark on gender alignment, you would do a lot of research to understand what changes that might bring, especially if your livelihood depends on your voice? I could not understand his utter bewilderment at his voice changing. 

Generally, Z is a pretty passive protagonist, constantly whinging to his girlfriend, friends, colleagues but failing to actually take control of his life. And he also smokes and drinks, which surely would do more damage to his fragile voice. I got pretty annoyed with him but OK, I guess it provides more drama. 

Watching the changes over time provides some interest but there is something a bit detached about this film which stopped it really moving me.

BFI Flare: Sally!

 Not really sure why the exclamation mark is there, but director Deborah Craig's doc on writer and agitator Sally Miller Gearhart touches on significant sections of US queer and feminist histories over the last 55 years. 

Gearhart was well known to me when I lived in SF back in the 1990s even if I now cannot remember exactly why. Protest marches? Talks? Events? Writing? All entirely possible. She was an academic, public speaker and all around lesbian icon. I did not know her life story, and this film is an eye opener. 

A Southern belle and established teacher who moved to SF in 1970 and immediately bought a motorbike and became a prolific seducer of women, Gearhart also bought land in the north of California to establish a community in line with her book The Wanderground, about a women's utopia. This I knew nothing about and the archive footage is fascinating but also familiar--lots of nakedness, laughing, cats and dogs and power tools. Ah.... a forgotten Eden. 

But the film has its darker strands, too, as Gearhart falls out with an ex whose stepson offers some cryptic comments about not speaking to her later in her life. 

And then the bombshell: Gearhart was suffering from dementia in her later years. Which begs the question: why the tittle tattle when she was in no condition to defend herself? The film seems ever so keen to move her away from her stated separatism to a more centrist position, as if to satisy some off-screen viewer. But can't people just have their belief systems? Why wouldn't a thinker and activist hold a range of views that might change over time? 

The saddest thing is they had to sell the land to pay her carer bills. So much left to do to achieve a just and equitable system to allow elders to age with dignity. 

But a cracking film about someone who is not necessarily as well known as she should be. 

Sally! trailer

BFI Flare: Respect Your Elders

 "Hey, old lady!" is not a greeting I have heard, but it surfaces several times in the delightful Korean dramedy Manok (dir/writer Yu-jin Lee). The titular character is not even all that old, perhaps mid 40s, but the teens she encounters in her small home town are not especially deferential. Having moved back from Seoul where she owned a queer bar, she is finding her feet but her every move is thwarted by her vengeful ex-husband, who is the town chief or mayor. When she realises how controlling he is, she vows to run against him. 

At times hilarious and then sad, Manok is a special film, brimming with wonderful performances, absurd set pieces (a rap battle in a police station comes to mind), and a timely message about people overcoming their differences to realise what they have in common. Manok's interactions with her ex's gender non-conforming child allow her to realise that the youth of today perhaps don't have it easier, as she thought. I thought a plot line might develop in which she pursued an old love, but this was a red herring. Never mind. Perhaps there will be a sequel. 

In the short Shoobs, an awkward teen attending a house party is shadowed by a mysterious older figure who offers her advice in pursuing the object of her affections. It gradually emerges who this fashion doppelganger is... An intriguing premise with a cryptic ending, it looks at how people get caught up in what might have been. 

Manok trailer

BFI Flare: I'm Your Venus

 What a heartbreaker this doc is. Directed by Kimberly Reed, I'm Your Venus is a sensitive and devastating reopening of old wounds in the name of healing as it revisits the 1988 murder of Venus Xtravaganza who was featured in Paris Is Burning. 

Quite incredibly, some 30 years later, Venus's brothers join forces with the House of Xtravaganza to seek answers from the police and find ways to honour her legacy. Reed's camera finds its way into legal conferences, council meetings and the ballroom scene as the various protagonists raise awkward and painful questions about the dead woman's life and death. 

In particular it is painful to watch the brothers wrangle with their own feelings of guilt over how they treated their sister 40 years ago. Clearly, mistakes were made and they are only really put on the spot by a member of the House who knew Venus. Still, it is gratifying to watch them try to be good allies and honour her by changing her legal name and preserving her childhood home. 

I had so many questions, mostly to do with what investigation was actually done by the police in 1988 and why the family knew so little of developments. But one doc can only do so much. 

This is a teary but necessary watch. 

BFI Flare: Familial Demands

I must admit that when I heard that The Wedding Banquet was being remade, I was sceptical. Why? I wondered, go back to a film from the 1990s? Ang Lee's breakthrough film has now been remade with one of the original screenwriters and a new director, Andrew Ahn, with the setting moved to Seattle. 

Bowen Yang is familiar to audiences as a comedic actor on SNL and as the GBF in films, but here he is handed a weighty role as a commitment-phobe drifting into his 30s and living in a friend's garage with his boyfriend Min (Han Gi-Chan). Lily Gladstone and Kelly Marie Tran are Lee and Angela, the couple who live in the main house, which is owned by the former. As the film unfolds, decisions must be made and life choices embraced, with the pressure of Min's grandmother pushing him to take over the family business while he wants to pursue his art. 

Once grandma arrives, things really pick up, with some delightful farce, including a frantic de-gaying of the house and a cringy Korean wedding ceremony. Gladstone, best known for her dramatic roles, is not a natural comic but has some great moments. But the film is really stolen by the two matriarchs, Angela's mother (Joan Chen) and Youn Yuh-jung as Min's grandma. It's laugh out loud and also moving. A delight. 

We Are Faheem and Karun is billed as Kashmir's first LGBT film and is a dreamy, thoughtful drama of forbidden love between a military man guarding a checkpoint and a local resident. As the two, Faheem and Karun, exchange grins and pieces of fruit, one wonders where this budding romance will go. In amongst the pressures brought by well-intentioned parents and a hotheaded brother, there are also flashes of humour. Viewers would greatly benefit from understanding the Kashmiri conflict and the cultural and religious differences in play. But one can glean the barriers facing the two would-be lovers and appreciate the quiet moments they share, against the gorgeous backdrop of the mountains. 

The Wedding Banquet trailer

Time Travel Is Dangerous!

 A British indie sci-fi mock doc, TTID! reaches for the stars and flies high if unsteadily over the roof tops, as Ruth and Megan discover a time machine and use it to restock their vintage shop in Muswell Hill. What could possibly go wrong?

Directed by Chris Reading and written by Reading and the Shakespeare Sisters, the film is narrated by a typically acerbic Stephen Fry and features the requisite shaky camera work and whip pans typical of documentaries. Ruth Syratt offers a hangdog performance as Ruth while Megan Stevenson is more expressive as Megan. The sound dipped at various points, perhaps as a nod to the documentary method and sometimes swallowed the dialogue but the two actors have good chemistry.  

There is also a host of Easter eggs for those with the energy to look for them, in the form of actors popping up from Buffy, The Witches and The School for Good and Evil. Plus Brian Blessed as an octopus, and, dear lord, Johnny Vegas as an angry robot. I know some find Vegas hilarious, but every time he appears on screen, he seems to suck the life out of every scene he is in. Jane Horrocks appears in a very odd steampunk sequence shouting a lot and I actually did not recognise her.

Truth be told, the pacing and tone of the film are all over the place. When the cast are trying to sort out the issues of time travel it is a lot of fun, but the more serious scenes feel out of place. 

So, yeah, time travel is a bit of a bumpy ride. 

Time Travel Is Dangerous! is on UK release from 28 March. 

Trailer

Barrelstout's Women's Day Picture Show

 The DIY filmmaking duo of Bev Zalcock and Sara Chambers has been collaborating for a few decades now, producing underground cinema drawing on Eisenstein, Deren and a host of others. On Friday they presented a selection of their work at Birkbeck Cinema. 

I had not been to Birkbeck for some years, probably pre-Covid for an earlier Barrelstout night. It was very odd to be out after dark and around lots of people. I am still being cautious, so I sat at the back and looked down on the audience, many of whom also appear in the films.

 While I have seen a lot of their work, several films were new to me, including two world premieres. While Bev favours Super 8, Sara is more in the digital realm, so the films are often a mixture of media. Suzi and Brandi in Needlepoint featured old S8 of two friends, which Bev had worked with a needle. Very hands-on. SLAGS, on the other hand, was composed of still photos of friends and the Kent town of Sandgate, which presumably were all digital. Those were the two new films.

Of the older ones Andi Andi was also new to me, featuring a femme biker cooking in full leather, and I recognised Diamanda Galas on the soundtrack. Diamanda was a total shock to me when I first heard her in the 1980s, thanks to a goth friend. At some point I played one of her records at the wrong speed and quite liked the effect. In any case, it was good to hear her soundtracking frustrated lesbian desire played out in the domestic sphere. 

Humour tends to run through Barrelstout's films and their punny titles reflect this. Among the films not shown were Oh, Odessa! and Mad, Bad and Barking, but these may come back at some point. There was a mention of re-editing some of the older films, which was intriguing.

Well worth a journey out on a Friday night and I also got to see some lovely spring flowers in the gardens around Bloomsbury.

Oh My Goodness!

 This one is a lot of fun. Nuns + cycling is the combo we didn't know we needed and this farce from director Laurent Tirard provides a marvellous cheerfully blasphemous confection. 

St Benedicts convent somewhere in rural France gets involved in a local cycling race hoping to use the prize money to bolster the funding for an old people's home. But only one of the sisters, trainee Gwendoline, shows any aptitude on a bike. Then a crew of rival nuns turn up and things get ugly.... 

Well, as ugly as a comedy about cycling nuns can get. The two mothers superior turn out to be old frenemies and concoct various schemes to do each other down. It is great fun watching nuns be devious and I did laugh out loud several times. For one brief moment it looks like the two trainees might run off but the mothers get it together and nobody goes to hell. Phew.

Trailer 

Oh My Goodness! (Juste Ciel) opens in the UK on 14 March. 

Die Alone

The stark title of this film by writer-director Lowell Dean really does not do it any favours. A futuristic dystopian thriller, Die Alone drops the viewer into a global environmental crisis in which human beings are being attacked by some kind of virus that turns them into plant zombies. At first the filmmaker seems to be drawing some kind of parallels with Covid, as newspaper articles speak of riots and resistance.

But then the film goes off in another direction. A young man called Ethan stumbles from his car and searches for his girlfriend Emma. A woman called Mae (Carrie-Ann Moss) takes him in and looks after him. As he gets in a number of scrapes, his amnesia prevents him from remembering those around him. Mae seems to be some kind of survivalist who carries a gun and has to keep her cranky generator running. Very few human beings are left after the plant attacks but there is one skeleton called Myrtle that hovers in the background.

Suffice to say Ethan and Mae are linked in some way and there is a massive twist toward the end.

Preposterously intriguing or intriguingly preposterous, Die Alone tries to be a sci-fi thriller and love story and perhaps also a warning of the damage human beings are wreaking to the planet. The zombie angle is not really pursued to any satisfaction. Why do they attack some things and not others. What happens to the people turned into plants? Do they decay and die or live forever? Who was Myrtle? I wish the film had filled in some of these details as the premise is solid. But it does rather let itself down. Great to see Carrie-Ann Moss being a badass but something is missing. Not so much Die Alone as To Die or Not to Die.

Trailer

Die Alone will be available on Home Entertainment from 10th March 2025

Who We Love

 This adaptation of his short by director Graham Cantwell is a well intentioned if rather clumsy drama about Dublin teens negotiating school, parents and budding queer life. At the start Lily seems to be in bed with a woman in flashback, but then heads off to school to give her best bud Simon a badge she tells him is from her visit to San Francisco over the summer. Since we have seen her cutting out the letter S I thought perhaps she made up the story of her visit and indeed the romance and spent most of the rest of the film wondering when she was going to come clean. But No, that sequence was so that we would see the exacto knife she used to cut the letter. The reasons for that will become clear later in the film...

Lily seems to lack confidence and does not seem to have told Simon she likes girls even though he is clearly out and proud. Nor does she tell her parents or anyone at school or even go online to find support. Seeing as Simon and Lily live on the outskirts of Dublin their isolation from a queer community seems most odd. The film really feels like it should have been set in the 1990s, not the present day. I could easily imagine it as a Channel 4 Out on Tuesday production. There are so many on-the-nose moments as characters make histrionic declarations like "Leave me alone!" as if their feelings are so hard to understand. There really is an Only Gay in the Village vibe that feels very off. 

So rather than go find some queer kids their own age, Simon takes baby dyke Lily to a gay pub to meet Oonagh who for some reason has taken on the role of lesbian den mother and gives  Lily a pep talk while constantly insulting Simon in language that feels more like a peer than an older woman chatting to a teen. Again it feels off.

Sadly, Oonagh is one of very few "older" characters who has any kind of compassion, with the parents being hostile or distracted and school authorities completely out of touch with the students. Lily's nemesis is her friend Violet who has violent tendencies and a mother who tells her she is "winning at life" in some of the worst parenting committed to screen. Another "older" character is a sleazy voyeuristic gay man who likes to watch. It gets quite uncomfortable. 

There is some satisfaction in watching Lily turn the tables on her bully but the film is an exercise in frustration at watching a collection of stereotypes and melodramatics in search of a coherent plot or character development. 

Trailer

Street Trash

 For my first post of the new year, it's this trashy remake of the 1987 film of the same name, courtesy of director Ryan Kruger. Set in Cape Town, Street Trash presents a familiar tale of underdogs vs The Man, as evil Mayor Mostert plots to do away with the troublesome homeless by vaporising them with a spray called Viper. 

The aesthetics are very much teenaged boy humour (lots of chat re: erections and humping) and B-movie sci-fi (exploding bodies and slime). Sometimes it works, with characters emerging over the piece to show a depth of emotion. Grizzled street dweller Ronald (Sean Cameron Michael) and newcomer Alex (Donna Cormack-Thomson) are particular standouts, growing from grudging allies to good pals. A sub-plot involving the subterranean Rat King is rather confused and adds little. 

What is impressive about this film is its embrace of lo-fi strategies and the energy of the cast. The feel of griminess is palpable. The mayor is little more than a cartoon character but the desperation and anger of the disenfranchised comes through strongly. Quirky exchanges between characters seem a bit reminiscent of Tarantino and the addition of a blue sex-obsessed ghoul only visible to one character is certainly an interesting story choice.

I could have done without the phallic obsession and the cringy post-credits coda is typical of this. Perhaps the director suffers from insecurities in this area. Grow up, Ryan.

Trailer