BFI Flare: Lakeview

 My viewing has been a bit short on comedy, so this Canadian indie was quite the treat, featuring dyke drama galore, heartfelt songs and some gorgeous scenery courtesy of its lakeside setting in Nova Scotia. 

Writer-director Tara Thorne serves up a gathering of assorted ladies with a shared history who are attending their friend Darcy's divorce party, as you do. What ensues is a weekend of simmering resentment, raging sexual tension and quite a few hilarious off the cuff conversations riffing on pop culture (Swifty alert). I also detected that the character names cover all three boygenius members, plus some more musical icons. Cute. 

But after a lot of laughs, the last third turns serious and melancholic in a way I had not expected. Can we not have one totally fun lesbian film? Apparently not. Lessons must be learned the hard way and the morning after is not nearly as fun as the night before.

BFI Flare: Summer's Camera

 This Korean drama starts out as a coming of age tale and segues into a reflection on grief, mourning and finding your way. First time feature director Divine Sung crafts a really thoughtful and dreamy meditation on first love as teen Summer finds herself attracted to football star Yeonwoo while also grieving the recent loss of her father. The two girls move toward each other tentatively, watched by their gossipy friends. 

But really Summer's relationship with her lost father and her use of his old camera becomes the focus of the film as she discovers mysterious pictures on the last roll of film he shot. Then she meets someone from his past, prompting her to question her family relationships. It is really intriguing and very clever use of analogue (the tech I grew up with) camera equipment to chart her developing feelings, as well as memories of her dad. I especially liked the idea of listening for the shutter click before you take the photo.

The ending is a bit cryptic and abrupt but this is a fine debut from Sung with standout performances from the two girls. 

 Trailer

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