LLGFF: Sisters in Struggle

Happy April Fool's Day. There will be no pranks played in this post, which winds up my coverage of the 26th London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival.

Saturday's viewing started with a DVD of Joe + Belle, a real find and one of the highlights of the festival for me. An Israeli comic drama directed by Veronica Kedar, the film finds drug runner Joe going on the run with psychiatric patient Belle, who had broken into the former's flat in order to commit suicide. Joe's reaction to finding this stranger in her bathtub, razor in hand, is exquisitely deadpan, setting the tone for the rest of the picture. As they get deeper and deeper in trouble with the law, their relationship also deepens, setting up a most cryptic finale.

Second highlight of the day was Icelandic drama Jitters (dir Baldvin Z), which also had comic elements amid its teenaged highjinks and parental disapproval. Sensitive Gabriel has an encounter with fellow student Markus while on a school trip to Manchester. Returning home to join his group of friends, he finds himself called upon to solve all of their problems while keeping his own uncertainty at bay. What I really liked about this film is that it gave free rein to teenaged passions, especially drink and sex, while at the same time allowing the kids intelligence and sensitivity. The adults were shown to be distant or out of touch with their offspring, while trying to be authority figures, which really rang true.

And then on to the concluding programme and most problematic of the day: Mommy Is Coming + Sisterhood, two films from Berlin, both related to queer feminist porn. MIC is the latest from Cheryl Dunye, one of my favourite filmmakers since the 1990s, and is an odd mix of screwball comedy and porn, or, as I decided, screwball with the emphasis on the screw. Gender-bending, a fish out of water, and adopted identities provide the humour, while visits to a sex club provide the porn element, as well as the atrociously bad acting. Even Dunye, as the cab driver who picks up all of the characters, over-acts. Maybe it was meant to be a parody of trad porn. Anyway, that and her use of to-camera interviews proved to be quite irritating, tripping up the comedic moments time and again. Odd, really that Dunye and co-writer Sarah Schulman should choose to do porn at this time in their illustrious careers. And a very thin piece it is, too, at only 67 mins.

The companion piece, Sisterhood, directed by Marit Östberg, is a doc on her gang of collaborators who make queer feminist porn in Berlin. It references a film of hers, Share, which showed last year at the festival, but which I have not seen, making the actors' constant nods to it less than illuminating. And, quite frankly, it was a bit dull. While I admire the performers' thoughfulness on their participation in porn and what makes it compelling for them, I do not share that interest and found my attention wandering to the dog, Billie, which was in all of the group interview shots. How did it stay still so long? How did it stay awake?

So, not the best end to the festival, but a sign that many, many tastes are being catered for. Oh, and the Dyke March ending up at the BFI lent a rather surreal air to the proceedings. Emerging from a shorts programme, I wandered in a daze through the throng, wondering, "Where did all these women come from?" Spirits were high, and though the sun had long since departed, a warm glow suffused the hall.

LLGFF + Lacan

Although the truncated London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival is well underway, I have only made the most cursory of visits so far. Oddly, though I have seen fewer films, I have been invited to more parties and what eye-openers those have been! Tonight, for example, I popped into a trans party and re-made the acquaintance of someone I haven't seen for five years. And there was cake!

Sunday night I was rubbing shoulders with the great and good connected to The Owls, Cheryl Dunye's collaborative lesbian thriller. Except it didn't really seem that collaborative: she is credited as director and co-writer and it was her story. But, the cast rewrote the script. It turned out as not much of a thriller, but had some great comic moments and the behind-the-scenes doc, Hooters, was a scream, providing some unintentionally hilarious moments of lesbian processing that had the audience in hysterics.

As it happened, this evening I also bumped into Lisa Gornick, one of the stars of The Owls, and asked her if the shoot was as much of a nightmare as Hooters suggests. She said not, but that it was a one-time experience for her: next it's back to her auteur films, this time not on the theme of babies, as had been the case with Tick-Tock Lullaby. This led to a lively discussion of lesbians and babies and how interesting that experience is to see on screen, and then she dropped the L-bomb: Lacan.

Yes, she said it was about "Lacanian lack". At the festival launch some weeks back, Gornick had told me queer film festivals were all about intellectualising and flirting through the brain, but here it was in evidence. Gotta love those brainy women.