Sandra Bagaria a French Canadian Jewish girl from Montreal went online looking for love. She thinks she has struck gold when she hooks up with a Syrian/American lesbian called Amina who is currently living in Damascus. Very quickly their emails to each other get hot and steamy as they exchange intimate naked photographs and engage in cyber-sex. Their connection is also very much on an emotional level and deepens significantly over the coming months.
Amina confides that she is not just ‘out and proud’, but that her father is totally supportive of her sexuality, something of a rarity in the Arab word. She actually starts publishing her own blog ‘A Gay Girl in Damascus’ which is extremely controversial and highly critical of the current dictatorship. It gets noticed around the globe and is followed by other media and progressive lesbians. She was both brave and very articulate and when even heavyweight newspapers such as The Guardian and The Washington Post covered the blog, it went viral.
Then one day Amina writes to tell Sandra that the Secret Police had arrested her but thanks to her father’s timely intervention, she was released again. Soon after that Sandra receives an email from Amina’s cousin Raina saying that Amina had been abducted and the family have absolutely no idea where she was being held. This is followed by a deafening cyberspace silence for some months and Sandra tries everything she can think off to track her girlfriend down to see if she is still alive and see if she can save her. She even lists the help of the US State Department. However despite all her extensive efforts she starts to draw so many blanks and finds it impossible to get a single lead on her girlfriend who by now is a world famous blogger, and then the penny finally starts to drop, albeit very slowly.
CAUTION: SPOILER ALERT.
There is no Amina. This bizarre real life true story takes a 180 degree turn when Sandra eventually engages the services of some clever IT geeks who track down the IP address of the computer that Amina’s emails were sent from. It’s not in Damascus, or any other part of Syria but in Edinburgh at an address owned by an American academic Thomas MacMaster and his German born wife. He is the real author of all the emails and the one that had conjured up the fake profile that Sandra had come across on line. The pictures that he had sent claiming to be the outspoken Amina were in fact stolen images of a Croatian girl living in London. When he was finally exposed, the discovery did not just distress Sandra but infuriated the media who claimed that all the coverage they had devoted to the case had diverted public attention to the horrors of the Syrian regime which should have remained as the main story coming out of that region.
When Sandra eventually gets to have a face to face meeting with MacMaster she never manages to successfully extract from him why he perpetrated this fraud which he admitted had gotten way out of hand. He very unconvincingly tries to pass it off as an experiment in creative writing, but it seems more likely that it was to fulfill some fantasies he had that were possible of a sexual nature. It is all very unsettling and more than a little bit creepy.
It is in fact the one failing of writer/director Sophie Deraspe, who made this compelling documentary with the complete co-operation and participation of Sandra Bagaris , that she failed to push MacMasters on the whole question of motive which would/should have given some closure on this far-fetched peculiar tale. She also left a few unanswered questions of Sandra herself who she treated with kid gloves as the ‘victim’ of not just the deception but having her heart broken by someone she had never met, and very oddly had not even spoken to via phone or computer.
It is certainly not the first time that anyone in the gay community has been led astray by an online profile that has been ‘enhanced’, but it is usually done by horny gay men looking for a quick hook up for sex, not by lesbians who are totally make believe. Well, one of them at least.
This real-life story of Edward John Barrington Douglas-Scott-Montagu, 3rd Baron Montagu of Beaulieu, a quintessential member of the English aristocracy, is a remarkable tale of how he survived one of the most notorious sex scandals of the 20th Century that resulted in a prison term, and then regained his position in society totally forgiven. It’s the stuff that Hollywood melodramas thrive on but back in the 1950’s when this occurred, the Studios would not have been brave enough or even ever have wanted to make a movie about ‘the love that dare not speak its name.’
Lord Montagu inherited his title and his 7000 acre estate with its stately home in Beaulieu when his was just two years old after his 61 year old father died in an accident. Although everything was put into a Trust until he came of age, the young Lord was still expected to play his part around the Estate, and he soon became very aware of both the responsibility and burden of preserving his legacy that had been in his family for over five centuries.
Post war Britain in the 1950’s was suffering from an economic depression and so just 25 years old (and the youngest member of the House of Lords) Montagu took the unprecedented decision to open his Home and Estate as a public attraction. The country still had a very entrenched class structure in place so tourists flocked to Beaulieu to see how the landed gentry lived and to get a glimpse at their private lives. It was an immediate success bringing in essential revenue to safeguard his heritage but it also brought a certain fame to Montagu himself. Ever the showman he delighted in being a major part of the attraction that the hoards of visitors wanted to see.
Then just as everything was going so very well for Montagu, he was awoken at the crack of dawn one morning by the Police and arrested, and suddenly it looked like he may lose everything. He was charged with ‘conspiracy to incite certain male persons to commit serious offenses with male persons’ i.e. gay sex. At that time not only were homosexual acts a criminal offense but there was a brutal moral backlash against gay men, and every year over 1000 of them were being jailed. The maximum sentence for buggery was life imprisonment, but so many people never even got their day in Court as they committed suicide to avoid the ignominy of being exposed.
Montagu had always admitted to being a bisexual but in this instance he was not actually charged with having male sex but just allowing his friend Peter Wildeblood, a journalist with the Daily Mail, to have a vacation with his Serviceman boyfriend and his best friend in a Beach House in Beaulieu grounds. The media went wild with delight as this was the first time that the Police had ever dared to make such accusations against a Peer of the Realm, and the biggest Trial of its kind since Oscar Wilde’s. They offered the two servicemen immunity if they agreed to give evidence against Montagu and Wildeblood which they accepted, but their testimony in Court was so inconsistent and unbelievable it looked that the two charged men (plus Montagu’s cousin) may actually be set free. However once Wildeblood admitted he was a homosexual then their fate was sealed. He was sentenced to 18 months and Montagu was given 12 months.
However what the Trial did in a rather spectacularly way was bring public attention to the unfairness of the current law and it propelled the Home Office Committee under John Wolfenden to eventually recommend that the law was changed so that homosexuality was de-criminalized.Montagu maintained his innocence throughout and has done so up to the present day, and he steadfastly refused to publicly discuss this period of his life until 2000 when he published his memoir ‘Wheels Within Wheels’ because as he claimed he finally wanted to ‘put the record straight’.
Texas filmmaker Luke Korem, who have never even visited the UK before making this his debut film, covers this infamous ’cause célèbre’ which helped to change the whole tide of gay rights in the UK but focuses more of Montagu’s rehabilitation and how he so successfully re-established himself as a pillar of English society. He married twice, which in the process gave him a male heir who will become the 4th Baron, and established not only the influential Beaulieu Jazz Festival, but more importantly this avid collector of classic cars founded what would become the National Motor Museum.
Mixing archival footage with current interviews Korem paints a portrait of a man obsessed with his ambitious plans for Beaulieu and living a action-packed life surrounded by celebrities and other aristocrats often at the expense of neglecting his family. They all seem somewhat aggrieved that they played second fiddle in his life especially having to grow up with such little personal privacy in the middle of a major tourist attraction. ‘We live above the shop’ they complained somewhat bitterly. Montagu was publicly rewarded with the chairmanships of such august bodies of organisations such as English Heritage and the Historic Houses Association and was one of the few Hereditary Peers to retain his seat in the House of Lords after it was reformed.
What the film politely refuses to do is discuss whether Montagu abandoned all involvement with the gay community in general or privately, and also Korem failed to mention even that when Montagu’s convicted friend Wildeblood was released from jail that not only was he one of the very few gay men to testify to the Wolfenden Committee, but he became a lifelong gay activist.
Lord Montagu, now 89 years old, sadly suffered a stroke just before Korem started filming, but maybe the rest of his very fascinating story will come out one day.
Brit filmmaker Jake Witzenfeld’s impressive and heartwarming documentary thankfully settles down after a somewhat uneven start to become an intriguing snapshot of what life is like for gay Arabs living in a trendy suburb of Tel Aviv today. He follows three extremely engaging best friends in their early twenties for 18 months through 2013 – 2014 when tensions between Gaza and Israel flared up yet again.
There is Khader who appears to have ‘independent means’ as he comes from what seems to be like a prominent Muslim ‘mafia’ family, and he lives with David his Jewish boyfriend who is a gay nightlife impresario. Fadi on the other hand is an ardent Palestinian and keeps beating himself up for falling for inappropriate handsome Jewish butch men. He calls it ‘sleeping with the enemy’. Nareem the final one of the trio, is a soft quietly spoken Nurse wreaked with guilt about not being able to ‘come out’ to his conservative traditional parents who constantly pressure him to return to his home village and live with them.
Witzenfeld films the boys taking a road trip together to visit their parents and showing the diverse backgrounds that each in their own way had held the boys back. Nareem’s parents refuse to accept that their adult son has any right to determine his own future and he, and the others, know it is futile to even try and raise objections. Fadi’s mother on the other hand acknowledges how primitive life is in their small Arab village bereft of even a cinema, and that she openly supported and encouraged him to have the life he wanted (and she would have loved) in the big city. Her compassionate speech has Khader in tears confessing that whilst he and his mother were best friends, his father had not spoken to him for years.
Later on one (of the many) drunken nights when feelings were running high and they were all bitching about how tough it was to be both Arab and gay, they decided to make a video. Khader declared ‘since we don’t have a role model, let’s be it.’ This is the first of several videos they make together which not only gives them a means to help explore the complexities and confusion of the feeling of ‘not belonging’ living in a country they call home. It also shows that despite all their concerns of the volatile political climate, that they also have really such fun together just like other single handsome young gay men.
Most of their other political posturing was usually done with copious amounts of alcohol and cigarettes and led by Fadi who was the most passionate about both his heritage and his unbelievable optimism that Israel could even renounce its claim to his homeland, but even he admits ‘This is our lives, it is very confused all the time’. Khader is reluctantly persuaded by David to leave his precious homeland to take a month’s vacation in Berlin, but once he is there and sees that there is a whole world outside of the troubled region where life is relatively stress free, he wants to stay. It’s only the fact that his romantic relationship with David is ending that he eventually comes back home.
What was particularly touching was how they were all there for each other including the girls who made up their circle of friends. As one said to Nareem ‘The question is, and I’m not trying to scare you, you either choose to live comfortably for yourself, or you choose to live comfortably for your parents. That’s the whole point of coming out of the closet.’
What is refreshing about Witzenfeld’s film is that it paints a totally different and more realistic picture of life in the Region than most other gay movies which are either overly romantic dramas which inevitably end in tragedy or are war/terrorist laden plots. He doesn’t shy away from the vitriol and hate that these boys have to deal with as evident from some of the very outrageous response that their videos received, but he shows that these smart, funny, streetwise boys also have a great time just simply acting their age. Fadi is also quick to recognize that there are young Palestinians in Gaza having a much tougher life than they have here in Tel Aviv.
The movie works so well because all the boys are so utterly engaging and you very quickly become invested in their outcomes and want to will them to succeed. They seem happiest of all when they are at a dance party in Amman where they are in majority (of Arabs not necessarily gay men) but even then very noticeably the music from Carter USM is ‘So this is how it feels to be small, This is how it feels when your word means nothing at all’.
However, the most surprising revelation is not on the screen at all, it’s the fact that newbie filmmaker Witzenfeld is British and now a Tel Aviv resident BUT that he is also Jewish and straight! Despite (or because ?) he has made a delightful and impressive wee movie that should be seen by anyone with an interest in gay life in that region. Even more so if you have a penchant for attractive young Arab men.
Adam fixes cars for a living and most nights he hangs out with his blue-collar buddies playing cards, watching sports, getting drunk and incessantly talking about hooking with big breasted girls like most 20 something-year-old single men do. He’s very happy with all of that, except for the last part, as Adam has a secret that he thinks it is time he shared with his mates. He’s gay.
When he finally does manage to blurt it out his three buddies are stunned and confused. Especially his best friend Chris as the two of them have practically been having a bro-romance for years. He takes the news badly but he is brought up sharp by his latest girlfriend who rounds on him for being so selfish and not even acknowledging the courage it took for Adam to get this far. That guilt’s him and the other two in the ‘gang’ Ortu and Nick into to start doing their ‘research’ into what it is like to be gay, and they soon become fluent in what they believe are the most crucial expressions of the gay lexicon such as ‘power-botton’.
The dynamic within the group changes regardless and the guys try to not only try and understand how different Adam is now, but they do their clumsy best to help find him a boyfriend too. After a series of really attempts with some very inappropriate men, Adam goes on a double date with Chris and his girlfriend, which ends disastrously. When the two friends are back at home a drunken misunderstanding leads to the falling out that was sadly obviously going to happen.
Newbie director Andrew Nackman’s ‘bro-comedy’ sets itself up to be a straight man’s guide on how to cope when your best friend ‘comes out’ as gay. Funnier than most ‘how to’ manuals it is however heavily reliant on clichéd situations and opinions for his story which obviously aims to entertain heterosexual audiences, even though many gay ones will find it a tad too patronizing to enjoy the humor in it.
François Ozon means to grab your attention from the very first frame of this movie which shows a young bride in a wedding dress lying in a coffin surrounded by white roses and sobbing mourners. Standing besides David her husband is Claire who has been Laura’s best friend since childhood and she finishes her emotional eulogy by promising to look after Laura’s baby and her husband too.
In the weeks that follow Claire is too distraught over the loss that she resists checking up on her new charges. When she does finally pop in to their nearby house one day without warning, she is totally unprepared for what she finds. Sitting on the couch is a blond woman who from the back is a dead ringer for Laura, but when she turns around Claire is confronted by the sight of David dressed head to toe as a woman. Both of them are startled by the confrontation especially Claire who quickly departs after denouncing David as a pervert.
However she is intrigued enough to want to go back and learn more about his long-standing cross-dressing habit. He explains that he is not gay but that he has always enjoyed dressing up in women’s clothes and something that he did with his wife’s knowledge. He goes one step further by confessing that he has never left the house dressed like this and so he implores Claire to accompanying him on an outing to go shopping at the Mall.
As nervous as she is about the whole situation, Claire agrees and it pretty soon becomes obvious that she likes being part of the David’s secret side. In fact it is she who randomly names his alter ego as Virginie and she soon gets a kick helping her new friend having fun dressing up.
When Virginie and Claire get really tight it leads to a suggestion of sexual attraction which muddies the water somewhat. Virginie has fallen in love with his late wife’s best friend, but it seems however that Claire has been drawn in looking for a substitute for her Laura who she so pines for and is horrified when she realizes that under all the attire, Virginie is still a man.
As perverse as he usually is in his movies, this time Ozon has gone against his usual style and wrapped the whole thing up on a joyous sunny note.
In one of his best ever performances, one of France’s finest contempory actors Romain Duris totally nails David/Virginie. He’s lost even more weight which suits all the chic clothing he gets to dress up in, but much more important than that he captures the feminine aspect of his character so perfectly without even a hint of campness that could so easily have reduced Virginie to a caricature. He is a sheer joy to watch (let’s hope he finally gets his first César Best Actor Award for this) but so too is Anais Demoustier who plays the shy Claire who finds her inner self and her voice by the time it is over.
Ozon has always been a great one to play with different sexual and gender identities and he has a wonderful time with this story making Virginie aka David ultra feminine right down to her flouncy lingerie, whereas Claire is so often in trousers that her husband is visibly shocked on the rare occasion she puts a dress on. It is a real treat.
American/Taiwanese Danny has been with his artist boyfriend Tate for two years now and to mark their anniversary Tate gives him a portrait of them both that he has painted. However what Danny really wants is a baby. So too does his mother back in Taiwan who is desperate to be a grandmother, something that her straight single elder son refuses to play along with.
When mother gets wind of Danny’s dream she hopes that her openly gay son is now suddenly ‘batting for the other team’ to make this happen and she is bitterly disappointed to discover that his chosen route to fatherhood is via surrogacy. He doesn’t need to enlist her help with this project as she promptly files to join him in L.A. and just barges in and tries to take over. She is however completely oblivious to the fact that Danny and Tate are an ‘item’ and so on her arrival he is banished back to his own apartment and totally cut out of the equation for the time being.
The problem is that although she knows that Danny is gay she still cannot accept the reality and goes to great lengths to deny his sexuality to herself and the rest of their family.
The search for the right surrogate is long and complicated and is not aided by the fact that for most of it, mother and son are arguing incessantly. At one point the movie seems less like a fictionalised drama and more like a ‘how-to-become-a-gay-dad instructional video.
The movie is the ‘baby’ of actor turned director/writer Barney Cheng who also stars as Danny too and is allegedly based on his own personal experiences. Although a little too earnest in parts, and at least 20 minutes too long, Cheng’s take on how Chinese gay men have to deal with the pressures and expectations of their traditional cultures in a contemporary society is highly admirable. The movie is being compared to Ang Lee’s breakthrough movie the 1993 Oscar Nominated ‘The Wedding Banquet’ , suggesting that ‘Baby Steps’ takes over where that story left off. There are some remarkable touch points in both movies, the most noticeable of which is that the veteran Chinese actress Ya-Lei Kuei plays the mother in both films. Her performance this time around is by far the best as she so skillfully captures the angst of someone who clearly loves her son but is having such difficulty in accepting his world which is so alien to her.
The movie has a great heart and clearly shows that Cheng has great promise as a new filmmaker, but Ang Lee he is not, so to be fair this entertaining wee feel-good film with everyone living happily ever after should be judged on its own merits.
Mike Skiff’s illuminating new documentary on the Folsom Street Fair, one of San Francisco’s iconic gay events, starts off by dispelling a few of the myths that surround its 30 year history. Initially the Fair was created in 1984 as part of a growing protest movement that objected to the enforced gentrification of what previously had been one of the most blighted areas of the city. The inhabitants of the skid row houses and the working men bars were being forced out as the Authorities bulldozed their way through the area to put up shiny new expensive buildings.
This was also the height of the AIDS crisis, which would go on to decimate the city’s gay population so the advent of the Fair created an opportunity for much needed fund raising. Audrey Joseph a local activist stressed the point that the presence then of so many women supporters, who were the most accepting of AIDS victims, helped create a crucial space without judgments at the Fair
The whole area known as South of Market was already home to a plethora of leather bars which local historian Jack Fritscher Ph.D. explained had sprung up as bolt holes for gay hyper-masculine men who were not interested in the stereotypical roles that were most prevalent in the community at the time. Dr. Fritscher who also worked for Drummer the now defunct leather magazine talked about the oft misunderstood leather and BDSM community who came into its own then by promoting their safe sex practices. He explained said the whole concept of successful BDSM is sexual acts within agreed lines of limits to make sure each part is safe and pleasurable. It wasn’t an argument that sat well with the Authorities who at the time were panicking like everyone else and wanting someone to blame for this uncontrollable epidemic.
Skiff added “In the 1970s, Folsom Street was the West Coast’s mecca for anyone on their leather journey in life “ and his movie goes on explore why the Folsom Street Fair couldn’t have got started anywhere else but San Francisco.” When someone talks about Folsom Street Fair now the leather and fetish elements of the historic outdoor celebration of sexual diversity are likely what come to mind, and it follows the tradition of where members of the LGBT community are given the space to explore the full spectrum of their sexuality and queerness.
It’s the one time of the year when those into kink and fetish can literally dress anyhow and do anything they want and the Fair security staff who police the streets will only stop them if they engaging in full on sex. Evidently that you can do in any of the Bars on the strip.
Nowadays the Fair is not only a major social event it is also one that has an enormous economic impact on the city. Demetri Moshoyannnis the Executive Director estimates that San Francisco benefits to the tune of some $35.4 million in revenue, and the Fair itself raises some hundreds of thousands in profits that it distributes to fund important local non=profit organisations .
Twenty-something-year-olds Lukas, Mia and Jonas have been best friends since their childhood, but then three years ago this all changed. They fell in love with each other and became a very happy menage-a-trois. They decried society’s contempt for their unusual relationship and became totally committed to each other even though it meant making a break from their parents who vehemently disapproved of their arrangement.
Since then once a year every summer the trio went on a camping trip together touring the countryside where they were able to be completely free from everyone’s prying eyes and pointed fingers. This year however is different as Lukas has just been diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer and although the tight knit lovers agree to take an oath that the holiday should be focused just purely on joy, they soon realize that it is difficult to completely forget that this will be their very last summer together.
The trip starts off all light and love and it is surprising that they actually get to their first destination as they cannot keep their hands off each other and are always making out in the back of the van. However it is inevitable that they cannot avoid the elephant in the room especially when Lukas shares with them the Living Will that he has written that gives them both control rather than his estranged parents.
When he gets taken sick and Jonas is rushed into hospital the trio’s joy and hope has been replaced with fear and grief and they have to deal with the anger of Jonas’s parents who turn up and insist that the Doctors keep him alive even though that is exactly against his express wishes.
This sophomore film from German writer/director Timmy Ehegötz is overly melodramatic even given it’s themes. The three good-looking young leads play their parts passionately but despite this it still seems that there is not enough actual chemistry between them to convince us that their relationship is as deep and real as the script would have us believe.
This well-meaning movie is full of energy and brimming with enthusiastic performances and has a lot to commend it for particularly, in its attempt to de-mystify the whole thruple relationship concept.
Thirty-something-year-old ex Broadway chorus boy Michael has run out of options and is down on his luck and the only job he can get is teaching old ladies to dance. There are plenty of them here in sunny Florida and all of them are looking for ways to pass their time in their twilight years. His first client is feisty 75 year old wealthy widow Lily, but the two of them take an instant dislike to each other the moment he arrives at her oceanside apartment.
With a very short fuse on his temper combined with a natural talent to put his foot into his mouth every time he speaks, Michael is quickly shown the door by Lily, or the ‘tight assed old biddy’ as he called her. She is furious enough to go to the Dance Academy where he works to cancel her lessons and intends to get him fired too. However with some very nimble footwork he talks himself into getting a second chance. Then later he has to repeat this to get a third chance and a fourth etc right up to the sixth and last lesson.
Every time the pair meet they squabble like a pair of kids and take it in turns to be the aggrieved party until they kiss and make up yet again. Much of the agreements are about nothing of any real consequence, but then again neither is this movie either. Throw in a nosey neighbor who constantly complains, and the predictable discovery of Michael’s tough past and Lily’s uncertain future (she’s ill), and that is about the full sum of it all.
It is excruciatingly unfunny with a script that is embarrassingly lame in parts that turns grins into grimaces. The saddest part of it all is that the movie stars Hollywood royalty in the form of Gina Rowlands in one of her rare screen performances these days. Even her creditable valiant efforts could not turn this sow’s ear into a silk purse.
Cheyenne Jackson as Michael has the tough job of being tough on the old lady and simply fails to do it. He just cannot play mean. He at least was not quite so miscast as poor Julian Sands who is sadly so painfully uncomfortable being the penny-pinching bitter Dance Academy Owner. The cast is completed by Oscar winner Rita Moreno as the neighbor who has no life and equally no good lines too, and Jacqui Weaver as Irene who takes her time realizing that she is never going to get her hands down (obviously gay) Michaels pants!
Adapted from what was a successful play that even ran on Broadway for a while before becoming a hit regularly performed by repertory companies. I can only assume therefore that although it was adapted by its author Richard Alfieri that something somehow got lost on the way to the silver screen.
P.S. If you really need a fix of seeing the wonderful Ms Rowlands , then instead rent ‘Gloria’ or ‘A Woman Under The Infuence’,both written and directed by her late husband John Cassavetes,
When the movie opens with an overflowing blocked lavatory in a small Bed and Breakfast Guest House in Saugatuck, you panic slightly if this small indie comedy is headed down the toilet pan too. The place is run by Maggie and her ‘can’t get a date’ gay son Drew and as it is Thanksgiving they are planning for the imminent arrival of the daughter of the house who left town to find her fortune and a fiance. She also found ‘God’ too and has become of these homophobic self-righteous pricks who want to impose their own bible-laden morality on everyone else who is not nearly as holy as her. The ‘family’ is completed by Drew’s best friend Brett who once dated Penny but is now more in love with liquor, and two full time residents, LaQuisha an African-American tranny, and Roberta who looks like she should be someones grandmother.
Maggie lets slip that her cancer has returned and her only hope for survival is an expensive experimental treatment in Chicago which she simply cannot afford. Neither can penniless Drew, so he reluctantly goes along with Brett’s madcap scheme of usurping the work of Penny’s fiance who runs a Gay Conversion scheme. The reasoning behind this is that they can tour all the Evangelical Churches in the State and hit them up for people who will pay to ‘become straight’ and raise enough to pay for all of Maggie’s treatment.
As unbelievable as it is, their fraudulent plan works and soon they are coining in the money, but it is also the part of the movie where the comedy turns into a farce, some of which is too far fetched and forced to be funny.
The plot may be lame, and the script grimace- making at times, but for a refreshing change for small budget movie like this, it has some really good acting. Max Adler (‘Dave in TV’s Glee’) is a rather charming Drew; veteran Soap Star Judith Chapman (‘The Young & Restless’) is a very grounded Maggie; and talented actor/filmmaker Danny Mooney is a very likable Brett.
Credit too for the fine production values and particularly for the unexpectedly impressive soundtrack.
Whatever its faults, it is hard not to warm to this big-hearted indie small movie, which although may not have you rolling in the aisles, will have you grinning from time to time, which is never a bad thing. The best line belongs to Brett who wants to hand all his own savings to Drew towards Maggie’s treatment. His BF refuses saying ‘it’s your rainy day fund’ to which Danny quickly retorts ‘Dude, it’s pouring!’
In the back streets of Manila amidst a vibrant transsexual community Dorina who is known as the ‘Doc’, is the purveyor of quick fix beauty enhancements. In a culture obsessed with looks and glamour this ex-entertainer provides the necessary collagen implants so that the ‘lady-birds’ can be transformed into a replica of their favorite female celebrity. With the next round of the Miss Gay 2013 Pageant about to happen Dorina is kept very busy trying to make sure her ‘clients’ are pretty enough to win Best Face as well as Best Gown Categories.
Originally from Japan, she drags her young nephew around all her appointments, even to see the Spectacular Show that her boyfriend performs in for tourists. Their relationship is on the wane although he is still happy enough to fuck her as long as she doesn’t remind him about the remaining part of her masculinity which is evidently large than his.
Just as Dorina seems like she cannot keep up with the demand for her services, there is a fatal accident involving ‘Mamma’ who is trying to correct a procedure that went wrong on one of the girls, and suddenly Dorina starts having her serious doubts about the reality of her work. Especially when she discovers exactly what she has been inadvertently injecting instead of collagen like she thought.
This colorful drama from Filipino filmmaker Eduardo Roy Jnr gives an insightful look into this marginalised part of society and the high price they pay to achieve the lives they aspire too. It’s not simply all as dazzling and pretty as the costumes they like to deck themselves in.
P.S. If you have Trypanophobia or any other form of needle phobia, you may want to miss one, as there is an awful lot of them being used.
David Gold is a thirty-something year old man who is still trying to cling to his past when he was a successful child actor in a hit TV series. Now he is closeted gay alcoholic in total denial of so much more than his sexuality, including stage 3 skin cancer. The only work he can get these days is doing voice-overs for new age mood enhancing tapes but he gets fired from that job for being drunk and ‘sounding too gay’.
Now totally broke and about to be evicted from his shabby apartment where he hangs out all day watching VHS tapes of his old shows, he talks his way into a job doing the one thing he may be good at i.e. helping young people. To date that has just consisted of him being the means for them to get liquor from stores that won’t sell it to them, but now he espies an advertisement for a vacancy as a High School Guidance Counsellor. Having absolutely no qualifications for the job he ‘borrows’ them from a real Counsellor whom he discovers through Google. With a deft piece of identity theft he uses his acting skill to ape the man’s mantras about helping teenagers which he successfully repeats to a harried School Principal who is desperate to give him the job as he is about to leave on vacation the next day.
Complete in a creased corduroy suit and now wearing geeky glasses Roland Brown aka David Gold descends on the school ostensibly do a job that he has not got the faintest idea of how to go about. The other staff are very wary of him except for the gay gym teacher who refuses to believe that Roland is straight as he claims, and immediately starts to aggressively flirt with him. The students however soon take a shine to ‘Roland’ and his unconventional advice. When shy Rhonda comes to discuss the fact that she has no friends, he gives her a few vodka shots and implores her to just hit on the dumbest boy in her class. When Brett the school ‘pot’ dealer comes for a session Roland quickly discovers that his problem is that his potential is not being recognised by anyone in the school. That, and the fact he is selling the pot too cheap, but Roland fixes both of these things.
Jabrielle who plays truant regularly is however a much more serious case as Roland quickly realises that she is being abused at home. This unlikely pair of misfits bond and when eventually Roland is uncovered for being a fraud and is on the lam from the Law, its Jabrielle who hooks up with him as she has finally run away from home.
This rather wonderful oddball comedy is the work of Canadian filmmaker Pat Mills who wrote, directed and starred in it. Mills was once a child star, and in fact he had to pay 10 years of back Union dues to be eligible to act in his own movie. He has a remarkable delightful droll sense of humor that is quite black, totally politically incorrect but never ever mean. He has written himself some real corkers of lines like ‘Everybody knows that teenagers are going to drink and smoke drugs. If you do it with them, everybody has fun!”In a performance that has some animated camp touches that seem to be inspired in part to Pee Wee Herman he simply shines and is a real joy to watch.
If this really is what the path to self-destruction actually looks like, then I think more of us would give it a spin. With a shot (or two) of vodka in hand of course.
Four gay men of different generations are searching for love, and much more, one cold winter’s night in Philadelphia and this is the story of how their paths cross until the morning breaks.
Brian is a 30-something-year-old writer who is at the end of his tether as he has been unable to write a single word since the successful publication of his first book of poetry. He seeks solace in a local bar in which he is the sole drinker until Chris comes in and immediately hits on him. Chris fesses up to have a girlfriend back home in the burbs but just feels an urgent need to get some hot man-on-man action. Which is exactly what he gets back at Brian’s apartment but the moment their very passionate lovemaking finishes, Chris freaks out, and leaves a stranded Brian desperate to know what he had done wrong.
He shares his insecurities with his ex roommate whom he wakes up in the middle of the night insisting that they discuss his problems there and then. Dan is straight but he too had once shared an emotional and physical connection with him and now Brian wants to know why that ended if it was all as real as Dan claims.
Whilst all this is going on, in another part of town super-hot 22 year old model Jim is being very energetically fucked by Drew his older lover on the bench of his workshop. Drew is a successful famous artist who considers Jim his muse, but a disgruntled Jim just believes he is being treated as a kept boy and threatens to leave and move to NY.
After he storms out of the house in a huff, he encounters Brian, and they hook up, and after more even hotter sex, he quickly abandons needy Brian who is now getting a serious complex about the men who just cannot leave him fast enough. Jim meanwhile gets picked up by elderly Bob who has been cruising the streets all night in a big white limousine drinking heavily and looking to get lucky.
He doesn’t but others do when this intriguing wee film neatly comes to a climax and it is almost a case of all’s well that end’s well, but not quite.
Written and directed by Joseph Graham (‘Strapped’) this edgy and very sensual and unsentimental movie is by no means perfect but it’s forthright take on contemporary gay life ….. well, sex anyway …. is both refreshing and extremely entertaining. Evidently based on a true story, it has a good script which was very stylishly shot and with some rather excellent performances from newbie actor Brian Sheppard (Brian),hunky Zach Ryan (Jim),comedianGrant Lancaster (Dan)and established local actorColman Domingo (Drew).
It’s a glorious summer’s day in July but despite the sunny weather it seems like everyone is having a bad day. Well, for these three different sets of friends at least. Steve and Tristan who used to be an ‘item’ are wasting a few hours on arguing about the ethics on how forthcoming one should be with the truth when you start dating someone new. Josh goes back to his old girlfriend’s house to retrieve his grandmother’s ring that he gave to her when things were better only to be ambushed by her demands. To see them squabble now, it is actually hard to ever imagine they ever were an engaged couple.
The third story strand is between two best friends who spend the day catching up to discover that neither of them are happy with their lot right now and its going to take a great deal more than the wine they are knocking back to solve their problems.
Each of the scenes are way too long to the point of where you become totally disengaged and uninterested in the outcome which is probably just as well as the connection you hope will link them all together at the end can be described at best as tenuous.
This micro-budget dramedy written and directed by Brandon Deyette, who also stars in it, tries way too hard to be impartial in each of the stories/arguments that he takes all the potential fizz out of his wee film. It also stars porn actor Charlie Harding who sadly cannot act, and Sadako Pointer (one of The Pointer Sisters) who happily can.
Set in one of the shabbier areas in Bilbao in Northern Spain, this is a tale of racism, homophobia plus both unfulfilled and unrequited love. It’s the story of Ibra a 15 year-old youth who has fled Morocco and is living hand-to-mouth in an immigrants hostel and trying to survive on nothing but his wits. He however catches the attention of Rafa a local boy his age in a bathroom of all places. Although Rafa is part of a local macho gang who go around town menacing people, particular Arabs, knows he is somewhat different than the others.
Soon Rafa and Ibra start hanging out together most of the time, and they start to become quite close. Despite a lot of lingering looks into each other’s eyes and the occasional hand brushing over the other, they never quite get around to acting on their very obvious feelings. Rafa cannot even bring himself to talk about it with his best friend Guille, but then again he has also totally failed to notice that Guille is carrying a big torch for him anyway.
Its probably best anyway that Rafa and Ibra do not ever get to take their relationship further as Ibra entered Spain illegally and can be deported at any moment. Why he left his home country is never made clear, nor too is a secondary potentially powerful story strand about another tough immigrant who is devoted to his disabled brother .
In the end it turns out to be film mainly about innocence, and Mikel Rudeda the writer/director tries to amp up the drama with intense close up shots of the two boys intermingled with scenes of a bleak urban landscape and a soundtrack of gentle pop music. It feels however that just when the story is on the edge of developing into something a tad deeper, it holds back which is a disappointment as it never seems to fulfill its potential.
Nevertheless this gentle slow-paced indie movie has much to be admired and I’m sure it will find the audience it deserves.
When the movie opens with an overflowing blocked lavatory in a small Bed and Breakfast Guest House in Saugatuck, you panic slightly if this small indie comedy is headed down the toilet pan too. The place is run by Maggie and her ‘can’t get a date’ gay son Drew and as it is Thanksgiving they are planning for the imminent arrival of the daughter of the house who left town to find her fortune and a fiance. She also found ‘God’ too and has become of these homophobic self-righteous pricks who want to impose their own bible-laden morality on everyone else who is not nearly as holy as her. The ‘family’ is completed by Drew’s best friend Brett who once dated Penny but is now more in love with liquor, and two full time residents, LaQuisha an African-American tranny, and Roberta who looks like she should be someones grandmother.
Maggie lets slip that her cancer has returned and her only hope for survival is an expensive experimental treatment in Chicago which she simply cannot afford. Neither can penniless Drew, so he reluctantly goes along with Brett’s madcap scheme of usurping the work of Penny’s fiance who runs a Gay Conversion scheme. The reasoning behind this is that they can tour all the Evangelical Churches in the State and hit them up for people who will pay to ‘become straight’ and raise enough to pay for all of Maggie’s treatment.
As unbelievable as it is, their fraudulent plan works and soon they are coining in the money, but it is also the part of the movie where the comedy turns into a farce, some of which is too far fetched and forced to be funny.
The plot may be lame, and the script grimace- making at times, but for a refreshing change for small budget movie like this, it has some really good acting. Max Adler (‘Dave in TV’s Glee’) is a rather charming Drew; veteran Soap Star Judith Chapman (‘The Young & Restless’) is a very grounded Maggie; and talented actor/filmmaker Danny Mooney is a very likable Brett.
Credit too for the fine production values and particularly for the unexpectedly impressive soundtrack.
Whatever its faults, it is hard not to warm to this big-hearted indie small movie, which although may not have you rolling in the aisles, will have you grinning from time to time, which is never a bad thing. The best line belongs to Brett who wants to hand all his own savings to Drew towards Maggie’s treatment. His BF refuses saying ‘it’s your rainy day fund’ to which Danny quickly retorts ‘Dude, it’s pouring!’
s of Manila amidst a vibrant transsexual community Dorina who is known as the ‘Doc’, is the purveyor of quick fix beauty enhancements. In a culture obsessed with looks and glamour this ex-entertainer provides the necessary collagen implants so that the ‘lady-birds’ can be transformed into a replica of their favorite female celebrity. With the next round of the Miss Gay 2013 Pageant about to happen Dorina is kept very busy trying to make sure her ‘clients’ are pretty enough to win Best Face as well as Best Gown Categories.
