Cultural Mining

Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.

As the nights grow colder and the leaves turn red, it’s time for Hallowe’en and all the movies that come with it. But Hallowe’en needn’t only mean horror, there are fairy stories, fables and folktales. So this week I’m looking at three new movies with a touch of magic. There’s a mythical gay universe in Paris, a dingy village in the middle ages, and a hidden kingdom in Portland, Oregon. 

Jim Queen

Dir: Nicolas Athané, Marco Nguyen

Jim Parfait is the best-built body-builder in all of gay Paris. A hugely popular influencer, he rules the nightclubs and has the most followers on instagram. The events he hosts has line-ups around the block.  He’s the undisputed king of the castle. He’s also a cold and selfish egotist. Until, one day, the unthinkable happens, his 8-pack abs suddenly look flabby. He has an urge to watch sports, sit on a couch drinking beer and ogling women — could it be? Is it possible? Jim Parfait is turning straight! A plague is spreading like wildfire throughout the gay community, a virus known as Heterosis, that turns any gay man heterosexual.

Meanwhile, a wispy young prince with pale skin and blond hair named Lucien stares wistfully out his palace window. He worships Jim Parfait, but only from afar. He’s never allowed out of his ivory tower. His strict mother, Christine, forbids him from leaving the castle. He seeks solace in his walk-in closet, full of sex toys, and gay porn, which he keeps hidden from his deeply conservative Mama. She is France’s Minister of Health but refuses to do anything to stop the gay plague.

So naive Lucien decides to escape from his chambers to rescue Jim — and maybe experience gay life for the first time. Together, can they find the cure for Heterosis?

Jim Queen is an extremely funny French animated comedy, set within a satirical version of contemporary gay culture. It’s sort of a raunchy fairytale, complete with trolls, ogres, a vapid but handsome prince, a captive princess and an evil stepmother.  It deftly satirizes all the stereotypical gay subcultures, starting with the body-building Gym Queens of the title. There are literal bears (called Ro-bear, Hu-bear) and drag queens, like the heroic, aging Glamydia,

I’m generally not a fan of drag culture and camp, I find it squirmy, kitschy, and usually unfunny.  But here every joke lands perfectly, I was laughing non-stop. This is truly, brilliantly hilarious. 

Jim Queen is an A-1 comedy.

Wicker

Wri/Dir: Alex Huston Fischer, Eleanor Wilson (Save Yourselves! review)

It’s the middle-ages. somewhere in Europe. Fisher (Olivia Coleman) is a fisherwoman who lives on the outskirts of a small village. She goes to town every few days to sell her catch, but nobody gets too close: she’s dirty and smells like fish. So she lives vicariously, watching the happy tailors, bakers, and bottle cleaners living their lives. And she always shows up for a local wedding, mainly for the food and wine. But she finds the odd ceremony — where a metal collar is locked around a new bride’s neck to show she belongs to her husband — ridiculous. She’d rather remain a virgin all her life than to wear something like that. Instead she decides to have a different sort of marriage.  She hires out the Master Wicker Weaver — a clever man with a touch of magic (Peter Dinklage) — and hires him to make her husband. Sure enough, one moon later, a tall, strong man built entirely out of wicker (Alexander Skarsgård), shows up at her door. They are married at once, and their honeymoon activities sends the marital bed crashing to the floor. He’s the ideal husband, kind, attentive, and sexually satisfying. He mends her thatched roof, takes over her chores. Soon the women in the village are seething with jealousy, and its up to their defacto leader, the rich and beautiful tailors wife (Elizabeth Debicki)  to ruin their marriage. Is their love true? And can it survive all the suspicion, rumours and innuendos all around them?

Wicker is a satirical, sexual comedy in the form of a very cute fable. It’s set in a mythical medieval village — shot in Hungary — but one that bears a close resemblance to our own lives from its colour-blind, multi-ethnic cast to its gender and class politics. And it looks at things through a contemporary lens — lovely costumes that you could easily wear nowadays — and deals with sex and relationships like any daytime talk show. Much of it is tongue-in- cheek, within a darkly humorous context, but you do care about what happens. Olivia Coleman is hilarious and racy as the fisherwoman and Skarsgård is a perfect straw man in his usual, impenetrable way.

What can I say? If you want to watch a cute and funny take on sex and gender, Wicker is for you.

Wildwood

Dir: Travis Knight (Masters of the Universe: review)

Prue McKeel is a young girl in Portland, Oregon who finds herself trapped deep in the woods. She ended up there after a murder of crows snatched her baby brother Mac, and flew away with him. She, along with her nerdy school friend Curtis (who has a crush on her), chased the birds out of the city and across an old railway bridge. And now she’s in the very forest  — the “Impassable Wilderness” her hippy parents have always warned her about. Up to now, she’s always considered their stories fairytales means for kids, and she’s not immature anymore. But now that everything has gone topsy-turvy, she understands what they meant.

There are soldiers here in red coats, carrying bayonets — and they’re coyotes, not humans! And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. She’s rescued by a mail truck, and driven into a city where animals and people exist side-by side. There’s an owl who is a crown prince, an opportunistic politician, a Governess Dowager who is dabbling in the Dark Arts, a gang of bandits, a turgid bureaucracy, a tribe of druids who talk to a tree and many, many others. All of whom see her as an “outsider” who somehow breached their magical barriers. And many of the people (and animals) she encounters want to put Prue in prison, or to use her for their own nefarious purposes. 

Why did they kidnap her brother? And can Prue find Curtis, rescue Mac, and escape from this strange world? 

Wildwood is a wondrous animated adventure about a girl on a mission in a strange, steampunk world existing right beside ours. Though it hints at HG Wells and Alice in Wonderland, coexisting beside a hippy-dippy Portland, it’s totally original and unpredictable. The story is fast-moving and constantly changing, but ultimately heads toward a monumental climax (no spoilers).  You really care about the characters, and there are many, each with their own look, voice and personality (voiced by Peyton Elizabeth Lee as Prue and a first-rate cast: Jacob Tremblay, Carey Mulligan, Tom Waits, Mahershala Ali, Tantoo Cardinal, Richard E Grant, Angela Basset, and Awkwafina)

But it’s the stop-motion animation that stands out. Laika studios makes fantastic stuff — with intricate detail and facial expressions; you can see every feather on a bird’s back. I will watch anything they produce — Coraline, Boxtrolls, ParaNorman— and Wildwood is one of their best.  

This is a great movie.

Wildwood, Wicker, and Jim Queen all open this weekend in Toronto; check your local listings. 

This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website  culturalmining.com