Urban chaos. Films reviewed: Crimes of the Future, The Divide
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Spring film festival season continues in June, when the idea of sitting in an air-conditioned movie theatre starts sounding better and better. The Female Eye film fest is on next Thursday through Saturday at the TIFF Bell Lighbox, showing films by female directors. Look out for Go On and Bleed about an American draft-dodger in 1971 — it’s directed by J. Christian Hamilton, host of Dementia 13, playing psychedelic music at this station. And if you’re down California way, catch the 3rd Annual Blue Water Film Festival, celebrating the United Nations World Oceans Day, with movies about Antartica, whales, oceans.
But this week I’m looking at two new movies — both opening this weekend in Toronto — about urban chaos and society in decline. There’s a film from France about an artist and a protester seeking refuge in a hospital; and another one from Canada about an artist who treats radical surgery as performance.
Wri/Dir: David Cronenberg
Picture a future where you don’t just sit in a chair, it latches onto you with grotesque bone-like appendages. It’s a world that diverged away from ours in the 1980s or 90s. People still carry huge clunky portable phones, they keep files in filing cabinets, and everything’s analogue. But technology has taken an unexpected turn — humans have “evolved”… drastically so. Pain and pleasure sensations have mainly disappeared, so people seeking sexual fulfillment might slice pieces of flesh of their lovers’ bodies… and then snack on it in a non-lethal, cannibalistic orgy. Government has largely collapsed, and police operate undercover in cels of corruption.
In this future world, Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen) and Caprice (Lèa Seydoux) are a celebrity couple known for their artistic performances. Fans flock to events where Caprice records Tenser cutting open his belly to excise fully-grown, tattooed organs from his body, organs that developed spontaneously. Afterwards they visit a clandestine quasi governmental office where two dry bureaucrats Timlin and Wippet (Kristen Stewart and Don McKellar) file their cases in the appropriate folders.
But there are complications. An undercover cop wants Tenser to be his informant. A young father named Lang (Scott Speedman) is also seeking out Lang and Caprice. He recently lost his son when his ex-wife murdered the boy because she didn’t like the way the boy ate plastic trashcans. He’s also stalking Tenser; but why?
Crimes of the Future is an extremely strange movie, maybe Cronenberg’s weirdest yet. Its full of sex, art and cringe-worthy gross-outs. Things like after Tenser gets a living-flesh zipper sewn into his belly, Caprice unzips it to performs oral sex on his gaping wound. It’s grotesque, but I’m not even revealing any of the most crucial horrific scenes. The costumes and special effects are terrific, and the locations (the movie was shot in Greece) are appropriately seedy and falling apart.
Does any of this make sense? Well it does, kinda.
It fools around with our fear of Big Pharma and the physical changes it could make to our bodies. It also deftly satirizes the worlds of art, celebrity and government. There’s an otherworldly feel to the whole movie, the stuff of dreams (or nightmares). It’s slow moving and very creepy but this isn’t a screamer-type horror movie, more of a constant supply of shock and yuck. Viggo Mortensen acts like a vampire or an unwrapped mummy, always shrouded in hoods and shawls, while Lèa Seydoux as Caprice is equal parts model and body-modification fanatic. Do I like this movie? Not exactly, it creeps me out and occasionally slides into the ludicrous, but I’m glad I saw it — with some of its images permanently burned into my brain’s synapses.
Wri/Dir: Catherine Corsini
Raf (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi) is a middle-aged, middle-class liberal cartoonist in Paris. She’s also a neurotic, relentless nag, given to sending countless text messages at 3 am. The recipient of the texts is her lover Julie (Marina Foïs), an editor and publisher who shares her bed. They live together along with Julie’s teenaged son. And Julie has had it — she wants to break up. And despite Raf’s pleas, she refuses to budge. They take their fight onto the street, but when Julie stomps away in anger, Raf slips and falls, ending up in hospital. But this is no ordinary day.
It’’s 2019 in Paris, and France is angry. Macron’s corporate and wealth taxes cuts, are making people angry. So are his austerity measures, cutting unemployment insurance and the general social Gas prices are rising, and surveillance cameras are appearing on the streets…So a huge coalition of truckers, precarious workers, and anarchists converge on the Champs Elysée to stop traffic and get noticed.
But the police crack down on the Yellow Vest protesters, sending dozens to hospital. So doctors and nurses are overworked and overwhelmed with patients. One is Yann (Pio Marmaï) a trucker in Paris just for the afternoon to check out the protests. He has shrapnel in his leg, and if he doesn’t get home by morning he’ll lose his job. Kim (Aïssatou Diallo Sagna) is a nurse in the hospital, dealing with the sudden influx of injured patients… and he own baby is not doing well. Meanwhile the police are trying to break in to arrest the injured protesters. And Raf and Julie’s teenaged son — who went to the demonstrations — is still missing. Can the chaos of the hospital bring these very different people together? Or is the divide too great?
The Divide is a terrific, realistic day in the life of a group of Parisians stuck in a crisis. I like the French title, La Fracture better, because it’s about Raf’s broken arm, but also about the huge divisions in French society. In its really warm and quirky view of diametrically opposed people forced to confront one another and work together, it humanizes all sides of the conflict. And there were lots of revelations — the yellow vests protesters were not right-wing followers of Le Pen… but they were angry at Macron. And while all this is going on, the on again, off again relationship of Raf and Julie, is resolved, one way or another by the end. The direction, script and acting are all just fantastic — Aïssatou Diallo Sagna won a César for best supporting actress and the film won the “Queer Palm” award as well. And after I watched it I remembered I‘ve seen this director’s work before, back in 2015; Summertime (La Belle Saison) was one of my favourite films that year. Which made me realize that this was no fluke, Corsini is a genius. The Divide is a wonderful warm human drama.
The Divide is playing at the Inside-Out film festival through Sunday; and Crimes of the Future opens 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
Daniel Garber talks with Kevin Hegge about TRAMPS!
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Photo by Jeff Harris.
It’s the late 1970s in a Covent Garden, London nightclub with an exclusive policy. To get in you have to look amazing in some way. An older man in blue jeans gets turned away at the door. The man is Mick Jagger, the place is Bowie Night at the Blitz Club and the doorman and organizer is Steve Strange. And so a new movement, born out of the ashes of punk, is dubbed the New Romantics by the mainstream press. But who were these tramps, really?
Tramps! Is a new documentary that looks in depth at East London in the early 1980s, along with the art, fashion, film, music, hats, makeup, hair, magazines, sexualities, aesthetics and lifestyles that grew out of it. It’s a stunningly beautiful kaleidoscope of colour, a collection of period photos and footage combined with new interviews with the main players. And it talks about the celebrities who emerged from it, like Boy George, Leigh Bowery, Derek Jarman, Phillip Sallon, Judy Blame, and many others.
Tramps is the work of award-winning Toronto filmmaker Kevin Hegge, whom I last interviewed on this show back in 2012 about his documentary She Said Boom: The Story of Fifth Column.
I spoke with Kevin Hegge in Toronto, via Zoom.
Tramps! is premiering in Toronto at the Inside Out film festival on May 31st, 7 pm, at the TIFF Bell Lightbox.
Life changes. Films reviewed: Dating Amber, No Hard Feelings, Keyboard Fantasies: the Beverly Glenn-Copeland Story at #InsideOut30
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Fall festival season continues with Toronto’s Inside Out LGBT festival playing now both digitally and at drive-ins through the weekend. So this week I’m looking at three movies playing at Inside Out. There’s love amongst refugees in present-day Germany, an odd-ball relationship in Ireland in the 90s, and a Canadian musician whose fantasies finally come true in his seventies.
Keyboard Fantasies: The Beverly Glenn Copeland Story
Dir: Posey Dixon
Beverly is a musician who grows up in a comfortable middle class home in post-war Philadelphia. Her father is a classical pianist and her mother sings spirituals at church. They send her to McGill in the early 1960s, where she is one of the first black students in her discipline, and where she comes out as a lesbian, virtually unheard of at the time, when homosexuality was still illegal in Canada. Later, she moves to Toronto where the Yorkville scene is nurturing folk musicians like Joni Mitchell. She cuts an eponymous record album with famous players on backup, in a unique style, combining jazz with blues and classical music. Unfortunately it disappears without a trace. She finds work as a musician and on TV – she is a regular on Mr Dressup! – but eventually moves into an isolated house in Muskoka with her lover.
In the 1980s she discovers computer-generated electronic music and self-produces a cassette of beautiful passionate songs. It sells maybe a few dozen copies. But in the 2000s, two big things happen: First Beverly realizes he’s trans, and begins transitioning female-to-male; and in the 2010s his album Keyboard Fantasies from the mid-80s is rediscovered in a tiny record shop in Japan. The owner requests more copies – all of which sell out in a day or two. The record is remastered and re-released and goes viral, and Beverly in his mid-seventies, is sudden’y a star with a devoited following. He embarks on a European tour backed up by a band of millennial hipsters and adoring young fans.
Keyboard Fantasies is a fascinating documentary about Beverley Glenn Copeland’s life, music and career. It’s filled with unusual psychedelic imagery, and upside-down and negative-coloured camera work reflecting the sudden reversals of Beverly’s own gender and career. His music is captivating, his voice sublime, and his life story like none other. This tale of rebirth in old age is a beautiful history not to be missed.
Dir: Faraz Shariat
Parvis (Benny Radjaipour) is a young, gay German with dyed blond hair who lives in his family home in Hannover. He’s into sex, dancing and Sailor Moon. His Iranian parents sought asylum there 40 years earlier, to give their kids a better life, but he feels unmotivated, cut-off and trapped in limbo between two worlds. Raised within German pop-culture he knows nothing about Iranian dance or music. At home he speaks Farsi with a German accent, but the men he meets in gay bars constantly ask “where are you from?” (He’s from there!) But his life changes when, after being caught shoplifting, he is sentenced to community service as a translator at a refugee centre.
There he meets an adult sister and brother, a pair that seem almost joined at the hip, who eventually become his friends. They live together almost like lovers. Banafshe (Banafshe Hourmazdi) is outgoing and savvy, fluent in German, but facing deportation back to Iran. Her brother Amon (Eidin Jalali) is a nice guy but a bit stand-offish. He tells the flamboyant Parvis not to be seen with him at the refugee centre; his friends told him gayness is contagious. But the situation changes when the brother and sister spend the night at Parvis’s home. Parvis and Amon become lovers but are forced to keep it on the down low, constantly searching for secret places they can meet undetected. Will their love last? Can Amon and Bana gain refugee status in Germany or will she be deported? And can Parvis find his identity both within his family and in the larger German gay community?
No Hard Feelings is a touching and realistic drama about cultural and sexual alienation set within the vast and lethargic bureaucracy of the country’s immigration machine. It’s a distinctly German story, but one told mainly in Farsi and from that point of view. Good acting with some beautiful cinematography as well as occasional experimental, stylized footage. This is a great story about a subculture rarely represented on film. And it won the Inside Out prize for Best First Feature.
Wri/Dir: David Freyne
It’s Ireland in 1995. Homosexuality was decriminalized just two years earlier, divorce is still against the law, and sex education is taught by nuns. Eddie (Fionn O’Shea: Handsome Devil) is a student at a rural high school outside of Dublin near an army base. He’s wants to become a cadet to please his dad but he’s not the right type; he’s frail, naïve and skittish. And he has a crush on his (male) math teacher. Amber (Lola Petticrew) is a plain-talking girl with blue streaks in her hair, who walks like she’s wearing army boots. She lives in a trailer with her mom since her father died. She’s saving up enough money to move to London after graduation to open an anarchist bookstore. She likes punk rock, but hates penises – they make her “vom” she says. Like Eddie, she’s bullied on a daily basis. Why? Because they’re both gay (though Eddie won’t admit it). So Amber comes up with a plan. Let’s pretend to be a couple until we graduate, so they’ll leave us alone. Will it work? Will it last? And what will it lead to?
Dating Amber is a terrific coming-of-age comedy about an unusual relationship in rural Ireland. It draws on a wry nostalgia for the 90s – fashion, hairstyles, pop music and attitudes — to construct some very real, funny characters. It’s romantic, hilarious, and deeply touching. This is a great movie.
Dating Amber, No Hard Feelings, and Keyboard Fantasies: the Beverly Glenn-Copeland Story are all playing at the Inside Out Festival which continues through the weekend. Go to insideout.ca for details.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com.
Daniel Garber talks with filmmaker Emma Seligman about Shiva Baby
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Danielle is a woman living the high life in New York City. She’s young, pretty and smart, finishing her BA and looking for work. In the meantime she’s shacking up in a Soho flat with a very generous, older boyfriend named Max in a pecuniary relationship. He thinks he’s paying her way through law school. But her delicate web of lies and deceptions threatens to unravel when she finds herself at a party she doesn’t want to attend. Well, not exactly a party, it’s a shiva, a Jewish, post-funeral get-together with family and friends of the deceased. And who shows up? Maya, her former best friend from high school with whom she once had a relationship; and Max, the guy she’s sleeping with now. Add an intrusive mother, an oblivious father, some nosy relatives telling cringe-worthy stories, some awful coincidences, and a few key embarrassing accidents, and there you have it: Danielle’s shiva from hell.
Shiva Baby is a dark comedy that adds a new twist to the classic screwball genre. It deals with family, sex work, secrets and lies, romance, eating disorders, hidden pasts and uncomfortable presents, It’s written and directed by Toronto-born, NY-based filmmaker Emma Seligman. Shiva Baby is her first feature.
I spoke with Emma in Toronto from my home via ZOOM.
Shiva Baby screened at TIFF20, SXSW and is currently playing at Toronto’s LGBT Inside Out Film Festival.
Light on their feet. Dykes in the Street, We are the Radical Monarchs, Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind, Diamantino
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Spring festival season continues in Toronto with Inside Out LGBT Film Festival. It premiers queer movies and docs from around the world. This week I’m talking about films at InsideOut and some general releases.There’s a musician who’s a light foot, a soccer player who is light on his feet, and some women marching in solidarity, boots on the ground.
Inside Out LGBT Film Festival
Inside Out opened last night and runs for the next 10 days. It features some major releases, like the Elton John Biopic Rocketman, Mindy Kaling’s Late Night, and the latest chapters in Armistead Maupin’s amazing serial Tales of the City.
I’m not allowed to talk about any of those films yet, but let me tell you about a couple of great new docs on radical lesbians.
Dir: Almerinda Travassos
…looks at the evolution of the dyke march in Toronto over the past 35 years. It started in 1981 with 300 women matching down Yonge and Bay streets organized by Lesbians Aganst the Right. This informative documentary combines talking heads with historical footage from the period. It talks to women who were there then and at subsequent marches ten, fifteen and thirty-five years later, as it becomes more inclusive and diverse.
Another radical lesbian documentary is shot in Oakland California:
Dir: Linda Goldstein Knowlton
…tells about a new alternative to scouts and girl guides. Founded by Anayvette Martinez and Marilyn Hollinquest the Radical Monarchs go camping, learn fun songs and chants and earn badges. But they also wear berets reminiscent of the Black Panther Party, and learn about social justice activism and black and brown history in Oakland. There’s even a Black Lives Matter badge! Adorable kids working for a good cause.
These are just a few of the dozens of great movies playing at InsideOut.
Wri/Dir: Gabriel Abrantes, Daniel Schmidt
Diamantino (Carloto Cotta) is a Portuguese soccer player at the top of his game. Like no other player, he can weave his way through a crowded field as if he’s all alone. His secret power? he sees other players as enormous fluffy pink dogs frolicking in the grass. That’s the source of his success. Diamantino is fit, popular and incredibly rich. He owns a mansion and a yacht. He’s also naïve, gullible and very stupid. Which makes him vulnerable to adversaries and villains alike.
When he first encouters refugees he is so upset he decides to adopt a teenaged boy from Africa who loves soccer. What he doesn’t realize is the “teenaged refugee” is actually the much older Aisha (Cleo Tavares) a gorgeous, lesbian secret agent. She is working undercover to find evidence of fraud and corruption in Diamantino’s many businesses.
Diamantino also has twin sisters, Sonia and Natasha (Anabela and Margarida Moreira), the real villains. They depend on their brother to finance their lavish lifestyle and don’t want to lose it… so they start spying on the spy. Something seems suspicious about that boy. Throw in some right-wing nationalists who want Diamantino to endorse their
cause, and an evil scientist named Dr Lamborghini (Carla Maciel) – who drives a Lamborghini! – and you can see all the obstacles our hero has to face. Can Diamantino survive a cruel world and remain a soccer great?
Diamantino is a bizarre and fantastical comedy, an explosion of pastel eye-candy across the screen. It’s told in an exaggerated storybook style, but deals with important issues. I can’t keep calling every movie “like nothing you’ve ever seen” but it’s safe to say this one really is.
I liked this one a lot.
Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind
Wri/Dir: Martha Kehoe, Joan Tosoni
Like many Canadians I’ve heard of Gordon Lightfoot and vaguely familiar with some of his songs. But before watching this documentary I knew little about his life. Originally from Orillia Ontario, he worked his way through the folk scene in Toronto’s Yorkville and NY City’s Greenwich Village. He studied music in LA and learned to compose and arrange at an early stage, and began writing his poetic lyrics even earlier. His widely covered songs range from traditional folk melodies, to country and western, pop, rock and even the long neglected ballad genre. (The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald – a six-and-a-half minute retelling of a shipwreck the year before, became an unexpected smash hit in the 1970s.)
This movie fills in a lot of gaps about his music, his career, personal problems (like alcoholism) and the meaning behind many of his lyrics. It shows him composing, recording and performing his hits, giving an inside perspective rarely seen. My only criticism is it didn’t need the overwrought ass-kissery, celebrity musicians gushing about how great Lightfoot is. (He knows it, and we know it – it feels like a eulogy, and he’s very much alive.) Luckily, that only takes up about 10-15 minutes. The rest of the documentary is
outstanding, with unequalled visual and sound research. They found a recording of him singing in the church choir as a teenager, and footage of him chatting with Alex Trebec in the 1960s. There are countless family photos and films and period shots of Toronto streets meticulously covering sixty years. Just amazing. And all his best songs and performances spread out from beginning to end, getting better and better as it goes.
I went in expecting nothing, and was blown away by this great music doc.
Gordon Lightfoot and Diamantino both open today in Toronto at Hot Docs cinema and theTiff Bell Lightbox, respectively. Check your local listings. Dykes in the Street and We are the Radical Monarchs are two of many fine movies at Inside Out over the next 10 days.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Daniel Garber talks with director Sarah Fodey about The Fruit Machine at Inside Out
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Canada finished WWII riding high as the fourth biggest military power in the world. Then came the Cold War and the red scare it inspired — a widespread panic about communist infiltration.
They look just like you and me, and might be hiding in plain sight... In the ensuing crackdown, another group was also labeled insidious, morally corrupt, and unpatriotic.
Who were these potential spies? And how could they be detected?
These “spies” were actually just ordinary lesbian, gay or bisexual Canadians, “detected” using a device the RCMP jokingly named the fruit machine. Suspects were locked in rooms, interrogated, forced to confess and expose friends and lovers. They were fired from their jobs, humiliated and ostracized.
A new documentary called The Fruit Machine looks at this terrible period and the effect it had on generations of Canadians. It tells about a dark side of history: over half a century of relentless persecution of gays and lesbians in the civil service and military.
The films was written, directed and produced by Sarah Fodey for TVO Docs. It has its world premier today at 4 pm at Toronto’s Inside Out LGBT film festival.
I spoke to Sarah about The Fruit Machine by telephone at CIUT 89.5 FM.
Unrequited Lust. Films reviewed: On Chesil Beach, Hurley, M/M
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com.
Inside out, Toronto’s LGBT film fest is on now, premiering movies from around the world, from Thailand to South Africa and showcasing innovative short films by new directors.
Unrequited love is a common theme, but what about unrequited lust? This week I’m looking at three movies — two dramas and a doc. There’s a honeymoon couple whose marital bliss isn’t; a racing car driver with a need for speed, and a guy in Berlin who lusts after a lookalike… in a coma.
Dir: Dominic Cooke, based on Ian McEwan’s novel
It’s England in 1962. Florence (Saorise Ronan) is a confident musician who leads a string quintet in Oxford. She comes from an uptight, stuck up, and upper class Tory family. Edward (Billie Howle) is a country bumpkin from a rural home a bus ride away. He’s emotionally raw and quick to anger. He can’t tell a baguette from a croissant but can identify a bird just from its call.
He comes from an eccentric family, with pre-raphaelite twin sisters, a kindly father, and an artist mother suffering from a brain injury. She can’t remember new names and takes off her clothes in public. Florence and Edward meet at random at a nuclear disarmament meeting (CND) and it’s love at first sight. She loves his realness and disdain for money and social conventions. And he is stricken by her beauty, her musical skills, and most of all her kindness – she can even pull his mother out of her shell. They marry.
But the honeymoon at a second rate hotel on a pebble-strewn beach starts bad and gets worse. The closer they get to the marital bed, the farther they get from sex. And after a disastrous attempt, they flee the bedroom for the rocky beach. Can true love rescue an awful honeymoon? Or will this be the end?
On Chesil Beach is a moving look at relationships, and a bit of a tear jerker, too. Though the beach scenes are at its centre, the film flashes back in time to reveal crucial secrets — and into a possible future — as the two lovers have it out. While not a perfect movie, I’ve seen it twice now and I liked it better the second time… which is a good sign.
Wri/Dir Derek Dodge
Daytona, Florida is the site of a renowned race car competition, where teams speed along a circuit keeping their cars running for 24 hours without stopping. The drivers too have to continue functioning at high speeds negotiating perilous turns while fighting exhaustion. Even a momentary break in concentration could lead to a crash.
Machismo rules, and winners flaunt their masculinity and sense of cool. It’s a world filled with photo-ops beside bikini-clad penthouse models, aboard expansive yachts. It’s also a big-money professional sport, whose champions land lucrative endorsements, prize money, sponsorships and cushy positions at car dealerships. Image is everything.
The kings of Daytona have long been the Brumos Porsche team, who drove to victory in the 1970s under Peter Gregg. He was arrogant and successful. He was later joined by Hurley Haywood, a shy but highly skilled racer. Together they were known as Batman and Robin. Eventually Haywood headed the team himself in Daytona and La Mans, chalking up countless wins. This new documentary chronicals Haywood’s career and his personal life.
So why is a movie about race cars playing at Inside Out?
Because Hurley Haywood is the first race car champ to publicly come out as gay… which makes this film a historic record.
Hurley is a squeaky-clean documentary about the famous race car driver, and is mainly of interest to fans of that sport, whom, I am told, are legion. I’m not one of them, but could still appreciate the cool cars and vintage pics. I felt like I was playing with hot wheels again.
Wri/Dir: Drew Lint
Matthieu (Antoine Lahaie) is a Montrealer living in a small apartment in Berlin. During the day he works as a lifeguard at a local swimming pool (or does he?). At night he’s clubbing to flashing lights and dark shadows. And then there are his dreams – realistic visions of interactions with stone statues and human flesh. (He rarely meets living people.)
One day he encounter Matthias (Nicolas Maxim Endlicher) online and follows him into the swimming pool showers. Matthias has a thin moustache, a buzz cut and a perfectly symmetrical body and face. The words Sodom and Gomorrah are tattooed on his torso. He works as a fashion model and poses for a digital sculpture created using a 3-D printer. Matthieu is infatuated with Matthias, mimics his style, and stalks him to his apartment window. It’s a minimalist palace of white walls, blown-up black and white photos and a chin-up bar. Matthieu longs to meet him, but there’s no real connection. But when Matthias falls into a coma after a crash, Matthieu — like Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley — moves into his home and takes over his life. Soon he has a parade of sex
partners visiting him who thinks he’s the other guy. But what will happen to Matthew when Matthias comes home? And how far will one M go to duplicate, or replace, the other M?
M/M is a highly stylized, dreamlike and surreal look at superficial relationships and the dangers they pose. This Berlin is inhabited only by gay fashion plates in their twenties, posing against shiny white surfaces or pausing for sexual release in washrooms or saunas. Most dialogue is disjointed telephone conversations or short texts sent on gay dating sites; and the sex scenes fall somewhere between MMA and interpretive dance.
The story is intentionally ambiguous, so you never know if you’re seeing dreams, fantasies or actual events, nor even which M is dreaming what. Still, this dazzling art-house fest of image and music manages to hold together.
This is the best movie I’ve seen at Inside Out, but if you miss it there, it opens commercially on June 1.
On Chesil Beach opens today in Toronto; check your local listings. Hurley and M/M are both playing at the Inside Out Film Fest.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Daniel Garber talks with director Jac Gares about her new film Free CeCe! at Inside Out
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
In June, 2011 in St. Paul Minnesota, an African-American woman and her friends were taunted by a group of white supremacists they encountered on the street. A white woman assaulted her, cutting her face, followed by a violent attack by a white man. The situation escalated when the woman under attack pulled out a scissors to defend herself. The man ended up dead, the woman charged with murder. Her name is CeCe McDonald and she’s a transgendered black woman whose story has captured the interest of activists around the world.
Free CeCe! is a new documentary that tells her story. It’s about the violence, injustice and incarceration faced by transgender people of colour. It is directed by Jacqueline “Jac” Gares an award-winning TV director and filmmaker. Free CeCe! is her first documentary feature film, and it’s having its Canadian premier at Toronto’s Inside Out Film Festival on Sunday, May 28th.
I spoke with Jac in studio at CIUT 89.5 FM via telephone to New York City.
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