FRAMELINE36—FOUR (2012)

It seems anymore that an American independent doesn't have sufficient credibility unless it's mounted one or two successful crowd sourcing campaigns. Joshua Sanchez's performance-driven feature debut Four (2012) [Official site / Facebook] has managed to achieve just that, securing its requisite $5,000 in Kickstarter funds for the film to traffic to its world premiere at the recent Los Angeles Film Festival. I usually suffer from compassion fatigue when it comes to Kickstarter campaigns—as a film writer I'm hit up by every project imaginable—but, supporting Four was a no-brainer. This film—adapted from the play by Pulitzer Prize finalist and Obie winner Christopher Shinn—brightens the cinematic landscape with its eschewal of lazy softcore porn for an authentic and complex treatment of gay characters.

Initial reviews from L.A. have been stellar. At Variety—though couched in staged reservations—Andrew Barker notes that Four spotlights "a quartet of furiously committed performances, ...burnished by vivid, atmospheric lensing." At indieWire, Emma Bernstein characterizes Four as "a quiet and poetic meditation on the solitude of the human condition." At Ioncinema, Nicholas Bell states that Four "manages to create a brooding atmosphere that slowly tightens its grip, sloughing off familiar tropes concerning race and sexuality and hitting enough subtle notes to become more intense the more quiet it becomes."

In the Bay Area, where Four is featured in the 36th edition of San Francisco's Frameline Film Festival, Jackson Scarlett observes in his festival capsule that Four "upends typical expectations of race and gender, reading Shinn's drama with an intensity that invariably invites comparison to the early films of Neil LaBute for its candor, carnality, and explicit focus on the mechanics of longing." LaBute, in fact, serves as Four's Executive Producer. At the SF Bay Times, Gary Kramer writes: "An outstanding character study, Four boasts a quartet of brilliant performances—with [Wendell] Pierce in particular a standout—and a seductive rhythm that will rivet viewers as the characters come to terms with themselves and each other."

Wendell Pierce—familiar to fans of HBO programming The Wire and Treme—bravely tackles the role of Joe, a closeted black, middle-aged, married man out on an internet sex date with young white teenager June (Emory Cohen). indieWire asserts that "Pierce steals the show with his multi-layered performance that is often best at its quietest: small facial movements and seemingly inarticulate grunts illustrate everything the character is unable to say aloud." Variety adds that Pierce manages "to convey Joe's warm, big-brotherly qualities alongside his sexual menace" and argues that—as "the film's most pronounced relationship"—its illegality is neither judged nor whitewashed and "might almost seem an argument for old-school Athenian pederasty."

That argument wouldn't have any credence were it not for the hungry reciprocity of June in a knockout performance by Emory Cohen, familiar to fans as the troubled son on Smash. Brooding, petulant, indecisive but anxious for experience, Cohen tempers longing with self-loathing in one of the most accurate portrayals of teenage sexuality this reviewer has seen in some time. June's shift from cagey indecision to seductive certainty is one of the film's most sensual moments, even as its hidden truth is painfully accentuated by the expressions of fear and disgust flickering over June's face during his uncomfortable sex with Joe. That truth—that a young man must do whatever he has to do to gain experience and find himself—is both sad and sobering.

Consummate performances are also achieved by E.J. Bonilla as the thoroughly charismatic and wisecracking Dexter striving to find an identity past the fading glory of his high school basketball years. In a brilliant stroke of sound design, Michael McMenomy layers in the sound of a dribbling basketball when Dexter and Abigayle first kiss. Aja Naomi King delivers a tortured performance as Abigayle, Dexter's love interest and Joe's daughter who—with considerable less back story than the other characters—beautifully suggests the damage inflicted by her father's not-so-secret indiscretions.

Shinn's script and Sanchez's adaptation offer insights riddled with conflicted American values. Offering to buy June some fireworks to celebrate the Fourth of July (the quintessential American holiday), June protests that fireworks are illegal in their town, to which Joe responds that breaking the law is a core American quality. This scofflaw attitude concerns not only their sexual liaison, but suggests that the rules that need to be broken are those that demand people desire in certain ways, when in truth they must desire elsewise. At film's end, Joe offers June a gift of condoms and sparklers: a transgressive blessing that confirms that rules must be broken in order to discover an authentic self.

Four plays Framline36 on Thursday, June 21, 7:00PM at the Castro Theatre. Expected guest: director Joshua Sanchez.

FRAMELINE36—JOBRIATH A.D. (2011)

It's difficult for a young person in their teens or early 20s to have a conscious sense of how they are an active part of cultural history; its living embodiment, in fact. More often than not this is an insight privileged from the vantage of distance, decades later, when one looks back nostalgically from the reflective comfort of the armchair. This week I've had two flights back to the late '60-early '70s. First, Sheila Weller's welcome reassessment of 1967's Summer of Love ("Suddenly That Summer") published in the July 2012 issue of Vanity Fair, and secondly Kieran Turner's Jobriath A.D. (2011), screening this evening at the 36th edition of San Francisco's Frameline Film Festival.

Queer history applies different research methods in its practice. Familiar facts are either recontextualized through a queer perspective so that they accommodate the reclamatory fantasy of the queer historical project (as in Matthew Mishory's Joshua Tree, 1951: A Portrait of James Dean, 2012), or personages are recovered from the margins and ellipses of history, redeemed from inference and resituated into subject significance, as in the case of Jobriath Boone, né Bruce Wayne Campbell who was—as Michael Hawley notes in his capsule—"a handsome and talented former Hair cast member who became the first openly gay rock musician signed by a major record label. Jobriath was hyped as the 'new David Bowie' by svengali music promoter Jerry Brandt, with thousands of bus ads and a billboard on Times Square, all before a single note was recorded."

Turner's documentary is as much about Jerry Brandt's promotional excesses as it is about the unfortunate media disaster known as Jobriath. Ample screen time is given Brandt to justify his failed executive decisions, which in retrospect don't seem so off mark, even for being admitted gambles. Just as Hair was a successful reaction to the Summer of Love detailed by Weller in her Vanity Fair piece, Brandt was convinced Jobriath would do well as they "rode the wave in" to New York on the coattails of the Gay and Lesbian movement of the early '70s. Perhaps one of the most poignant points made in Turner's documentary is the lack of support Jobriath received from the gay press during his bid for fame and how—all these decades later—Jobriath might just receive his long overdue recognition and perhaps (as Brandt enthuses in a chilling bit of irony) a Broadway treatment. I don't know whether to say everything old is new again or a prophet has no honor in his own country.

Without question, Jobriath was an artist ahead of his time and—true to mythologist Joseph Campbell's assertion that misunderstood artists are the martyred saints of modern times—there's a Catholic impulse to light a candle for Jobriath's failed artistic experiment sacrificed to the fickle malcontents of the public imaginary. Turner's documentary addresses the way that gay men have had to reinvent themselves in order to survive social persecution, relying on the masks of persona to both conceal and reveal themselves. This "acting out" is conceived as both creative agency and a desperate cry for acceptance. Ambivalent gender as masquerade becomes performance art subject to uncertain reception.

Some of the film's most difficult subjects are tackled through animation (left curiously uncredited at both film's end and IMDb). How Jobriath's advertising campaign is homophobically defaced, how heterosexist imagery trumps gay erotic expression in the commercial games where "sex sells everything", and how Jobriath's chance to successfully reinvent himself as cabaret singer Cole Berlin becomes a warped record that ushers in the AIDS years, are all simply but effectively presented.



Jobriath A.D. plays Framline36 on Tuesday, June 19, 9:30PM at the Victoria Theatre. Expected guest: director Kieran Turner.

FRAMELINE36—JOSHUA TREE, 1951: A PORTRAIT OF JAMES DEAN (2012)

Arthur Rimbaud and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry are the twin literary spirits guiding Matthew Mishory's debut feature Joshua Tree, 1951: A Portrait of James Dean (2012) [official site / Facebook]—Rimbaud as an introduction to fire, and Saint-Exupéry as the patron saint of puers. Like Saint-Exupéry's Little Prince appearing and disappearing in the desert, Mishory's homostylized take on Hollywood icon James Dean queers the archetype of Dean's eternal youth, as imagined through his formative years at UCLA.

With much style and adequate substance, Joshua Tree, 1951: A Portrait of James Dean is more bio-fantasy than bio-pic, glorifying Dean's bisexuality and shrugging it down the runway like a fashion shoot this side of softcore gay porn. The film's narrative emphasis appears to be that life can "hurt so good" and—true to Rimbaud—Dean is frequently shown suffering for his art while those around him, each in turn, suffer longingly for some kind of commitment out of him. As Dean, James Preston (previously seen on ABC's The Gates) broods beautifully, there's no question about that, and his experience modeling for Abercombie & Fitch serves the film's surface appeal and compensates for some uneven acting. When he's on, however, Preston is undeniably mesmerizing. His hypnotic on-screen seductions sizzle around their edges, especially when he admits to a young man he's picked up on the beach "I'm passive" and then sets out to prove his versatility.

With regard to surface appeal, cinematographer Michael Marius Pessah's talents are on evident display with lustrous B&W compositions of Joshua Tree's stark beauty contrasted against L.A.'s martini poolside parties, sumptuously lit, briefly suggesting the raw style of '50s juvenile delinquency films before relying almost exclusively on glossy center spread aesthetics, and interjected now and again with grainy color sequences that telegraph (a bit too artily perhaps?) the color Dean brings into the life of those who love him, especially Dean's never-specifically-identified "Roommate" (Dan Glenn). Suggestion and insinuation hold court.

Unfortunately, languorous pacing sometimes breathes the life right out of some of the dialogue (thin enough as it is), forcing the film's visuals to sustain interest. My favorite scene was an acting class where a young actress is instructed to recite the Star Spangled Banner inside her head so as to generate enough intensity to have an audience believe she is waiting for a train. Despite myself, I kept wondering how often this was being done within the film? Another particular standout is Jeff Harnar's moody performance of "I Fall In Love Too Easily", and choice selections of Jo Stafford, Kay Starr and Doris Day to add pop accents to this timepiece.

Joshua Tree, 1951: A Portrait of James Dean plays Frameline36 on Thursday, June 21, 4:30PM at the Castro Theatre. Expected guests: director Matthew Mishory, actors Robert Gant, James Preston, and Edward Singletary, Jr.

FRAMELINE34 2010—Michael Hawley Preview Capsules

This year's edition of Frameline, the world's oldest and largest LGBT film festival, is set to kick off this Thursday, June 17 and will run until Pride Day on Sunday, June 27. Venues include the Castro, Roxie and Victoria Theaters in San Francisco as well as the Rialto Cinemas Elmwood in Berkeley. Here are capsule write-ups of 10 films I've previewed on DVD screener (except where noted), followed by a quick overview of several more.

Elvis and Madona (Brazil, dir. Marcelo Laffitte)—Certain to be one of Frameline34's biggest crowd-pleasers is this charmer about the unlikely romance between a dyke pizza delivery girl and a transvestite beautician. Elvis delivers a pizza on the fateful night Madona's boyfriend, "Tripod" João, robs her of the life savings she's squirreled away for staging a super-spectacular Copacabana drag show. Elvis, who's also an aspiring photographer, is instantly enamored of Madona and offers to shoot her publicity stills. Next thing you know, Elvis is pregnant by Madona and the drug-dealing João is in jail because of an incriminating Elvis-snapped newsphoto. Will Madona make one more porno with João to finance her show? Will Elvis forgive her for it? Will the menacing João kill them both? Not if the girls at the beauty parlor have anything to say about it. Effortlessly fun with flawless lead performances and colorful art direction, I won't be surprised if this takes the festival's audience award.

Plan B (Argentina, dir. Marco Berger)—After getting dumped by his girlfriend, scruffy slacker Bruno plans to get her back by seducing Pablo, her soft-spoken rumored-to-be-bisexual new boyfriend. It's a shaky premise requiring a heap of viewer patience, as the story twists its way through murky motivations and psychosexual machinations. It's two steps forward and one step back, as the guys develop a mutual Man Crush, but then repeatedly retreat to hetero safety. In other words, you'll be tearing your hair out right up until the end, wondering if they're gonna "do it." Sweet, smart and sexy, this film is everything last year's similarly-themed, infantile U.S. indie Humpday was not. One caveat—Plan B's narrative is strangely punctuated by still shots of desolate industrial landscapes. These aren't uninteresting in and of themselves and are perhaps meant to reflect the characters' internal something-or-other. But they're unnecessary and may prove to be the proverbial straw for some exasperated viewers. (Seen at the 2010 Palm Springs International Film Festival.)

Beautiful Darling: The Life and Times of Candy Darling, Andy Warhol Superstar (USA, dir. James Rasin)—This lovely and moving portrait is a swell addition to the pantheon of documentaries about those who've been immortally name-checked in Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side." In the back room at Max's Kansas City, Candy was everybody's darlin'; the smart, witty and gorgeous blonde transvestite who saw herself as a throwback to a Hollywood studio system that didn't quite translate into the world of New York underground cinema. Rasin's film incorporates a wealth of archival materials, plus interviews with suspects both usual (John Waters, Holly Woodlawn, Paul Morrissey) and unexpected (Fran Lebowitz, Michael Pollard, Julie Newmar) to understand both Darling and the era in which her star burned. The film is equally about one Jeremiah Newton, who as a young man was Darling's closest friend and confidant. After her death from lymphoma at age 29, Newton had the forethought to tape audio interviews with practically everyone who ever knew her, including Tennessee Williams who had starred her in his off-Broadway play "Small Craft Warnings." These interviews, along with letters, diaries (both lovingly voiced by Chloe Sevigny) and other ephemera Newton rescued from Darling's childhood home, occupy a big chunk of the film. Newton also became the keeper of Candy's ashes, and we watch as he places them in the burial plot he'll eventually join her in. Newton is expected to attend the Frameline screening, along with director Rasin and my personal fave Warhol superstar, Holly Woodlawn, herself long overdue for the feature documentary treatment already accorded Jackie, Joe and now Candy.

Dzi Croquettes (Brazil dir. Tatiana Issa, Raphael Alvarez)—For some, they were the first manifestation of a gay movement in Brazil, and to others they were a catalyst for ending that country's military dictatorship. This extraordinary and inspiring documentary recounts Dzi Croquettes' spectacular rise and fall as Brazil's preeminent ragtag-drag troupe of musical performance artists. Initially inspired by San Francisco's own Cockettes, they would surpass them both creatively and professionally—thanks in large part to the contribution of celebrated American dancer/choreographer/singer Lenny Dale. My favorite part of the film details their conquest of Europe, for which they set sail with two tons of costumes and three kilograms of marijuana hidden in rubber balls. Through the efforts of Liza Minnelli, they became the toast of Paris with the likes of Jeanne Moreau, Omar Sharif and Catherine Deneuve flocking to their shows. The directors had a dizzying amount of archival footage to work with, but unfortunately only five of the 13 original members are still around to recount their adventures. That responsibility falls upon several key characters instrumental to the scene, including Nega Wilma, the black woman who ruled the troupe's unruly São Paulo commune with a whip and a water hose. Oddly, Frameline has relegated the lone screening of this marvelous doc to an 11:00AM Monday time slot. If you can catch it, it'll be worth it. (Seen at the 2010 Palm Springs International Film Festival.)

Uncle Bob (USA, dir. Robert Oppel)—Each year at Frameline there's a biographical documentary I like to file under "who knew?" In 1974, 36 million people watched Robert Opel streak by David Niven during the Oscars telecast. Thirty-six years later, Opel's nephew has made this tribute to his Uncle Bob—photographer, performance artist, theatrical producer (Divine's The Heartbreak of Psoriasis) and gallery owner (S.F.'s Fey-Way Gallery, one of the first in the country to exhibit Robert Mapplethorpe and Tom of Finland). Opel was murdered in his gallery in 1979 under extremely sketchy circumstances. To put it mildly, his nephew has long been obsessed with that event, and we see footage of him at age 13 conducting a mock murder trial. While the doc does a fine job at preserving Opel's legacy, it's equally about the nephew/director grasping for catharsis and proving himself a chip off the block. That becomes both the film's greatest weakness and its greatest strength.

The String (France/Belgium, dir. Medhi Ben Attia)—The last person I expected to find in a Frameline film was 72-year-old Italian screen legend Claudia Cardinale (8½, The Pink Panther). Yet there she is, resplendent as a Tunisian matriarch adjusting to the return from Europe of her arrogant, gay architect son. In the film's two loveliest moments she recalls her rebelliousness as a Catholic girl marrying into an Arab family, and dances with her son's male lover on the son's wedding day to a lesbian family friend he's impregnated so that she and her girlfriend can have a baby. Yes, you read that right. The most interesting element of this film is its portrait of an Arab society that seemingly co-exists with lesbian moms, gay sons who bed their mother's handyman, booze, discos, poppers and rough trade assignations in abandoned buildings. One keeps waiting for a violent, fundamentalist retribution to arrive. Happily, it doesn't. Otherwise, the Tunisian scenery is splendid, the titular metaphor is a bit creaky and the appearance of French-Arab actor Salim Kéchiouche (Criminal Lovers, Grand école) as the son's love interest is most welcome.

The Sea Purple (Italy, dir. Donatella Maiorca)—Purple is the perfect color to describe this outlandish, but highly watchable gender-bending melodrama set in 19th century Sicily. The plot is too convoluted—I mean complex—to recount here (the Frameline capsule does an excellent job), except to say that it involves two young women who are permitted to marry because of a bizarre set of circumstances. The script lays the drama on thick—bound breasts, a baby fetus in a jar, a blackmailed priest, imprisonment, drownings, beatings, death by childbirth, gender illusion—and it's all allegedly "inspired by a true story." Lots of handheld camera and a partial electro-rock score give it a contemporary feel, and the whole affair is handsomely photographed. Gay guys looking to see at least one lesbian feature in the festival should check it out—half-naked Sicilian quarry workers abound.

From Beginning to End (Brazil/Argentina/Spain dir. Aluízio Abranches)—If the Lifetime Channel were to make a weirdly idyllic, R-rated movie about incest between two hunky, privileged Brazilian half-brothers, it might come off something like this. Born six years apart to different fathers, Francisco and Thomas sail through childhood despite concerns that their relationship is "too intimate." Two out of three parents get abruptly bumped off mid-film, leaving the smitten siblings, now young adults, to unashamedly do their thing. "To understand our love they'd need to turn the world upside down," they opine. After much anguish, the younger bro is sent off to Russia (?!) for three years of Olympic training. Wedding rings are exchanged and we're asked to believe they remain chaste throughout the separation. What makes this overwrought affair watchable are the performances of Rafael Cardoso and João Gabriel Vasconcellos, who are smokin' hot and 100% convincing as half-brothers obsessively in love with each other.

The Sisters (Austria, dir. Manfred Hoschek)—Until the definitive Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence documentary comes along, this one will do nicely. Highlights include a peek inside the Sisters' San Francisco archives, plus footage of the Union Square exorcism of Pope John Paul II performed during a 1987 Bay Area papal visit. Sisters from Germany, Uruguay and of course, San Francisco (the fabulous Sister Dana and Sister Vicious Power Hungry Bitch) get profiled, while the bulk of the film spotlights the group's 2009 thirtieth anniversary celebration in Dolores Park. Even at a short 74 minutes, however, there's still too much extraneous material here. I could have easily done without all the shopping trips for beauty products. The film's post-script apologizes to those Sisters left out of the doc, which would include infamous Sister Boom Boom—a former S.F. mayoral candidate who converted to Islam in 2001.

Baby Jane? HR (USA dir. Billy Clift)—I prepped for this locally produced drag parody/remake by watching Robert Aldrich's 1962 original for the first time in 20 years. The sublime art direction belies the film's low-budget and the script is dotted with clever send-ups of its source material. Jane warbles "I've Scribbled a Postcard to Daddy," Bette/Joan movie titles get name-checked in the dialogue, and best of all, the part of nosy neighbor Mrs. Bates has been amplified to accommodate the talents of SF drag impresario Heklina. Unfortunately, the overall result is kind of flat, which will likely go unnoticed by an amped-up Frameline audience. Knock back a few pre-screening beers to get in the mood.

Quick Takes

I can heartily recommend Frameline34's Opening Night film (The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister), an absorbing British TV biopic about an 18th century landowning lesbian whose lusty, coded diaries were recently decrypted. I was equally taken by the fest's Centerpiece Film (Undertow), a poignant, metaphysically-tinged Sundance prize-winner from Peru about a life-changing love between a married fisherman and a vacationing artist. Both were screened for journalists at the Castro following the festival's press conference a few weeks back. Back in January I caught two of last year's most acclaimed LGBT films at the Palm Springs International Film Festival and was impressed by both. Nineteen-year-old French-Canadian Xavier Dolan wrote, directed and stars in I Killed My Mother, a scabrously funny and ultimately touching mother-son verbal slugfest, which I'm dying to see again at the Castro. The other is Eyes Wide Open, a compelling Israeli film about the clandestine love shared between a married, ultra-Orthodox Jerusalem butcher and the young man he takes on as an apprentice. At that same festival, I was less impressed with Brotherhood, a Danish gay-neo-Nazis-in-love movie that comes off as pure exploitation. Finally, I previewed two more films on DVD screener. Sasha is a fairly contrived My Big Fat Balkan Coming Out about a piano student madly in love with his teacher, which nonetheless makes some interesting observations about generational conflict in immigrant families. Then there's Norway's The Man Who Loved Yngve, a messy, directionless love story about confused teens in the 1980s.

Cross-published on film-415 and Twitch.

SFJFF09: 575 Castro St--Q&A With Director Jenni Olson and Cinematographer Sophie Constantinou