LLGFF Part 3: An imaginary love

The British Film Institute's 25th London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival heads into the week a bit bleary headed after the party-filled weekend. Since the festival is so short this year, everything has been packed into this one weekend - leaving us all feeling a little worn out as we look ahead to the next three days of screenings (and one more party). But it's been great fun to socialise with filmmakers and actors, as well as the festival staff and London-based distributors who I already know. This really is one of the friendliest, liveliest festivals we all attend, so we're making the most of it now, and we'll deal with the morning-after headaches and sleep deprivation later.

Here are some festival highlights on Monday and Tuesday...

Heartbeats
dir Xavier Dolan; with Monia Chokri, Xavier Dolan 10/Can *****
At 21, actor-filmmaker Dolan proves that I Killed My Mother was no fluke. This is even bolder filmmaking that continually takes risks with its material. It's not always successful, but it's clever, funny and sharply observant... FULL REVIEW >

Sasha
dir Dennis Todorovic; with Sasha Kekez, Tim Bergmann 10/Ger ****
This film's light, comical tone is slightly misleading, as something much more dramatic is going on under the surface. And this makes it an entertaining, sensitive exploration of a young man trying figure out a way to be himself... FULL REVIEW >

A Marine Story
dir Ned Farr; with Dreya Weber, Paris Pickard 10/US ***
While the filmmaking itself is a bit simplistic, this movie tackles a big subject with sincerity, never taking the easy route through the material and developing strongly involving characters along the way... FULL REVIEW >

Man at Bath
dir Christophe Honore; with Francois Sagat, Chiara Mastroianni 10/Fr ****
This odd experimental film has only the loosest sense of narrative, merely letting us observe the wrinkles and twists of a relationship between two men who are apart for a week. It's difficult to pin down, but still manages to engage us... FULL REVIEW >

The Advocate for Fagdom

dir Angelique Bosio; with Bruce LaBruce, Gus Van Sant 11/Fr ****
Lively and engaging, this documentary about iconic filmmaker Bruce LaBruce is a real gift to his fans. It takes a lucid, witty trip through his career, but it's definitely not for general audiences... FULL REVIEW >

LLGFF Part 2: A personal journey

The British Film Institute's 25th London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival continues over the weekend with a variety of screenings and events. The opening night on Thursday was great fun - with a lively screening of Kaboom attended by writer-director Gregg Araki, who held a terrific Q&A afterwards, followed by a rather raucous party at the BFI.

Pictured above is Chaz Bono with filmmakers Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato - sadly, festival budget cuts meant they were able to attend the UK premiere of their film last night. But the festival parties continue all weekend. And here are some film highlights...

Becoming Chaz
dir Fenton Bailey, Randy Barbato; with Chaz Bono, Jennifer Elia 11/US ****
In documenting Chastity Bono's transition from female to male, filmmakers Bailey and Barbato offer a detailed, intimate narrative. And letting Chaz tell his own story is both engaging and moving... FULL REVIEW >

Break My Fall
dirKanchi Wichmann; with Kat Redstone, Sophie Anderson 11/UK ****
Scruffy and offhanded, this low-budget British feature takes a fractured, fragmented look at a relationship. Without a clear narrative, it's not an easy film, but it's honest and often painfully raw... FULL REVIEW >

Open
dir Jake Yuzna; with Daniel Luedtke, Morty Diamond 10/US ***
Artfully and beautifully directed, this film feels like a feverish dream, with characters whose gender is impossible to define. It's an impassioned, important call for respect, although it's unlikely that a bigot would watch it... FULL REVIEW >

Angel
dir Sebastiano d'Ayala Valva; with Angel Preciado, Feliza 10/Fr ***
This unusual doc follows a cross-dressing man home from Europe to visit his family in rural South America. And what we see is continually surprising, as the story and colourful people defy expectations... FULL REVIEW >

Horror of Darkness (special screening)

dir Anthony Page; with Alfred Lynch, Glenda Jackson 65/UK ****
Originally broadcast on BBC television's The Wednesday Play, this ominously titled drama gets increasingly forceful as it progresses, vividly exploring the complex inner life of three people who are connected in a disturbing way... FULL REVIEW >

LLGFF Part 1: An explosive start

The British Film Institute's 25th London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival kicks off tonight with a film (Gregg Araki's Kaboom with Thomas Dekker, above) and party as usual. But things are rather stripped-down from last year's 16-day series of daily star-studded screenings and parties. Due to budget cuts at the BFI, the festival is only six days long this year, and it's a much leaner affair in other ways: no delegate facilities, no travel allowances for filmmakers and, most startling, no travelling programme of festival films around the UK over the rest of the year. There's a lively Facebook campaign to save the LLGFF, which was the UK's third largest film festival after Edinburgh and London. Well, Edinburgh is also drastically truncated this year, and the BFI also runs London in October, so we'll see what happens then.

But back to the festivities at hand. Here are highlights from the first two days of the 25th LLGFF...

Kaboom (opening film)
dir Gregg Araki; with Thomas Dekker, Juno Temple 10/US ****
As this scruffy coming-of-age sex comedy turns into a horror movie, the combination is completely disarming. It's both silly and creepy, with honest subtext about youthful searching and the complexities of human sexuality... FULL REVIEW >

Mysterious Skin (special screening)
dir Gregg Araki; with Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Brady Corbet 04/US *****
Araki takes a huge leap forward with this deeply provocative and moving drama based on Scott Heim's novel. While maintaining his jerky editing style, he avoids his usual amateurishness and plays on his strengths. This film is lushly filmed and acted with raw beauty and subtlety even when the story gets seriously disturbing... FULL REVIEW >

L.A. Zombie
dir Bruce LaBruce; with Francois Sagat, Rocco Giovanni 10/US ***
LaBruce brings his usual eerie comical moodiness to this outrageously graphic tale of a lonely zombie in Los Angeles. So clearly it's a metaphor, right? Indeed, the film is impossible to categorise. And even though it's utterly in-your-face, we still somehow feel for this guy... FULL REVIEW >

Unhappy Birthday
dir Mark Harriott, Mike Matthews; with David Paisley, Christina De Vallee 10/UK ***
You have to give credit for the cast and crew for trying to create a gothic atmosphere in this low-budget British horror movie. It doesn't quite work, but it's still rather good fun to watch, if only for campy, creep-out vibe... FULL REVIEW >

House of Boys

dir Jean-Claude Schlim; with Layke Anderson, Benn Northover 09/Lux ***
Starting with the same plot as Burlesque, this ambitious film turns into a full-on Aids drama. And while it feels somewhat dated, as well as melodramatic, the filmmaking is intimate enough to keep us engaged with the characters... FULL REVIEW >

Critical Week: Action porn

The big press screening in London last week was for Zack Snyder's hotly anticipated Sucker Punch, which instantly becomes the most disappointing film of the year. Not because of the high expectations as for the fact that the film is chaotic, nonsensical and fetishistic in its approach to women and action. Much more enjoyable was the animated comedy Rio, a colourful 3D romp that kept us laughing nonstop.

Off the beaten path, we had two independent British dramas: Blooded is a provocative thriller about anti-hunting activists that looks terrific even if it never really grabs hold; and Break My Fall is a scruffy, postmodern romance about two girls (it also marks my first on-screen credit, since I was an extra on the film set last summer). Foreign films featured two of the week's best performances, both by young children: the gripping South African drama Life Above All centres on a young girl trying desperately to maintain her family's dignity, while the artful Turkish drama Honey follows a young boy struggling to connect with his mother, society and nature.

This coming week we have the horror movies The Roommate and Rubber, the "don't ask, don't tell" drama A Marine Story, and a trio of documentaries: Becoming Chaz, about Chaz Bono's gender transition; The Oath, about a Guantanemo prisoner; and the acclaimed Danish war doc Armadillo. We also have the kick-off of the 25th BFI London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, which has been stripped-down this year from 16 to 7 days due to budget cutbacks at the British Film Institute. I'll have daily highlights here.

Requisite Blog Photo: Blame it on the samba

Critical Week: Brain-bender

Two brainy movies screened for London critics last week, and while neither is quite Inception, at least they demonstrate that blockbusters don't have to be stupid. To follow up his astonishing debut Moon, director Duncan Jones goes big-time with Source Code, a crackling terrorism thriller with a Groundhog Day premise. The likeable Jake Gyllenhaal and especially good Vera Farmiga and Michelle Monahan help. The other is Limitless, about a brain-expanding drug, and it's also exhilarating good fun, with a terrific central performance from the even more likeable Bradley Cooper.

There were a few other high-profile films last week for us as well: we had a very late screening of Matthew McConaughey's enjoyably twisty legal thriller The Lincoln Lawyer; Tom McCarthy's latest engaging slice of real life in Win Win, starring Paul Giamatti; the goofy stoner fairy tale Your Highness, reuniting DannyMcBride and James Franco; and the genuinely scary horror film Insidious, with Rose Byrne and Patrick Wilson. Last week's kiddie movie was the enjoyably deranged Easter Bunny adventure Hop; the foreign film was the serene, doc-like Le Quattro Volte from Italy; and the documentary was the inspirational charity film A Small Act.

The big movie this coming week is Zack Snyder's girl-power fantasy Sucker Punch, and for the kids we have the 3D animated parrot adventure-comedy  Rio. Smaller indie films include the British thriller Blooded and the London romance Break My Fall. Foreign films include the South African drama Life Above All and the Berlinale-winning Turkish drama Honey (Bal).

Requisite Blog Photo: Early Easter cheer