Tribeca: The Best Film I Saw Was "Bad Hair" (and Other Oscar-Related Thoughts)

I hope this is Venezuela's Oscar entry!

This article is an expansion of a brief piece originally published in Nathaniel's column at Towleroad

The best of the LGBT lot at Tribeca this year was surely Love is Strange, which I reviewed at Sundance. I didn't see all the gay titles but that's a safe assumption since Ira Sach's drama about newly married seniors (John Lithgow & Alfred Molina) who lose their longtime apartment is already feeling like a future classic. But though the other titles I took in were lacking, Mariana Rondón's spanish-language Bad Hair is a worthy runner-up to Love is Strange's crown.

The film opens next month in Venezuela and it would be a worthy Oscar submission from that country which has yet to secure a Best Foreign Language Film nomination. A submission is certainly possible as Rondón was submitted once before for Postcards from Leningrad in 2007 and most countries tend to favor directors they've previously embraced with submissions. [More...]

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April Showers: Midnight Express (1978)

Waterworks some nights at 11. This one is from the vaults from the first season. But it's worth a revisit as the film is currently available on Netflix Instant Watch.

I've always been a little bit a lot perplexed by the famous shower scene in Alan Parker's Midnight Express (1978). I'm not exactly sure why it's in the movie. Midnight Express strongest asset is arguably its expressive physicality and gritty tactile quality; you feel like you're right there in the grotty hellish Turkish prison, sweating and suffering along with Billy Hayes (Brad Davis). But the sexual vibes coming off of the movie are at times unfathomable. Is it gay? Is it bi? Is it straight? Is it just horny? Or is its ambiguous eroticism simply a by-product of casting a star as carnally charismatic as Brad Davis in the lead role?

As warm up to the famous shower scene we get a montage detailing the friendship of Billy and Erich (Norbert Weisser) a fellow prisoner. They've been in this hellhole for years. We see them do yoga togethe and bathe each other. They even duet on a private meditation mantra...

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Tribeca: Three Bizarro Twin Gay Films

Tribeca wraps tonight but we're still writing. Here's your host Nathaniel on three LGBT offerings. Portions of this piece were originally published in his column at Towleroad

The Tribeca Film Festival, founded in 2002 at least in part to help revitalize the Tribeca neighborhood after 9/11, has migrated and grown over the years; in 2014 I saw almost everything in Chelsea. An apt location because there seemed to be a lot of gay movies. Here are three, the first two of which seem like warring fraternal twins and the other which may or may not have psychotic doppleganger issues.

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Tribeca: Gender Punk Love Story

Reporting again from Tribeca, here's Jason on the Tiger-winning Something Must Break from Swedish director Ester Martin Bergsmark.

Xavier Dolan directing a remake of Fassbinder's In a Year of Thirteen Moons is what occurred to me about halfway into the Swedish transgender love-story-of-sorts Something Must Break, although I think I probably do director Ester Martin Bergsmark's film a disservice setting it up against the lofty cinema I excitedly imagine that project could be. (Somebody send Xavier a note, please.) As for what the film really is, while it's spiked with moments of aggression and punk (especially in the terrific final moments) it's more intent to drift on languid pauses, hushed tones, and Instagram filters - think Weekend on smack.

Something Must Break tells the tale of Sebastian turning into Ellie while simultaneously falling in love with Andreas, a boy whose outer Sid Vicious masks a more gooey James Dean trustafarian center. Simultaneously or maybe because of - the push and pull of Andreas' needs (which Andreas can't even seem to comprehend himself) seems to spark Sebastian to action, and the film's at its most interesting when his inner Ellie begins making herself known, most especially in moments of defiance. The film does nearly wring a tear or two out of Andreas' blind self-absorbtion and cruel confusion, and I did dig the way the process of Sebastian's transformation was more just a shift of perspective, as if light began hitting a diamond from a different angle.

But it's the sort of movie that feels like an extended first act - I was more interested in where Ellie was going than where I'd just watched her wander from. I wanted to see that diamond cut glass.

Tribeca: Life Partners With Benefits

Tribeca coverage continues with Jason on Life Partners with Leighton Meester & Gillian Jacobs

When I say that the specter of Frances Ha hangs heavy over Life Partners, you should probably keep in mind that the specter of Frances Ha has been hanging over my entire life for the past year and a half - it nearly immediately became The Movie I Quote Constantly. But that said, Life Partners tells the story of the air-tight bond between two young women that experiences a little leakage when a gentleman caller arrives on the scene, tossing the sudden third wheel into chaos, so you know... it's not just me.

Standing in the shadow of Frances' greatness could squelch the life from anything, but Partners, with its light heart and sitcom tread, is a genial enough 93 minutes that it makes it out alive. It's not the sort of film I'll be demanding be screened for me upon my death bed, the light in Greta's eyes carrying me off into that great nothingness, but I imagine now and then I'll chuckle remembering this or that moment down the line.

One interesting contrast of note between the two films - whereas Frances only seemed a little gay for her bestie Sophie, and that tension was acknowledged and joked about, in Life Partners the Frances-esque character of Sasha (played pleasantly enough by by Leighton Meester) is actually a lesbian, but the topic of any non-platonic love between her and her heterosexual bestie (played pleasantly enough by Gillian Jacobs) is verboten. It seems a conscious decision by the film-makers but it strains towards self-consciousness - one of their friends would joke about it, at least. Life Partners isn't that interested in really difficult complications that linger though. It still has some growing up to do.