"At the Farm" or "By The Lake", Queer Films Among Best @ TIFF

This article was originally published in my column at Towleroad

The French famously call an orgasm "la petit mort" or, the little death. In two new French-language films playing at the Toronto International Film Festival (in full swing through next weekend) this euphemism forgets to be euphemistic. If you like your sex all mixed up with danger -- you know, the way straight people did during the mainstream erotic thriller years (the Glenn Close thru Sharon Stone continuum) -- consider these films 'must sees' when they hit your city. IF they hit your city. It's tough out there for art films, especially gay ones, as recently discussed in a fascinating piece at IndieWire mapping out the problems.

Prolific twenty-four year old writer/director/actor Xavier Dolan has been a sensation on the festival circuit and in Canada since his award-winning debut I Killed My Mother in 2009. Despite the accolades Dolan has yet to win the Stateside following he deserves, even among LGBT audiences. This is largely because his films are in French and they have had a weirdly hard time making their way onto US screens. I Killed My Mother was famously delayed and delayed and delayed again. Before I received a screener a couple of years ago I was convinced that it was an imaginary movie, dreamt up by journalists to make the rest of us feel jealous that we aren't fabulous enough to party in Cannes with them each May. Dolan's subsequent features, the stylish unrequited love triangle Heartbeats (also known as Imaginary Lovers) and the recently released three hour trans drama Laurence Anyways only increased his wunderkind reputation. His latest TOM AT THE FARM may well be his most accessible but reviewing it presents a challenge because the less you know about it going in the better.

Let's keep it very simple AFTER THE JUMP... 

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Queer or "Queer": Newfest hits New York City

Glenn here discussing queer cinema. Or should I say “queer cinema”? The term has kind of lost its meaning these days where those words are used to describe anything with homosexuality at its core. Gone are the days of directors like Gregg Araki, Todd Haynes and Tom Kalin making confronting, even angry films about sexuality that were heralded under the banner of “New Queer Cinema”. As I discussed just last week, there appears to be less of a need for that type of transgressive filmmaking anymore in our culture (although I’d certainly take it over some of the films discussed below) so if society’s going to change then I guess cinema has to change with it. 

Beginning tomorrow in New York City is Newfest, the city's “premier LGBT film festival”. Just as an aside, wasn’t one of Gayby’s (mini-reviewed here) best jokes the one about the ever-expanding acronyms of gay culture? I think it was. Anyway, let’s take a look at a selection of titles screening for local audiences and which may be arriving at a queer film festival near you over the next 12 months (if not already). 

James Franco, Elizabeth Taylor (er) and Terrence Malick (umm) after the jump...

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Una Noche, Kill Your Darlings and the Problem with Gay Films at the Box Office

Glenn here. I read an article the other day at IndieWire asking "why don't LGBT movies make money at the box office anymore?" It's a worthy question to ask since I know I'd love for films focusing on "our" stories to be more prominent in cinemas and the only way to get that is to receive the backing of Hollywood and audiences. What I don't think is that there's anything insidious going on in the seeming rapid decline in mainstream representations of LGBT characters on the big screen. It's not like film audiences have gotten more homophobic with time, right?

My biggest theory is one that the article only flirts with: that gay culture itself has become so mainstream that the idea of paying $15 for a dash of it is rather unnecessary. And as the article wisely states, television has been more than willing to take up the baton of telling complex, romantic, tragic, funny, and unique stories about gay characters. And it's cheaper, too. That medium has certainly come a long way from the days of advertisers cancelling their marketing on Ellen less than 20 years ago!

Is LGBT the new black... on TV?

Gay TV and two new gay-centric films after the jump

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Germany @ The Oscars

Germany has a long and trivia-crazy history with the Oscars that didn’t just begin with Sandra Bullock speaking German in her Blind Side acceptance speech or Christoph Waltz, an Austrian-German talent winning two Tarantino-Flavored Oscars for multi-lingual performances. We’ll get to more trivia in a minute but first the German shortlist.  We await their choice for Oscar’s Foreign Language Film submission with curiousity because they’re always a threat for the eventual shortlist. Germany has received 18 nominations and 3 wins over the years. They’re weighing the quality of nine different pictures before deciding. Which will they send our way?

The finalists are…

• MY BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY Michaela Kezele
  This one skews international - a romance between a young Serbian widow and an Albanian soldier 
• THE GERMAN FRIEND Jeanine Meerapfel
  A coproduction with Argentina 
• FREE FALL Stephan Lacant
  A gay romantic drama about two cops
• THE GIRL WITH NINE WIGS Marc Rothemund
  I don't know what this one is about but I love the title 
• OH BOY Jan Ole Gerster
  a popular comedy about a drop out university student 
• RITTER ROST multiple directors
  an animated film 
• SCHULD SIND IMMER DIE ANDEREN  Lars-Gunnar Lotz
  This one sounds interesting - a juvenile offender in an "open prison" discovers that his house-mother was one of his victims 
• NOTHING BAD CAN HAPPEN von Katrin Gebbe (Junafilm)
  Also known as Tore Tanzt. Will this Cannes entry be too controversial for submission?  
• TWO LIVES von Georg Maas & Judith Kaufman (DE/NO, Zinnober Film,  B&T Film)
  Also known as Zwei Leben. This film stars Liv Ullman of all people!!! It's about a woman (Juliane Köhler who starred in the German Oscar winner Nowhere in Africa), born to a Norwegian woman and a German soldier who becomes involved in war crime trials. 

It's worth noting that the acclaimed Hungarian German coproduction The Notebook which was suggested to be in the running by some outlets is being submitted by Hungary so it can't be the German submission.

Patrick, a German reader thinks that it would be a surprise if they passed on OH BOY which has been a major hit in Germany at the end of 2012. But since it’s a black and white contemporary film and youth sensation it’s no automatic draw when it comes to appealing to Oscar’s foreign language voters who are, it's important to remember, a volunteer group culled from all the branches. Anecdotally speaking, they skew even older than the typical Oscar demographic because they have to have a lot of free time to attend a least a couple dozen screenings from the long long submissions list (which is broken up into 3 sections so that each member doesn't have to watch all 60+ entries). For Germany, Oh Boy, is also facing the potential problem that The Hunt has for Denmark. It's not "new" anymore... so if the decision-makers have a fresh love...

I wouldn't be surprised if they went with Two Lives (trailer above) given Liv Ullman and Juliane Köhler's Oscar histories but the only director in the nine finalists that's previously been submitted is Marc Rothemund (The Girl With Nine Wigs). His film Sophie Scholl was an Oscar nominee in the 2005 race.

They'll announce their submission on August 27th. What do you think it will be? 

P.S. I promised some trivia so here we go...

a few German winners: Emil Jannings, Luise Rainer and Hans Zimmer

• Germany's most frequently submitted director is (drum roll please) Wim Wenders who has been submitted only three times (The American Friend, Wings of Desire, and Pina). None of those famous films were nominated in this category. Wenders has better luck with the documentary branch where he's won two nominations (Pina, Buena Vista Social Club).  Several other directors are tied with two submissions each.
• Germany holds two important "firsts" for the acting Oscars. The first actor ever handed an Oscar was Emil Jannings for The Way of All Flesh. Less than a decade later Luise Rainer became the first actor of either gender to win two Oscars. Since she did that in the late 30s Hollywood lied about Rainer's provenance and claimed she was from Austria.
• The category that loves Germans most is Art Direction (31 nominations and 7 wins) but weirdly no German has been nominated there since 1972 when Cabaret took home the gold in that category. 
• Hollywood's favorite German currently, if you subtract Christoph Waltz, is Hans Zimmer a frequent nominee for Best Original Score. [cue: loud Inception bwaaaaaaa  ♫ here]
• The last German film to win the Oscar was The Lives of Others (2006), one of the most popular winners in this category in recent years.

With Six You Get Linkroll

New York Times a fascinating discussing about"strained pulp," the trend of low culture and disreputable genres being remade as art films by Nicolas Winding Refn, Steven Soderbergh and more.  
Cinema Blend more drama for the fantasy Seventh Son (trailer discussed) with Julianne Moore which is still having trouble getting into theaters
MNPP Lovelace in 200 words or less

/Film Loki continues to hold the Thor franchise hostage. Reshoots to give him more screentime
Playbill on that rare breed: musicals based on movies that were better than the movies from the obvious (Kinky Boots, The Producers) to the highly arguable (Hairspray, Once) and others inbetween
IndieWire Qu(e)eries why don't LGBT films make money in movie theaters anymore? Fascinating article! Depressing topic.