Queer TIFF: "Can You Ever Forgive Me?"

by Chris Feil

Marielle Heller’s Can You Ever Forgive Me? is the rarest of comedies, as lovely as it is scabrous, and able to craft a film cohering as many dualities and tonal contradictions in its construction as its protagonist. The film stars Melissa McCarthy as the shamed Lee Israel, once noted biographer and journalist whose late career stumbles found her forging letters of noted dead writers and famous personalities.

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Queer TIFF: "Diamantino"

by Chris Feil

Plenty of the quasi mainstream queer movies are quickly labeled as not queer enough, the queer intelligencia (however rightfully) upset if gay life is reduced for the straight masses. Yeah, Diamantino has never heard of any of them, nor is it all that interested in your intellectual approval either.

And still it delivers something batty enough (and honestly flat out sweet enough) to knock potential naysayers off of their pretentious perch while delivering something foaming with queerness to fill all of its corners. Get ready for a fantasia of giddy gender confusion to glitterbomb the square conformity delusion, all set to Donna Lewis' "I Love You Always Forever". Diamantino is an absolute gas.

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Queer TIFF: "Rafiki"

by Chris Feil

Already famed for being banned in its home country of Kenya for having a positive outlook on its lesbian lovers, Rafiki is a mostly conventional coming out and of age tale. That is if you wish to divorce it from its very specific context in African cinema. A teen love story less interested in breaking narrative molds than it is environmental ones, Wanuri Kahiu’s debut stands out by presenting queer people within its own vision of contemporary Nairobi. While its expected beats and the familiarity of its narrative trajectory present some limitations to our enthusiasm, the film comes alive mostly by creating a palpably real world.

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Queer TIFF: "Touch Me Not"

TIFF kicks off today!! In addition to our regular coverage, Chris Feil will be covering a sampling of the festival's LGBTQ global cinema...

Adina Pintilie’s Golden Bear-winning piece of experimentation and sexual reflection Touch Me Not opens on a landscape of the naked male body, anonymous and alien, shot with a deliberate distance that doesn’t deceive the film’s tension between curiosity, impulse, and terror. While this quickly establishes the psyche of Pintilie’s piece, it is about to become far more personal, with its players all playing themselves or versions thereof. Its fourth wall is never broken because it was never built in the first place.

The film centers largely on two emotionally stunted characters (or “characters”), struggling to experience both physical and emotional connection...

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More Fall Festival Happenings!

Chris here with more news for the fall festivals! We're counting down the days until Nathaniel and I are in Toronto, and TIFF just announced all of their Canadian titles to be seen at the festival. Most notorious among them is the delayed Xavier Dolan film The Death and Life of John F. Donovan, which will be a world premiere. Producers had previously noted that the film would be likely for the fall fests, but it's post-production woes made those comments a bit in flux. Regardless, we are very curious to see Dolan's first English language effort and his bursting cast that includes Jacob Tremblay, Natalie Portman, and Kit Harrington (but not Jessica Chastain, left to the cutting room floor).

Another noteworthy announcement is that the New York Film Festival has chosen its closing film: Julian Schnabel's Venice-bound Van Gogh biopic starring Willem Dafoe At Eternity's Gate. The film joins that fest's opening night The Favourite and centerpiece Roma, which will each play other festivals. It had been unclear in the past few months if the film would be released in time for the 20189 Oscar season but CBS films looks to open the film in November. Can we bank on Dafoe as one of our Best Actor sure things this year? And could Schnabel return after The Diving Bell and the Butterfly got so close to Oscar?