LA Film Festival Review: Four

One of the things that I learned about the LA Film Festival in particular is that themes and images tend to overlap from film to film in almost a kismet kind-of-way.  Last year, I wrote it off as a rudimentary effect of teaching the creative process and this year I'm more inclined to view it as more serendipitous.  And, though I’m seeing a comparatively less number of movies than 2011, there are still enough coincidences to make one smile.  For instance, I had just finished seeing A Night Too Young (Příliš mladá nots), when I jumped over to the next theatre to see Joshua Sanchez’ Four, an adaption of Christopher Shinn’s play, with the financial help of Neil LaBute.  At first, going from watching grainy 16mm film stock to digital was jarring.  The crisp imagery was just too abrasive and glaring (even though the majority of the film takes place at night) after soaking in the timeless quality of Night.  I soon recognized the appropriate messy realness of the digital stock and had to chuckle at how both films take place for roughly twenty-four hours over a major holiday (from New Year’s Eve in the Czech Republic we go to Four’s American Independence Day), complete with pensive ruminations over the fleeting nature of fireworks in tandem with coming-of-age stories.  Also, each has some controversial sexual imagery involving a kid and adult.  So far geographically, yet so much in common.

Wendell Pierce

At any rate, the title also represents the number of main characters.  On one hand, we have daughter Abigayle (Aja Naomi King) trying to decide if she is going to have sex with her new boyfriend Dexter (EJ Bonilla), while her father Joe (Wendell Pierce) has lied to her about his plans to meet his online teenage friend June (Emory Cohen).  Her boyfriend is a bit of poseur, but has a big heart to go with his large libido.  She uses him to sort through the stress and pressure she feels regarding her confusing home life, as well as forget about the pain they bring, while her hetero-married father takes a young man out on a date while eventually planning to get to know him in the biblical sense.  Abigayle carefully measures her steps towards what is made readily available to her, while the father contends with a partner he is constantly checking in with to see where the evening will end up.  Whatever sex that does take place isn’t magical for most, but an empty primal need to lose oneself, face who they are, or, in one person’s case, actually enjoy the body they’ve been given.  The night this film takes place details what happens on their respective dates.  

Future Superstar Aja Naomi King

Some of the less well-adjusted teenagers in Four are confused and have taken it upon themselves to carry the burden of the world.  Joe observes, when he was young, his generation learned to keep, “a lock inside – we didn’t expect too much.”  Abigayle and June are so judgmental of what satisfies/interests them sexually, that there is no joy, only the desire for someone else to hold up a mirror to them, so they can see who the really are.  A great deal of the movie takes place while driving. 

Super hot EJ Bonilla

Sweat dripping from Joe’s scalp eventually segues to tears in his eyes.  He’s a gay man (or bisexual, whatever) who has been having sex with other men for most of his adult life since the 1980s, but chose not to fully embrace his being, but rather enter the socially normative hetero-marital contract.  While he isn’t technically breaking Massachusetts’ age of consent law (though he cheekily alludes to the illegal nature of cheating on his spouse), he didn't strike me as a card-carrying NAMBLA member grooming his prey.  Or maybe I’m not puritanical enough to judge him.  At the very least, he bucks the stereotype of a pedophile.  Though he strives to be a confidant of the kid, as well as a cheerleader, and his needs are ultimately lascivious (for the more cynical), Joe gives June the option of exiting at any given moment.  During his many different angles at trying to get to what June is about, Joe, taking note of his antisocial body language, tells him to choose to love things in life and “Say it with force.”  As well, he loftily shares with June that HIV may have been God’s way of teaching gay men to think about the sex they’re having, rather than just have it.  Fourenters a conversation that deserves to be out in the open, rather than swept under the rug, as there are no crimes in talking about things.  Are June and Joe’s need for each other a symptom of where our society is at present with homosexuality in some areas of the country?  Every gay has their own needs and method of coming out, even if it’s a choice made at June's age (somewhere between 16 and 18).  

Christine Giorgio, EJ Bonilla, Aja Naomi King, Joshua Sanchez

The tight writing and efficient direction showcase a superb cast.  Pierce (and his big old laugh) and Cohen bring to a life a relationship not seen before on film.  As Dexter, Bonilla in his cornrows wishing he was black shows growth both physically and in his acting since his LA Film Festival Mamitas last year.  The standout among these exceptional actors is King, who is whip-smart and sure to have quite a career for herself, if Hollywood gets out of her way and gives at least one black woman of her generation the opportunity to shine in ways we sadly haven't really seen yet (i.e. sexy, young, beautiful black woman taking on lead role after lead role).  Caveman’s “My Room” starts and ends the story that will surely get people talking if enough go to see it.  At the screening this reviewer attended, host Jen Wilson introduced director Sanchez, who also came up after the credits rolled along with producer Christine Giorgio and cast members Bonilla and Asia to endeavor a Q & A.  

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Outfest Film Review: Gayby

At the recent premiere of Gayby, (because I'm all about the name-dropping) I saw famed Chloë Sevigny's impressionist and Groundling Drew Droege who starred last year on stage in The A-List and did a stellar job directing Jersey SHOREsical.  He probably thinks I stalk him, as I also saw him at the Scream 4 opening night at the Cinerama Dome last year (which had to have been the largest congregation of white Gen-X gay men I've ever been a part of).  Much to my delight, the LA Film Festival wisely ditched the poorly produced pre-film promo from last year that only elicited one big WTF (various faces morphed into each other ala Michael Jackson’s “Black of White” music video conveying a series of emotions that one can feel "at the movies" and had the worst eye-gauging cinematography imaginable) and was absolute torture the fifteen or so odd times I sat through it (the DP owes my eyes, as well as everyone else who was blinded by it, new contact lenses).  The Festival still struggles with the organization of the ballooning size of the event, but puts on quite a deal.  Drea Clark provided her bubbling personality as host of the screening, where she introduced the SXSW entry, which, only one year previously from its premiere, had no script to speak of.  The screening finally got underway after a twenty minute delay and three subsequent sound gaffes.  Gayby is Jonathan Lisecki’s feature length version of his recent short about two best friends—one gay, the other a fag hag—from college who decide to have a baby together.  Before you go running from this film screaming, “Not another poorly produced independent gay film rife with annoying clichés,” (not like anyone screams that, but I digress) be prepared to be at least mildly surprised and, gulp, entertained.  Yes, this is a gay movie.  But, like most gay films these days, it isn’t one of those gay movies.  It’s actually well-executed and entertaining.  Yay for the gays!  

The aforementioned premise doesn’t break new ground as even the trailblazing sit-com Will & Gracewent down that road after it jumped the shark around season five or six (or whatever).  And movies about untraditional procreation involving white people living in Brooklyn seem to be the rage or the recent Friends with Kids from Jennifer Westfeldt was just a coincidence (er, wait, wasn't Grace living in Brooklyn at one point with Leo, I forget; so sue me, I never lived in New York; I get all those boroughs mixed up).  With Friends, it got the Kid-making part out of the way fairly quickly: those predictable feelings that surfaced after the characters took on the responsibility of parenting fueled the movie.  With Gayby, the focus doesn’t quite get to the birth part so swiftly, and smartly so as the leads endeavor even less introspection than their Friends counterpart, while they go through the sexual motions (and otherwise) to create their child.  Jenn (Jenn Harris) works as a yoga instructor and Matt (Matthew Wilkas) runs a comic book store and is an aspiring artist.  Getting on in years and feeling her life is missing something, Jenn is the one who is struck by her biologically ticking clock.  Matt is excited and open to the idea of becoming a father.  She only has one caveat, “I want to do it the old fashioned way … surprise.”

Director Jonathan Lisecki also plays Nelson:
"It seems so early for a mid-life crisis
and yet here we are."

With no Photoshop skills necessary, old pictures of the leads, who are best friends in real life, incidentally, are used in the film’s opening credits. Their chemistry is obvious and lends a great deal of heart to the feel of the film.  The deadpan Harris is in full-effect here and receives ample support from Wilkas, who has one of the less showier rolls but can still get appropriate mileage out of lines like, “I just kissed him so he’d shut up.”  And, the writing is often just as sharp and a great deal of fun.  Nelson, a friend of Matt’s (played by director Lisecki) who later plays an ad hoc gynecologist to the proceedings, remarks to Matt on his decision to help Jenn have a baby, “It’s nice to see you’re opening up a closed locations in these troubled times.”  He’s full of comic-relief as an effeminate newly-bearded man exploring his masculine side, “I’m here, I’m bear, get used to it, woof, paw.”  (Accented with appropriate gesticulation.)  He’s full of acerbic and/or thoughtful observations.  Concerning the main plot-point, perhaps in a nod to Westfeldt’s comparable film or, well, modern reality: “That is so Brooklyn.”  Each protagonist has his/her own chorus of friends/romantic interests/enemies.  Playing the shrew of a sister Kelly is the lusty-voiced Anna Margaret Hollyman (who was there for a Q & A along with producer Zeke Farrow after the screening). 

Producer Zeke Farrow and actress Anna Margaret Hollyman
at the LA Film Fest screening 6/16

The quirky direction never goes too far and there’s a zany randomness that Lisecki injects seamlessly into the proceedings like the sound of Matt squirting lube and mounting Jenn during their first baby-making session, heaving a couple of hooah's.  In a kind of a Laugh-In moment, Jenn receives doctor recommendations and diet advise from coworkers Jamie (Jack Ferver) and nemesis Valerie (Joanne Tucker), the latter of which has nothing vested in her best interests whatsoever, but it works.  There’s even a short pole-dancing sequence which plays like a DVD outtake, but manages to make itself at home in the narrative.  Judicious, but never over indulgent, Lisecki is in complete control of his material and aware of his audience, taking gay stereotypes and milking just the right amount of screen-time and humor out of them.  The film just debuted at the Provincetown International Film Festival and will screen at BAMcinemafest, as well as Outfest 2012.  Angelenos can find Oufest tickets here:

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Film Review: Call Me Kuchu

Call Me Kuchu(referencing a self-empowering, inclusive synonym for queer in Swahili) is a documentary from the team of Katherine Fairfax Wright and Malika Zouhali-Worrall detailing the plight of David Kato, Uganda’s first openly gay person (yes, you read that correctly).  Celebrating the 9^thanniversary of a gay couple in the privacy of their quarters, Kato swings his hips to some music while being served appetizers (that’s my move, but I'll let him have it), before the film travels down the arduous, insurmountable issues Ugandan gays face today in the second decade of the 21^st-century.  Along with providing a slice-of-life impression of gays featured, the film goes on to detail a libel case affecting regular law-abiding gays, as well as a national proposed law from Ugandan MP David Bahati that would require citizens to "report" gay people within a twenty-four hour period of discovery. 

The unapologetically libelous
Rolling Stone

The main theme quite simply is the repressing environment which ignorance can impose on a minority, who must muster every ounce of strength they have to continue their fight lest unsound minds prevail.  Homophobia is embedded in the culture of this stubborn country that would prefer to live in perpetual denial that circulates mistruths, disease, and death, than listen to Western leaders.  Ugandan leaders speak out against the civilization of the west and homosexuality using Westernized media, but it is the west who introduced anti-gay laws to the world, as well as Christianity to Uganda in the later 1800s.  While ignoring sensible, heart-driven Christian leaders in their own backyard like heterosexual Bishop Senjonyo (who was in attendance at the screening Saturday night), they invite the likes of Western Evangelicals like Lou Engle and Scott Lively, who manipulate and take advantage of this unevolved society, ripe for brainwashing.  The documentary is rife with irony, which even includes a shot of an advertisement for unjudged R. Kelly.  An anti-gay leader can sit down on a couch with a lesbian and have a “discussion,” but he’s never going to address any of the elephants in the room.  The long list of lies that are allowed and encouraged to parasitically attach themselves to the gay movement include pedophilia, prostitution, and the deliberate spread of HIV.  Even a terrorist bombing of Kampala is laid at the feet of gays.  Gay youth are manipulated by the system, including curative rape, no counsel for defense, and subjection to abortions.  Activists battle against an HIV spread rate which ignorance makes more rampant.  Sometimes meandering through its ca. 90-minute runtime, Kuchu reaches an unfortunate poignancy towards the end (it's better if you go into this film blind).

David Kato and his mother

This country is in such an infancy of its activism that even its drag queens have milquetoast names like Veronica.  But, this is really no laughing matter.  In his quest to out and expose average citizens, an editor of a local publication Rolling Stone (not be confused with the international entertainment magazine) by the name Giles believes in “ignor[ing] the right of privacy in the interest of the public."  He goes on to wash his hands clean of any harm that comes to any of his publication’s targets, insisting his intent is only to bring “criminals” before the eyes of the law, ignoring the ancillary malicious effects of his plight.  At a funeral for a murdered activist, those who would fit right in with the Westboro Baptists are the rule and not the exception.  In The Crucible, John Proctor gives everything of himself and begs to keep his name.  Not even in this African country can a gay man have that.  The film closes with a juxtaposition of people celebrating the life of a gay man at a karaoke bar verses US citizens picketing the injustice of his death.  It’s a telling moment that displays a tiny, but mighty band of people who only have so much energy and will against a tide ready to wipe them off the face of this planet. 

Director Katherine Fairfax Wright

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