I’ve got to say, I’m not a big fan of film musicals, but when I was introduced to Hedwig and the Angry Inch, this all changed. I’m a huge fan of John Cameron Mitchell, who plays the lead: Hedwig, a transgender entertainer who surgically changes sex in order to leave a segregated war-torn Germany for a life of stardom (she hoped) in the USA.
The film follows Hedwig and her merry bunch of band mates following Tommy Gnosis, a world famous rock star, whom she wrote songs with before he got famous. Gnosis, once famous, denies Hedwig’s existence.
The music is bitter sweet, with toe thumpers: “Wig In A Box” and thought-provoking ballads, like “The Origin Of Love”.
At the core of this bright and brilliantly directed piece is a sad iconic transgender person, whose hair (slightly resembling a late Farah Fawcett) is looking for recognition, both for her music and for her Angry Inch…
You’ll never look at a splatter painting in the way away again.
If you’ve ever wondered what it would feel like to have your face stuffed into a film’s never regions, then Shortbus is the film for you to see. Stat.
Director John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig And The Angry Inch) bravely circumnavigates the world of sexuality in this stylish, almost uncomplicated observation of sexual dysfunction.
“Shortbus” is a New York club where the focus is sexual liberation with a heady blend of punters. Transgender people, ageing homosexuals, hot young boys, a straight female sex therapist all looking to get their rocks off – a bit like Piccadilly on a Thursday night but more scintillating.
The creators and actors of Shortbus have genuinely created and sustained characters the viewer can befriend and have some feeling for. You can feel that the actual actors forged a real relationship with each other, which gathering from the DVD’s ‘extras’ they had to, as part of the film development process was having sexual relations with each other.
Shortbus did give me a tingling sensation. Not just because you get to see: self-sucking, a blinding rim job, a 3-way, the national anthem sung into a sizable cock and Mr Cameron-Mitchell himself being sucked off by a supporting actor (no really) but it caused me to think of my own sexuality and my relationship to it.
Sex is ‘in your face.’ It is about sexual roles. It’s about ‘this moment, now’. Being British, and naturally reserved such talk and this movie is better left after two bottles of Chablis and a handful of bar nuts.
Some fantastic performances and an introduction to one Jay Brannan – who I suggest you get yourself into – socially so to speak. He has a Facebook, twitter, albums and tours his music about regularly.
If you’re sexually revolutionised you might watch this and think, what’s all the fuss about, but worth a punt anyway. You can always pass it off as porn with a story line and real actors.
If you’re a fan of the slightly psychedelic, smash colour, animatic world of John Cameron Mitchell you’ll love this movie. It isn’t one, however, to watch with your Mother. You get to see quite a bit of peen!
I had some reservations about Gayby. A lot of these ‘gay films’ are usually clichéd drivel, almost always, an unlikely relationship sparks and then it’s just an hour of plot-holes and bad acting.
Jenn, a yoga instructor, and Matt, a comic book store worker, are best friends from college who are now single and in their 30’s. In agreement with a pact they made in their youth, the two decide to have a baby (“Gayby”) together, even though Jenn is straight and Matt is gay. Jenn’s grandmother set her up with a trust fund for if she ever had a child, so Jenn is confident that she and Matt will have the finances to have one. However, Jenn states that she wants to have a baby through natural conception, so the two begin awkwardly having sex.
Gayby was something very different indeed. I found it to be relentlessly charming in every way, with just the perfect amount of drama peppered in. Superbly written and directed by relative newcomer Jonathon Lisecki, It had something that all these other films are missing… A great script.
The awkwardness of the “Attempted Conception” scenes was genius, with just the perfect combination of one liners, curious glances and the various montages of penetration were just divinely cringe worthy.Possibly the stand out performance of the film is that of Jenn Harris. Harris plays the quintessential fag hag (Jen) to the devastatingly handsome Matthew Wilkas (Matt). Harris brings a depressive vibe into a relatively overused character, which is surprisingly, a breath of fresh air.
Although it’s the supporting characters that steal the show, both fag and hag have terrifically bitchy henchmen as it were, the ‘femme-bear’ “Nelson” and the incredibly bitchy “Jamie” (Jack Ferver)
By far the highlight of the film is the fabulous wannabe bear, Nelson, played brilliantly by writer and director Lisecki. The character of Nelson wasn’t particularly appealing to me at the beginning, then suddenly; the character soon manifests as the star of the show. Clearly, Lisecki gave himself some of the best lines, yet you don’t really mind, seeing as he pulls them off in the most gorgeously sarcastic manner.
Gayby’s plot isn’t really anything special; it is essentially a romantic comedy in disguise.
It’s the characters that make the film stand out. They are multidimensional and most importantly they’re ‘real’.
Uncompromisingly jovial, I would certainly recommend Gayby to anyone; it has buckets of charm, something that I find to be a rarity in gay cinema.
The lazy summer is over and Leo and his best friend Giovana are back in High School for the new term when curly headed new boy Gabriel joins the class for the first time.
Suddenly the cosy closeness of the two old friends is threatened when Giovana discovers that the newcomer will not be her longed-for first romance and that in fact, he will usurp her major role in Leo’s life. Leo has been blind from birth and lives with his overprotective parents in their very comfortable middle-class home in a suburb of Rio, and Giovana has played the part of his ‘seeing eyes’ for years. His mother almost suffocates him by insisting on controlling his every movement and she is reluctant to leave him alone for one single moment.
Gabriel’s arrival seems to coincide with Leo’s quest to finally break free and see if the school-exchange problem will also accept him so that he can live and study in another country. The news of this sends his mother into a fit, but his more amenable father is at least open to considering the idea which he tells Leo in one of the most touching of scenes in this very gentle coming of age story.
Leo’s quest for independence is part of his journey about discovering who he really is, and he seems totally surprised when he realises that part of this is his attraction for Gabriel. As the boy’s friendship grows into something much deeper, neither of them can trust their judgments in revealing their feelings to each other, even after a stolen peck on the cheek after a drunken party.
There is nothing at all extraordinary in the plot lines of this wee movie, but somehow it has the most endearing quality that makes it so immensely enjoyable. There is a remarkable innocence to this group of young people who all seem never to have even been kissed, and even the inclusion of Leo’s taunting by the bullies in his class has no hint of any real hatred. There are some really nice touches of humour and tenderness, none more so than when Gabriel insists that Leo learns how to dance. What does make it all so compelling is the captivating performances of the three young lead actors, particularly Ghilherme Lobo who was so pitch perfect as the blind boy.
This very cute debut feature from Brazilian writer/director Daniel Ribeiro was based on his award-winning short ‘Eu Não Quero Voltar Sozinho’ with the same actors and has gone on to, quite rightly, win two major accolades from the Berlinale: the FIPRESCI Prize and The TEDDY for Best LGBT Feature.
