Gays Gone Wild!

It’s that most wonderful time of the year. No, it’s not Christmas – though some gay apparel would be more than appropriate. In fact, ’tis the season for lusciously caparisoned drag queens to prance down the DGA theater red carpet to watch hot movies about teenage boys trying to get laid (by each other).

Yes, it’s time again for Outfest, the annual celebration of films dealing with subject matter relating to the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender communities. This year’s festival contains a whopping 212 titles (including roughly 80 features), with many keynote premieres, from director Tim Frywell’s fascinating-sounding Victorian women’s prison mystery, Affinity, to Todd Stephens’s likely D-and-A beefcake fest Another Gay Sequel: Gays Gone Wild!

Even considering the daunting number of entries on display, the number of works likely to make a crossover to the mainstream is small. Instead, the festival offers an exciting venue for dynamic smaller efforts, which continue to artfully shade in the nuances of queer life.

The rise of TV networks like Logo and Here! has created an almost inexhaustible demand for gay cinema – many of Outfest’s releases will ultimately find their way to the cable “airwaves” in this way. And this is both good and bad: It’s good that filmmakers driven to explore queer issues will have a way of showcasing their work. Yet, the fact that so many of these films’ final resting place is the tube pretty much also ensures a generic aspect to their stories; one is unlikely to find films that skirt the edge on cable channels owned by corporations like MTV and CBS.

Still, even judging by the selection of films provided for preview, one is struck by the sense that the current queer zeitgeist is less about the need to label behavior and more about the chaotic expression of desire. We are finally seeing a transition from films which depict behavior as being regimentally “gay” or “lesbian” to those in which characters’ actions drift from one gender orientation to the other and back, without labels. It’s indeed a fascinating time for queer cinema.

Annlee Ellingson (AE), Amy Nicholson (AN), and I (PB) checked out the following films (more reviews will apear next week):

Bi the Way. In their glib and relentlessly upbeat documentary, co-directors Brittany Blockman and Josephine Decker travel the country, interviewing bisexuals. They talk to an African-American kid in New York, who comes to grips with his own issues of shame before committing to a romance with a guy; and they meet up with a sweet young twentysomething Chicago actor whose doting parents seem only marginally less confused about their son’s sexuality than he is. There are also interviews with tons of giggling college girls who consider themselves adventurous as they swap spit with each other. And there are some downright creepy scenes in which a personal trainer-couple (male and female) go out to play at a swingers’ party. Although one tends to sympathize with the filmmakers’ arguments that folks are more sexually complex than they believe, the cutesy handling of the subject matter is so surface level as to come across as patronizing. Interestingly (and rather sadly), the film also has interviews with an adorable pre-teen boy, who defines himself as “bisexual” clearly in the hopes of earning the favor of his long-distance dad – who just happens to be Jonathan Caouette, director of the far more transgressive 2003 doc Tarnation. (PB) (Sun., 12:15 p.m., DGA; also Thurs., July 17, 9:45 p.m., DGA)

Dolls (Pusinky). Tucked away at sports camp under the watchful eye of her younger brother Vojta, privileged Iska longs to journey with her best friends to Holland in order to spend their last summer together working on a farm and smoking pot. The trio hitchhikes with Vojta reluctantly in tow, taking turns flirting for free food and booze. Seductive asthmatic Karolina is best at this – Vendula is on the heavy side and Iska isn’t interested, it turns out, in anyone but Karolina, eventually driving a wedge between the girls. Much of the action is set at night and/or in clubs, and it’s difficult to decipher all that’s taking place in these darkly photographed scenes – possibly more of an issue on a review copy than on the big screen. But, as each character discovers her own path from girl- to womanhood, Czech writer-director Karin Babinska’s coming-of-age road trip flick hits all the right, if familiar, notes. (AE) (Sat., 2:30 p.m., Fairfax; Mon., 9:30 p.m., Laemmle’s Monica)

The Lost Coast. In writer-director Gabriel Fleming’s bleak drama, three San Francisco-based childhood pals, now in their 20s, come together for the annual Halloween Boy’s Town party. Mark (Lucas Alifano) is gay and had a long ago, brief tryst with his pal Jasper (Ian Scott McGregor), who has since “gone straight” and is engaged to be married. Consumed at first with an inexplicable bitterness, the pair bum around the Castro with Mark’s roommate (and fag hag) Lily (Lindsay Benner), engaging in a nonstop fest of spite, pill-popping, and boozery. Fleming’s film is intentionally dark and murky, but that’s all to the point of artfully conveying a bleak underlying mood of romantic despair. The film sometimes drags, but it also often possesses an unsettling mood of unease that borders on the ghostly – even though the only ghost present turns out to be the Spirit of Love Thwarted. (PB) (Sun., 7 p.m., Fairfax)

The New Twenty. Thirty is the new 20, as the saying goes – but in writer-director Chris Mason Johnson’s ensemble soaper about a coterie of whiners, 20 is actually the new 16. A group of former best pals from college find themselves growing old without growing wise. Shark-like investment banker Andy (Ryan Locke) is engaged to be married to sexy Julie (Nicole Bilderback), but he suffers a career crisis when he goes into business with a ruthless venture capitalist (Terry Serpico). Julie’s brother Tony (Andrew Wei Lin) falls in love with a handsome college professor (Bill Sage), who happens to have a dark secret – while gay slacker buddy Ben (Colin Fickes) wanks himself cross-eyed to porn because he can’t find true love. Johnson’s film strives to be a St. Elmo’s Fire for the fin de millennium twentysomething, and it’s commendable that the characters are not so much defined by sexual labels as they are by their attempts to satiate their emotional desires. The cast’s a likable bunch – particularly Locke and Lin – but the plot’s lack of dramatic heft is off-putting. (PB) (Sat., 9:30 p.m., DGA; Tues., 7 p.m., Laemmle’s Monica)

The New World (Le Nouveau Monde). Their families think they’re unconventional, but longtime French couple Lucie and Marion are as normal as it gets: Lucie (Natalia Dontcheva) wants kids, Marion (Vanessa Larré) wants motorcycles. Eventually, Lucie gets her way and what starts as a comedy of double-edged support – Marion only chooses ugly dads for the insemination process – becomes a straight-up drama, complete with saccharine music. Dontcheva and Larré have an earthy chemistry; they don’t kiss much, but they lean on each other constantly. Ludovic Pion-Dumas and Catherine Touzet’s script plunders every 21st century, three-parent Unexpected-Drama-to-Expect-When-You’re-Expecting trope. There are plenty of hugs, but this pulse-reading of Parisian gay rights and acceptance stops shy of treacle. Managing to be obvious without being boring, and sensitive without being false or cloying, it’s the rare vitamin that goes down smooth as sugar. (AN) (Fri., 7:15 p.m., Fairfax)

Newcastle. Here’s a movie jam-packed with hot blond Australian surfer boys – and not only do they surf, they do so shirtless (and often shorts-less), their toned bodies dripping with salt water and sweat. Really, does an Outfest review of writer-director Dan Castle’s Aussie surf epic need to mention anything else? Castle’s drama centers on three surfing brothers, living not far from Australia’s almost gorgeous Newcastle Beach. Legendary surf champion Victor (Reshad Strik) is now an embittered has-been, sidelined by a knee injury. His towheaded half-brother Jesse (Lachlan Buchanan) is becoming a famous surfer in his own right. And Jesse’s younger brother Fergus (Xavier Samuel) develops a crush on Jesse’s main competition, hunky surfer star Andy (Kirk Jenkins). Frankly, it’s best to watch Castle’s surf opera with the sound turned off: The acting of the beautiful, doe-eyed surfer boys is beyond atrocious, and the Aussie dialect is so unexpectedly impenetrable the film almost needs subtitles. Castle’s cornball cliché-filled script plays like it’s little more than a pilot for Boy Baywatch. Still, Richard Michalak’s cinematography beguilingly captures the greens of the sea and the ➤ near-balletic movements of the surfers. (PB) (Sun., 9:30 p.m., DGA; Tues., 9:30 p.m., Laemmle’s Monica)

Ready? OK! Filling the slot in Outfest’s traditional Young Gay Coming of Age Film category is director James Vasquez’s cheerful but utterly generic comedy about a young lad who dreams not of being on the school football team but of becoming a cheerleader. And why not? He is a peppy young lad who knows his batons from his pom- poms. Eventually, horrified and disgusted mom (prissy Carrie Preston, extra starch) comes to grips with her son’s choices, assisted by a kindly gay neighbor (Michael Emerson). The film’s moral lessons are essentially undermined by the stock characters and creaky sitcom atmosphere – and it doesn’t help that the neighbor is unintentionally far creepier than he needs to be. Except for Tara Karsian, as the boy’s narrow-minded school principal, this is a humdrum effort. (PB) (Fri., 7 p.m., Fairfax; also Sat., July 19, 11:30 a.m., Fairfax)

Steam. The relaxing vapors of the sauna bind three over-stressed women in writer-director Kyle Schickner’s femmepowerment flick. Divorced mom Laurie (Ally Sheedy) flirts with her son’s hunky coach while battling an ex (Ron Bottitta) more evil than Snidely Whiplash; senior Doris (Ruby Dee) is so walled off from her son’s death that she can’t go to church, let alone receive the affections of a widower (Dick Anthony Williams); and pretty co-ed Elizabeth (Kate Siegel) has just spent her first night with foxy bi classmate Niala (Reshma Shetty, luscious for all genders), only to duck out for morning Mass with her right wing parents. None of the three bathers knows (or truly cares) about the other’s lives; the steam is an evanescent excuse to make a movie out of three under-developed stories. But while the acting and cinematography aren’t strong enough to redeem Schickner’s predictable melodrama, each of the leads has a crackup smile that keeps us more rooting for than heckling their latest personal disaster. (AN) (Sat., 9:30 p.m., Fairfax)

Trinidad. Trinidad, Colorado, it turns out, is the sex change surgery world capital, replacing those old Amsterdam sausage factories we used to read about in the funny papers – at least according to this pleasant, albeit workmanlike documentary from directors PJ Raval and Jay Hodges. It’s a brisk portrait of life in the otherwise typical small American town, where some of the townsfolk are quite aghast at what their community’s main industry has become. More startlingly, the film contains interviews with the kindly, motherly surgeon, who is not only her company’s president, but is also a client. The directors convincingly prove that the clinic’s transgender patients (and doctors) are about as normal as any folks living in a small town – which means that the film itself starts to plod midway through. If the patients and surgeons weren’t themselves transgendered, they’d just be the same folks you’d see anywhere and hardly worthy of the scrutiny of a full documentary – but, perhaps, that’s Raval and Hodges’s point. (PB) (Fri., 9:45 p.m., DGA; Sun., 1 p.m., REDCAT)

The Way I See Things. Writer-director Brian Pera’s intimate – but still haunting – drama is one of this festival’s most deeply personal, idiosyncratic, and delicately constructed films. Sometime after the death of his longtime lover, young Otto (Pera) is dragged off on a road trip by his buddies, who want to snap him out of his mourning. Before long, an exasperated Otto ditches his pals on the road, hooking up with a group of strangers, who convince him to join a commune in the middle of nowhere. There – amid a group of loopy New Age goofuses, who happen to be led by a spooky rich divorcée turned guru (Beverly Doggrell) – Otto finds a sort of peace that has little to do with the quack-a-mamie culty philosophy of the other followers. With its rustic, mostly backwoods setting and long patches of silence, Pera’s film possesses an internal, near-monastic quiet that suggests a deep spirituality; there’s a lot going on, even if it’s mostly on a cerebral and interior level. (PB) (Sat., 1:30 p.m., DGA)

XXY. During a vacation holiday with his parents to the coast of Uruguay, teenage boy Alvaro (Martin Piroyansky) falls in love with sweet, beautiful Alex (Inés Efron), age 15. The problem is that she – or maybe he – is a hermaphrodite, with sex organs of both types. At his/her parents’ orders, Alex is on a constant diet of hormones to keep him/her in a state that is on the female side of the face. Yet Alex, in a rebellious era of adolescence, spitefully quits taking her/his meds and starts to realize some things about himself that shock him greatly. Argentinean writer-director Lucía Puenzo’s remarkably powerful drama skillfully takes the central intimate teen romance to haunting levels of angst and melancholy. Piroyansky’s tortured performance, as a young man who can hardly believe what he’s feeling, is brilliant – a scene where he pleads for his father’s love is incredibly haunting and unexpectedly universal. (PB) (Fri., 7 p.m., DGA)

Outfest. 212 films, including 65 features. At the DGA, Fairfax, Laemmle’s Monica, REDCAT, and other venues, through June 21. General info: outfest.org/fest2008/Ticket info: (213) 480-7065 or boxoffice@outfest.org.