QFest's poetic bits from Latin America
Only four more days to catch Philadelphia's premiere LGBT film festival before QFest is gone - at least until next year.
Only four more days to catch Philadelphia's premiere LGBT film festival before QFest is gone - at least until next year.
There are still plenty of films to enjoy before Monday's grand finale, a screening of Big Gay Musical followed by an awards ceremony and a closing-night party.
What to watch? Here are a few suggestions:
The fest offers three remarkable, poetic films from Latin America that play with the tradition of magic realism.
Limbo. Mexican writer-director Horacio Rivera offers a strange, amusing, and endearing fable set in that non-space between heaven and hell. Isao (Francisco Barcala) is a strange, amusing, and endearing sexually ambiguous fifth grader who is molested and left for dead by a teacher. As he hovers between life and death, Isao is transported into an eerie ghost hospital. Joined by a lawyer with a gunshot in his head, the youngster must figure out the secret to his limbo state.
El niño pez. Director Lucía Puenzo follows up XXY with a lesbian romance/ crime thriller/ fable about the forbidden love between Lulu (Inés Efron), a privileged girl from the suburbs of Buenos Aires and her family's Paraguayan maid, La Guayi (Mariela Vitale). The pair hatch an ill-fated plan to raise money to escape to La Guayi's village. Lulu makes it there alone to find that her girlfriend's past is shrouded in a fantastical mystery straight out of Latin American mythology.
Raging Sun, Raging Sky. Acclaimed Mexican writer-director Julián Hernández follows up 2006's Broken Sky with a ravishing 191-minute epic poem about the power of desire, which uses stunning black-and-white and color photography instead of dialogue to tell its story. Two young lovers, Ryo (Guillermo Villegas) and Kieri (Jorge Becerra), are split apart when Ryo is abducted by Tari (Javier Olivan), a young man literally possessed by jealousy.
We enter a mythological realm when a female divinity, Corazón del ciel (Giovanna Zacarias) helps Kieri to find his lover.
If magic realism is too much of an escape, try these other festival favorites:
An Englishman in New York. Flamboyant civil servant Quentin Crisp became a gay icon in the '70s with the publication and subsequent film adaptation of his memoir, The Naked Civil Servant. John Hurt, who played Crisp, returns in this sequel about Crisp's later life as a minor celebrity.
Changing Spots. Susan Turley, whose directorial debut, The M.O. of M.I., was a clever, postmodern con-within-a-con story, returns with an equally layered love story/mystery. Fledgling actress Molly (Lane West) and her pregnant partner, Peg (Danielle Egnew), lead a happy, fulfilling life until a wedding invitation sends Molly back to her home town and her past, which is haunted by dark secrets.
Prodigal Sons. Kimberly Reed's debut feature is another complex mystery filled with surprising twists. Except that it's an autobiographical documentary about the San Francisco filmmaker's journey back to her home town in Montana. Reed, a male-to-female transexual who began life as Paul McKerrow, tries to reconnect with her estranged adopted brother Marc, who has mood swings after sustaining a head injury. Filled with resentment, Marc has spent years searching for his biological parents, only to find out that he is an unacknowledged grandson of Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth.
St. Trinian's. Oliver Parker, who struck gold with his hilarious Oscar Wilde adaptations, The Importance of Being Earnest (2002) and An Ideal Husband (1999), teams up with co-creator Barnaby Thompson for this lovable British satire based on the 1950s film series, about a cabal of bad girls who try to save their all-girls boarding school. Stars Gemma Arterton, Talulah Riley and Mischa Barton are joined by a cross-dressing Rupert Everett as eccentric headmistress Camilla Fritton. (Need we say more?)
Philadelphia QFest
The 15th annual QFest continues this weekend with more screenings and events. It ends Monday with a screening of Big Gay Musical followed by a closing-night bash.
Tickets: $10 per screening. The festival offers a choice of packages with varying levels of access.
Information: For showtimes call 267-765-9800, Ext. 4, or visit www.phillycinema.org or www.qfest.com.EndText