Gay Themes in the Big Picture

A sufficient number of the dozens of films in Outfest ’97 were made available for preview to suggest that this is a banner year for gay movies, most of which either have already been picked up for distribution or are virtually certain to find buyers. After a gala opening at the Los Angeles Theater Friday, the festival settles down at its usual venue, the Directors Guild of America’s Theaters I and II and Video Theater, 7920 Sunset Blvd., augmented this year with the Harmony Gold Preview House, 7655 Sunset Blvd.

There’s been a flourishing of lesbian films in recent years, although few in this year’s festival were made available for advance screening.

But all the films in the festival that were available are by and large encouraging, not only for their artistry but also for their rigor and depth and for envisioning lesbian and gay people as part of society as a whole. Most all are fine examples of resourceful, committed, low-budget independent filmmaking.

Here follow mini-reviews of films available for preview:

It matters little that John Keitel’s shot-in-13-days “Defying Gravity” (DGA 1, Saturday at 1 p.m.) is a tad rough around the edges, for it confidently goes right to the heart of the matters of coming out and of gay-bashing. College fraternities are officially as emphatically heterosexual as the military, and it’s no wonder that Griff (Daniel Chilson) wants to keep secret a new gay relationship--even to his best friend (Niklaus Lange). Griff is not yet ready to accept that he’s gay or bisexual, while his lover (Don Handfield) has moved out of the fraternity house to explore a more openly gay way of life.

A brutal gay-bashing incident thrusts Griff, very well played by Chilson, into profound conflict. “Defying Gravity” is taut, to the point and totally involving and is a reminder that coming out remains a painful process for many even as the end of the 20th century approaches.

Director John Schlesinger will receive Outfest’s first lifetime achievement award at a screening of one of his finest films, “An Englishman Abroad” (1984) (DGA II, Saturday at 4 p.m.). The film was inspired by a real-life meeting that actress Coral Browne (who plays herself) had in Moscow with notorious British spy Guy Burgess (a formidable Alan Bates).

With John Greyson’s dispiriting “Lilies” (DGA I, Saturday at 9:15 p.m.), it’s the old story: You can imagine “Lilies” working on stage (it’s based on Michel Marc Bouchard’s 1987 play), but this screen version is so close to being a filmed play that it has an aura of artificiality that allows it to lapse into tedium.

It’s Quebec, 1952, and a bishop has been summoned to hear the confession of a supposedly dying convict, imprisoned for 40 years. Sure enough, the bishop and the convict were schoolmates, and they and another student were caught up in a lethal entanglement of homosexual passion, which via flashbacks is played out in stylized, sometimes surreal fashion heavy with symbolism--it’s not for nothing that the youths are seen enacting the martyrdom of St. Sebastian. The cast, which includes men playing female roles, is clearly able and at times affecting, but rarely are we unaware that the actors are acting rather than becoming the characters they portray.

Bestor Cram’s documentary “Courageous Hearts of Transsexual Men” (DGA Video, Sunday at 2:45 p.m., Monday at 5 p.m. and July 19 at 7:30 p.m.) introduces us to six very different individuals, all of whom have undergone or are undergoing the challenging passage from woman to man. With humor and candor they open their hearts to us as they face this dramatic change in their lives, which does not necessarily involve the still rudimentary--and very expensive ($20,000 to $70,000)--surgery to replicate male genitalia. Several seem effeminate, others amazingly masculine, and all of them happy with the choices they’ve made.

The description of “The Cream Will Rise” (DGA I, Sunday at 6 p.m.) as a work in progress should be taken seriously. It is documentarian Gigi Gaston’s ambitious attempt to create a portrait of the beautiful and talented singer-composer Sophie B. Hawkins, a self-described “omnisexual,” coming to terms with childhood sexual abuse while on a national concert tour and a visit with her decidedly bohemian mother in her native New York.

In its present state “Cream” is all impressions and no context, with virtually every aspect of the singer’s past and present shrouded in ambiguity and contradiction. If Gaston means to stick to this approach, she needs to tighten her film to eliminate a sense of repetition and a feeling of anticlimax. There’s an excess of music video-style communing-with-nature footage, but Hawkins comes across a vibrant woman of dazzling presence.

In his impressive and reflective “Finished” (DGA II, Sunday at 8:45 p.m.), experimental filmmaker William E. Jones probes the life and death of Alan Lambert, a handsome French Canadian porn star with whom Jones became infatuated but whom he never met. As Southern California, and later Montreal, vistas unfold, Jones tells how he discovered that Lambert committed suicide as part of his half-baked messianic Marxism.

Lambert also thought that, having reached the height of physical perfection, he could only decline. “Finished” draws provocative parallels with Frank Capra’s “Meet John Doe,” but Lambert also recalls Japanese novelist Yukio Mishima in his self-destructive mix of mystical radicalism and concern for physical perfection.

One of the standout works of the festival, “Private Shows” (DGA Video, Sunday at 8:45 p.m., Tuesday at 9:15 p.m. and Thursday at 7 p.m.) is a gritty, intense study of a good-looking young man, Christopher (M. Blaine Hopkins), who is working his way through school as a stripper-prostitute. Christopher is vain and self-absorbed but also intelligent and vulnerable. The film becomes increasingly intense as we learn that the film’s unseen maker is a former lover of Christopher and has a terrible time accepting Christopher’s prostituting himself.

Stephen Winter, referred to as Loren in the film, and Hopkins aren’t saying for sure that they’ve actually been lovers, but “Private Shows” certainly gives that impression. “Private Shows” is also honest about how seductive prostitution can be for young men, despite the uncertainties and dangers. Not only is the quick money intoxicating but also the discovery of exerting sexual power over others.

Written by Rondo Mieczkowski and directed by David DeCoteau, “Leather Jacket Love Story” (DGA I, Tuesday at 7:15 p.m.) poses the deathless question, can an 18-year-old blond Silver Lake poet (Sean Tataryn) find happiness with a macho 29-year-old construction worker (Christopher Bradley)? The answer in this sweet, campy, raunchy, funny, sure-fire crowd-pleaser may surprise you in its genuine tenderness.

Even more intense, and one of the most emotionally complex films among those previewed, French Canadian filmmaker Denis Langlois’ “L’Escorte” (Harmony Gold, Tuesday at 9:15 p.m.) reveals the impact of a clearly troubled young man, Steve (Robin Aubert), identifying himself as being from an escort service, upon a gay couple, Philippe (Paul-Antoine Taillefer) and Jean-Marc (Eric Cabana), who give him shelter. At first we think we’re in for a familiar story of lovers whose long-term relationship is threatened by a home wrecker, but what does evolve between Steve and Philippe leads Philippe to come to terms with his relationship with a childhood friend. What emerges from acutely observant and compassionate Langlois is in fact a consideration of love and life in the age of AIDS. “L’Escorte” is a notably assured, mature work.

Acclaimed experimental film-maker Su Friedrich’s “Hide and Seek” (DGA II, Wednesday at 9:15 p.m.), which had its local premiere in April as part of the American Cinematheque’s Alternative Screen series, is a fresh, exquisitely wrought 63-minute evocation of young girls coping with adolescence in the ‘60s. The film is intercut with interviews with lesbians, who in turn recall the advent of puberty in their lives and their growing awareness of their sexual orientation. For full schedule and ticket information: (213) 852-1407.

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Note: The American Cinematheque’s fascinating “Outlaw Masters of Modern Japanese Filmmaking” continues Friday and Saturday at Raleigh Studios featuring more films of neglected director Kenji Misumi. Information: (213) 466-FILM.

Also, the Nuart is bringing back Jean-Luc Godard’s masterful meditation on the fall of the Berlin Wall, “Germany Year 90 Nine Zero,” Saturday and Sunday at noon along with “The New World,” Godard’s unsettling contribution to the 1962 episode film “RoGoPaG,” a bleak vision of the future set in the present as a way of suggesting that it’s already here. Information: (310) 478-6379.

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Note: The 1997 edition of “Spike and Mike’s Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation” runs at the Royal Friday through July 26, (310) 477-5581; at the Colorado, Pasadena, Friday through Aug. 2, (818) 796-9704; at the Sunset 5, Aug. 1 through Sept. 27, (213) 848-3500; and UA Warner Center, Woodland Hills, Aug. 8 for an indefinite run, (818) 999-2130.

Included in the festival is Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s highly controversial “The Spirit of Christmas,” a five-minute anarchic, outrageous, obscenely funny film, which features a fierce battle between Jesus and Santa Claus, and is already, thanks to bootleg tapes, the hottest home screening item in memory.

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Meryl Joseph will appear tonight at Raleigh Studios at the 7:30 p.m. American Cinematheque screening of her documentary “City Farmers,” dealing with the efforts of Operation Green Thumb to turn vacant lots into vegetable and flower gardens. (213) 466-FILM.