reelout blazes through Kingston

From the lost gems of Kingston filmmakers to an intersex teen in Uruguay, the Journal wraps up reelout’s final weekend

  • Arts
Marion and Lucile struggle to adopt in the French film The New World.
Image supplied by: Supplied
Marion and Lucile struggle to adopt in the French film The New World.

CENTREPIECE GALA: “KINGSTON’S STILL BURNING” SHORTS SERIES

After 10 successful years, Kingston’s reelout queer film & video festival has matured into the second largest queer film festival in Ontario, and Friday night’s gala proved why. The centrepiece gala—entitled “Kingston’s Still Burning”—offered a scintillating exploration of identity and acceptance.

Held at Time to Laugh Comedy Club, the cheery atmosphere in the dimly lit lounge was complimented by a welcome from Miss Tyffanie Morgan, Kingston’s most famous drag queen. Miss Tyffanie enthusiastically introduced the films of the night, all made by Kingstonians over the past 15 years. Among the six shorts, Queen’s graduate Brian O’Neill had the audience roaring with laughter over Starring Brian O’Neill as Himself, a documentary he made in his final year as a film student. His use of home footage of his early years is compiled into a poignant and hilarious glance at his childhood—an upbringing full of failed attempts to fit the stereotypical, vivacious young-boy-tale mould. In a more serious, yet equally striking, tone was Jim Verburg’s A Fine Romance (in three parts), exploring a passionate relationship between two men. Its beautiful intimacy questions the lengths we will go to defy, conform to, or explore the identities attached to us by society. On a warm, rowdy and fun evening, the films—when taken in tandem—exhibited the outstanding and captivating talent Kingston has to be proud of. One guest even jumped up on his chair at the end of the night to protest the absence of a gay bar in Kingston. “You people are the worst supporters of the gay community that I have ever seen in my fucking life,” he joked playfully.

Kingston is defiantly still burning.

—Chloe Campion

THE NEW WORLD

The New World (Le Nouveau Monde) is a French film centred on Marion and Lucille, a lesbian couple struggling with various obstacles as they work towards having a child within the confines of a gay relationship. The story is a complex narrative, ridden with strife as the two women encounter homophobic family members, a barrage of unsuitable sperm donors and the dissolution of their own relationship as they both attempt to define their roles in baby Enzo’s life. The film is a fusion of a light-hearted and quick-witted exploration of modern parenting, and a more serious examination of the perils of being a gay parent in a world so dominated by heterosexuality. Despite a fairly horrific soundtrack and a somewhat overly dramatic plotline, the film is well acted and at times genuinely poignant. More than anything, it provokes deep moral questions about the privileging of heterosexuality in parenthood and encourages viewers to open their minds to the possibility of families without the traditional nuclear dynamics.

—Louise Potter

TRU LOVED

Nothing holds a mirror to ones cynicism like a heart-warming love story. But love stories are usually cringe-fests and, most of the time, it’s more fun to be cynical than warm-hearted. So while I was tempted to dissect this sort of cliché queer love comedy, I decided that although it was irritatingly passive-aggressive, it was indeed hilarious. Tru Loved is the story of high school junior Tru, who after moving from San Francisco to suburban southern California with her two moms, finds herself a social pariah because she is rumored to be a lesbian around campus. This rumor is based entirely on her lack of Apple Bottom Jeans and boots with fur.

Although she endures senseless and creative verbal abuse for her first few weeks, she befriends a slightly effeminate football quarterback named Lodell, who appears interested in a romantic relationship. They go out on a few dates, everything is hunky dory—until he makes bedroom eyes at a well groomed gentleman at a musical. Lodell eventually comes out to Tru, but remains her boyfriend at school to moisturize his macho mask. Meanwhile, Tru and queer comrade Walter spearhead the Gay/Straight alliance at their high school. The homo-hatin’ football team busts up the peace, Lodell included—despite his covert conoodling with Walter—in a kind of West Side Story parking lot dance sequence.

The film continues in this befuddling manner until Tru’s moms (inspired by the recent marriage of Tru’s dads) decide to tie the knot. Bruce Valanche, of all people (the guy with the red glasses in Hollywood Squares) plays the pastor, and the catalyst for a closet-exodus of literally all present. The movie was enhanced monumentally by both the presence of Bruce Valanche and a proverbial barrel of “Tom Cruise is gay” jokes.

—Tom Morgan

XXY

Written and directed by Argentine Lucía Puenzo, XXY is a beautiful, thoughtful portrayal of a critical point in the life of an intersex person. It follows 15-year-old Alex, played by Inés Efron, who has ambiguous sexual characteristics and has moved from Argentina to a small village in Uruguay to escape persecution. Up to the start of the film, Alex has been living as girl, taking hormones to prevent the development of masculine characteristics. Her mother invites friends, a couple from Argentina and their son, to stay with them. One of them is a surgeon, and Alex’s mother, unknown to her husband, has invited him with the idea of talking with Alex about having surgery done. The son, Alvaro, played by Martín Piroyansky has a relationship with Alex that forces him to reconsider his own sexuality.

The film is tense and emotional, but none of it seems manufactured or engineered to be that way. Its punch comes from the genuine drama of Alex’s search for sexual identity. The simple but moving plot is told with understated cinematography and soundtrack and the film never gets in the way of the story that it tells. Unfortunately, nearly all the characters except for Alex are somewhat two-dimensional. Efron makes up for it though by his sometimes funny, sometimes heart-breaking, entirely believable performance as Alex struggling in coming to terms with herself. XXY goes beyond being specifically an example of “intersex film.” It doesn’t present the facts of some collective, universal “intersex experience,” nor is it cynically relying on cinema-goers’ penchant for the different to attract viewers. XXY tells a story. It’s stark, moving and it may change some minds about gender assignment surgery and sexual relationships involving intersex people. But at its core, the film is a bittersweet human story that can resonate with any audience.

—Nicholas Fellion

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