Portland Lesbian And Gay Film Festival

[October 10th, 2007]

[PICK] Brand Upon the Brain!

[DIRECTOR APPEARANCE, LIVE NARRATION] It’s no surprise the centerpiece of this year’s Lesbian and Gay Film Festival is a bit of a gender-bender. What’s striking about Guy Maddin’s Brand Upon the Brain! , however, is how radically it twists everything else. It’s a Hardy Boys mystery combined with a Fritz Lang silent film and an autobiographical childhood-memories piece—which suggests Guy Maddin’s childhood included a father who literally sucked the youth from his offspring with a diabolical hose. Also, did I mention the Hardy Boy is actually a girl? Brand Upon the Brain! is bizarre and compelling enough on its own merits, but its national tour has been accompanied by live narrators. In Portland, the story will be told by Stephen Malkmus on Friday night and Karen (Fucking!) Black on Saturday night. AARON MESH. Cinema 21. 7 pm Friday, Oct. 12. 4 and 7 pm Saturday, Oct. 13. Director Guy Maddin will attend all three screenings.

The Curiosity of Chance

[DIRECTOR APPEARANCE] Like, oh my God. I just watched this, like, totally gnarly film. It’s called The Curiosity of Chance, and the fact that it’s been picked as the opener of the PLGFF is, like, so NOT cool. A totally hot (only from the head up, that is) military brat-cum-gay boy is forced to go to International School in Antwerp. In yet one more unnecessary coming-of-age story, Chance must deal with, in no particular order, a high-school bully that looks like Dom DeLuise, a hottie is-he-or-isn’t-he? neighbor, and the fact he likes to dress up in drag and perform in nightclubs he’s way too young to get into in the first place. It’s like an ’80s version of High School Musical , except it takes place in Belgium, with really bad actors and dialogue. Gag me with a spoon. BYRON BECK. Hollywood Theatre. 7:30 pm Friday, Oct. 12. Director Russell P. Marleau will attend the screening.

Colma: The Musical

Two things to love about this laughably low-budget suburban San Fran musical: puppylicious actor Jake Moreno as the (straight) protagonist Billy, and perhaps the first musical number on film in which a character sings the lyric, “You can shove it up your cunt.” The rest of director Richard Wong’s feature-film debut goes skidding off the rails, if giddily so. H.P. Mendoza’s screenplay and lyrics are high-fructose bubble-gum everyteen. Mendoza himself stars as Rodel, an angry and seemingly asexual Asian gay teen so damningly drawn and nastily portrayed that he earns no sympathy, even after a good gay-bashing from Dad. A deeply misguided film masquerading as comedy lite that sets queer cinema back at least a decade. STEPHEN MARC BEAUDOIN. Hollywood Theatre. 6 pm Saturday, Oct. 13.

[PICK] The Bubble

Gay love is messy enough without getting Hamas involved. That’s the premise of this film by Eytan Fox—director of one of the best love stories of all time, Yossi&Jagger . His new heroes are two attractive, gay Romeos—one Jewish, one Palestinian—whose lives intersect in the most untimely of ways. In fact, the one drawback of this film is how quickly everything in their lives goes from mind-numbingly quiet to quite literally explosive. But then again, the beauty of this film is to see how hard it is to gain peace in this world when you can’t even get along with your next-door neighbor, let alone fall in love with him. BYRON BECK. Cinema 21. 6 pm Tuesday, Oct. 13.