Steering Queer

When the Portland Queer Film Festival launched 18 years ago, it didn't have that name—it was the Portland Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, and the word "queer" was a long way from being widely embraced. This year, the fest has rebranded itself. Its lineup, though, is as strong as ever. Here are four picks. 

Back on Board: Greg Louganis

Critic's Grade: A  [DIRECTOR AND SUBJECT ATTENDING] It's lonely at the top of a diving board. Greg Louganis knows. The star diver caused controversy by disclosing he'd been HIV-positive during the '88 Olympics, when he suffered a head injury during competition. In her sharp-eyed documentary, Cheryl Furjanic illuminates not only this struggle, but also Louganis' financial troubles, abusive partners and the isolation of competing in an individual sport. The portrait is intimate—we learn about insults thrown at him and about the secret signals between him and his coach—but Furjanic skimps on the years between Louganis' retirement and his reconciliation with the U.S. Diving Team for the London Olympics. Still, by juxtaposing his struggles with the Cold War, the AIDS panic and the financial crisis, the film gets at the stakes of being a champion. JAMES HELMSWORTH. 7:30 pm Friday, Oct. 3.

Appropriate Behavior

Critic's Grade: B  As the bisexual daughter of conservative Iranian immigrants, life is dicey for 20-something Shirin (Desiree Akhavan, who also directs). Appropriate Behavior begins as Shirin loses her long-term girlfriend because of her reluctance to come out to her family. Despite its weighty subject matter, the film doesn't take itself too seriously. It even makes fun of its own occasionally overly artsy cinematography: Shirin teaches film class to 5-year-olds, spending most of her time trying to persuade them not to eat the candy for their stop-motion movie, while her rival teacher's students re-create scenes from The Birds. Akhavan and Rebecca Henderson, as Shirin's ex, pull off roles that are believable in their ridiculousness, as when they passive-aggressively compare their dates at a party: "John's spearheading a campaign to bridge the gentrification gap in Brooklyn through mass kombucha brewing," Shirin brags. Akhavan doesn't try to solve the challenges of bisexuality or coming out, but her wry voice is enough to carry the film. SHANNON GORMLEY. 7 pm Saturday, Oct. 4.

One Zero One

Critic's Grade: B+  Like the love children of Marie Antoinette and Divine, Cybersissy and BayBjane bring drag to lurid, baroque heights. But they're more than just queens in footlong eyelashes and the most ornate wigs imaginable. They're paragons of courage, self-invention and subversion, at least as presented in Tim Lienhard's debut documentary. Cybersissy is Antoine Timmermans, a plump Dutchman with acute psychological issues, while BayBjane is Mourad Zerhouni, a German-Moroccan born with severe physical disabilities: He's under 5 feet tall, with misshapen fingers, a congenital heart defect and only one eye. Their performances question the relationship between ugliness and glamour, as well as the implications of playing up disability. Lienhard himself toys with expectations of documentary, cutting the talking-head interviews and performance footage with hyperartificial scenes of the duo in palaces or forests, Mahler playing in the background. It's weird, wonderful and entirely fitting. REBECCA JACOBSON. 8:50 pm Sunday, Oct. 5.

Lilting

Critic's Grade: B+   There are moments in Lilting, from Cambodian-born director Hong Khaou, that make clear we're watching a debut film. A lack of subtlety creeps in, driven by a need to over-explain. But it's easy to forgive such minor missteps in this elegiac, unconventional love story. Forget all those "boy meets girl" or even "boy meets boy" plots. This is "boy meets deceased gay lover's possessive and possibly homophobic Mandarin-speaking mother" material. Richard (Ben Whishaw) tries to make a connection with his lover's mother, Junn (Pei-pei Cheng). As the reluctant resident of a London nursing home, Junn divides her time between fantasizing about her last moments with her son and snogging fellow home resident Alan (Peter Bowles)—so Richard hires a translator for them so their affair can progress beyond heavy petting. The results at first are heartwarming and funny. As time goes on, though, it's clear that speaking the same language is more about empathy and acts of love than it is about alphabets. DEBORAH KENNEDY. 9 pm Tueday, Oct. 7.

SEE IT: The Portland Queer Film Festival is at Cinema 21, 616 NW 21st Ave., 223-4515, pdxqueerfilm.com.

WWeek 2015