Frameline's Grand Finales

Frameline 38, the San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival's four final nights are unusually rich, with a line-up including several possible future queer classics.

I Feel Like Disco (Germany) Axel Ranisch's domestic comedy, by turns goofy and dark, puts our love of the eternally silly music genre disco to an ultimate test. Flori is a terminally confused teenager whom perhaps only a mother could love. Still saddled with his "baby fat," the kid lives for lip-synching under a revolving glass ball. Only mom sees into his heart, and when she is suddenly struck down, Flori is left to cope with an impatient swimming-instructor dad who prays that he'll butch it up, and a lithe, impossibly cute Romanian diver who becomes an impossible lover fantasy.

IFLD illustrates the fine line trod by German comedies that veer between fantasy and the kind of gritty truths given a wide berth by their American counterparts. Robert Alexander Baer raises the erotic temperature as Flori's main crush and tormentor-in-chief. (Closing night, Castro, 6/29)

Appropriate Behavior One of the festival's hippest comedies is an achingly wise and poignant account of life in Brooklyn's lesbian fast lanes, from Iranian-American director Desiree Akhavan. Her wise-ass heroine Shirin starts with a messy breakup - her ex cuts up her underwear as an exclamation point to their final fight. She's not out to her family, her day job involves teaching filmmaking to six-year-olds, and worst of all, she just can't get her mind off her ex. Akhavan punctuates her story with flashbacks, like that long-ago New Year's Eve when Shirin first met her honey on the steps of a Park Slope brownstone.

"What are you drinking?"

"I filled this water bottle with tequila."

"Classy."

"I'm drinking with a purpose. This guy with whom I recently had an unfortunate sexual encounter showed up, and now I feel uncomfortable. I just hate the way dudes get when they can't maintain an erection. They shut down and get all mopey and offended when you make jokes."

"Yeah, it's weird the way men don't enjoy humor at the expense of their penises."

"I know I don't look like I'm into girls, and I was just talking about being a boner-killer, but I am super-sexy and super into girls, like you."

"Like me?"

"You know, like manly, but also a little bit like a lady."

With a sharp eye for the pratfalls of coming out in a conservative ethnic culture, Akhavan offers a queer version of mumblecore classics like Andrew Bujalski's Funny Ha Ha. Beginning and ending with our gal on the subway, we hope Shirin finds her way before the end of the line. (Castro, 6/27)

Boys "I'm not gay!" Before an impossibly cute Dutch boy issues this frosty declaration, we've had 20 minutes to drink in the little slice of rural heaven that 15-year-old Sieger (Gijs Blom resembles a Brat Pack-era Rob Lowe) inhabits with his rebellious older brother, widower dad and a scrum of adolescent athletes-in-training. Twenty minutes in, director Mischa Kamp has her lads lock lips at the local swimming hole. The kiss surprises Sieger, but not his lip-locking partner Marc, a brazenly self-assured lad played with terrific aplomb by curly-haired imp Ko Zandvliet.
Scene from director Miguel Ferrari's My Straight Son. Photo: Frameline

The boy-on-boy frolics upstage a teen sports story that otherwise resembles Peter Yates' 1979 Indiana bicycle-racing comedy/drama gem Breaking Away. Others will recall the similar 1980 queer-themed classic Spetters, which became a Hollywood calling card for its young Dutch director, Paul Verhoeven. (Castro, 6/28)

My Straight Son (Venezuela) Director Miguel Ferrari provides a stirring melodrama with the festival's most compelling if unlikely father/son bonds. Gay photographer Diego is living a cozy Caracas life between his high-end fashion shoots and nights out with his boyfriend Fabrizio. Diego suffers trouble in spades with the visit of an angry boy, his own 15-year-old son, the product of a long-ago hetero fling. The kid, Armando, is upset over years of fatherly neglect. Things come to a nasty head when Fabrizio is the victim of a vicious queer-bashing and Diego is challenged to be a good dad and a true mensch while under siege from his society's most virulent form of machismo. (Victoria, 6/28)
Scene from director Rodrigo Guerrero's The Third One.
Photo: Frameline

The Third One (Argentina) This erotically charged caper kicks off in a young man's bedroom as the college student begins a sexy web-chat with an older guy. Rodrigo Guerrero uses deliciously framed long takes to show how the kid hooks up for some frisky action with the man and his lover. What distinguishes this romp is the deliberately paced escalation of carnal hooks: sex must wait for dinner with white wine. The bedroom scenes are worth the wait, in carefully choreographed erotic sequences, for a film that steers clear of obvious porn. (Victoria, 6/28)

Cupcakes Israel's jack-of-all-genres director Eytan Fox returns with a cinema sugar-rush about six friends at a European TV song contest. Ofer, a sexy and vocationally frustrated pre-school teacher, ropes five female pals into subordinating inflated egos to deliver a blockbuster slice of pop treacle. Framed by my favorite disco anthem, "Love Will Keep Us Together," Fox unveils the party-down side of a country surviving perilously in the world's toughest neighborhood. (Castro, 6/28)
Scene from director Eytan Fox's Cupcakes. Photo: Frameline

Boy Meets Girl Eric Schaeffer (My Life's in Turnaround) gives the story of a newbie Kentucky tranny a sassy spin. Newcomer Michelle Hendley offers a brave interpretation of the complex motives of a "simple country girl" who trusts her platonic best friend/one-time wannabe lover with a naked glimpse of both her heart and a body that's still very much in transition. (Roxie, 6/28)

Salvation Army (France) Abdellah Taia embeds us inside an extended Moroccan clan as a shy, queer Arab boy (Taia's younger self) plots to escape the tyranny of family and the mostly benevolent but still painful exploitation by foreign sex tourists. (Roxie, 6/27)

Boys Don't Cry (1999) Nebraska native Hilary Swank notched the first of her Best Actress Oscars with a heartbreaking turn as a small-town girl whose boyish demeanor sets her off on a tragic path. Swank is utterly convincing as the real-life Teena Brandon, a lesbian lothario who, posing as pretty-boy Brandon Teena, wins the hearts of a posse of small-town country girls. "They say I'm the best boyfriend they've ever had." Unfortunately, this winning streak enrages the local rednecks, giving director Kimberly Peirce the makings of a classic queer tragedy. Swank's peerless turn is matched by Chloe Sevigny as the girl who steals Brandon's heart, and Peter Sarsgaard and Brendan Sexton III as the guys for whom Brandon is an intolerable affront. A good excuse to skip work for a Castro matinee, June 26 at 11 a.m.