SF International LGBT Film Festival: XXY & Japan Japan
(By SFist MiHi Ahn)
We're suckers for coming-of-age movies, so we hunkered down with a cup of coffee and bag of popcorn last night at the Castro Theatre to see back to back Frameline Festival movies about young adults. The first movie, XXY by first time director Lucia Puenzo is a quietly riveting film about an intersex teenager going through puberty in a small seaside town in Uruguay. Fifteen-year-old Alex has lived life as a girl, but... well, let's not mince words, she also has a penis. All of our dorky concerns and ridiculous melodrama of our adolescence seems trivial in comparison to the anguish Alex must face.
Alex's protective parents moved to a small town after her birth to keep her away from the wagging tongues of big city snoops, but with puberty also comes choices. Throw in the arrival of a visiting plastic surgeon, the doc's family, and a tension-alced attraction between the plastic surgeon's son and Alex, and you have the makings for high drama at a critical juncture in Alex's life. The most remarkable thing about this film was that, ultimately, we felt Alex would be just fine. It was the plastic surgeon's son we were worried about. Alex may have been born intersex but her protective and loving father always saw her as "perfect" from the moment she was born. In contrast, the son of the plastic surgeon has to deal with a father who's kind of a jerk. In the end, the film asks you who is more blessed: the normal, so to speak, boy who lives with the disapproving and disappointed father, or the teen who is blessed with unconditional love and the knowledge that her family is always on her side? Us, we'll take the boobie/penis package and the nice dad any day.
The director of Japan Japan, Lior Shamriz, flew in from London for the Frameline screening of his latest film last night. Boy, did we feel bad for him when people started leaving the theatre in droves about 40 minutes into the movie. Japan Japan is billed as a movie about the critical moment between youth and adulthood when a lot of nothing happens. (Emphasis on NOTHING.) The only thing more mind-numbingly dull than witnessing our own boring lives frittering away is watching someone else's boring life frittering away. Ugh. We kept waiting and waiting for the movie to get good, but after about an hour we gave up. We followed the third wave of people leaving the Castro Theater. Alas, when we reached the lobby, one of the anguished film festival workers creid, "oh no, you guys are all leaving too?!"
It was that bad, folks.
We're curious to know Japan Japan ever got better? Please let us know if we should have stuck it out to the bitter end.
Oh, and Japan Japan was preceded by a short called Alan Ginsburg Gives Great Head. The short was an indictment of Singapore's rigid government which outlaws pornography (among other things), BUT was was basically a voice-over of Ginsburg quotes and Singapore facts spliced together with a video of a young lad jacking off. Yeah.
Check out the SF International LGBT Film Festival's schedule of films here.
Image: Japan