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The 2011 Philadelphia QFest arrives July 7, bringing with it more than 80 filmmakers and actors from across our rainbowed globe. As usual, the accompanying work is a grab bag of rich discoveries and cheap fodder, provocative gems and limp drivel. The rumored must-see of the 12-day affair is “Circumstance,” the rebellious, Tehran-set lesbian love story that took home this year’s Dramatic Audience prize at Sundance. Other probable hot tickets include the erotic thriller “Absent,” Argentinian director Marco Berger’s follow-up to “Plan B”; and closing-night selection “Going Down in La La Land,” guilty-pleasure maestro Casper Andreas’s latest bit of uncensored, spirited boundary-pushing. But, for our purposes, we’ll focus on seven not-so-random titles, and point out whether or not they’re worth the tear of a ticket.
If you want to have a happy festival, it’s best to skip the opening nightmare that is “Judas Kiss,” an ingratiating numskull fantasy from director J.T. Tepnapa. Unable to even smoke cigarettes convincingly, festival fave Charlie David plays Zach, a 30-ish filmmaker who treks back to his alma mater to judge a student film fest. Naturally, Zach beds a freshman the night he arrives, only to realize it’s actually his younger self. Don’t even bother snickering at whatever Freudian pretzel Tepnapa is trying to twist, as its hardly the nadir of this queer “Quantum Leap.” Amidst an orgy of bad acting and worse dialogue, characters preposterously regard the festival like a regular Cannes Jr., its winner destined for Oscars. Zach 1.0 (Richard Harmon) has apparently made a movie so stirring people sweat while they watch it, but it turns out to be little more than the white-boy, music-video version of “Precious.” And “Judas Kiss” turns out to be something that definitely shouldn’t presume to know squat about film art.
An immensely better way to kick things off is with “Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same,” a kooky, highly endearing throwback to 1950s sci-fi and the opening title for the ladies in the crowd. Coolly mashing up “Coneheads” with “Clerks,” this ultra-low-budget black and white romcom follows three baldheaded female aliens from the planet Zots as they aim to have their hearts broken on Earth, a plan designed to numb them of the “big feelings” their elders think are boring holes in Zots’s ozone layer. Writer/director Madeleine Olnek shrewdly scores some major culture-clash laughs (a barroom dance scene is soda-outta-the-nose funny), and she rather effortlessly deals in the theme of individuals being alienated from their home for impulses foolishly viewed as damaging.
A like-minded, but far less inspired, film is “This is What Love in Action Looks Like,” Morgan Jon Fox’s bloated, redundant documentary about Love in Action, a Tennessee-based Christian “straight camp,” and Zach Stark, a gay teen who, in 2007, blogged about his forced enrollment and incited a protest that made national headlines. Inside info from former “clients” provides slivers of fascination, but there’s nary a factoid that truly grabs you. Besides, Fox is too busy packing his running time with regurgitated kumbaya platitudes about acceptance that, if anything, regressively work against his cause. Moreover, he makes the wretched decision to step in as his own talking head and self-appointed expert, creating an instant veil of falseness and practically de-authoring the film. Proving, however, that such a thing can be done with absolute grace is the doc “I Am,” whose director, Sonali Gulati, speaks to her subjects and appears briefly in footage from her TV appearance on a popular New Delhi show. An Indian-American lesbian who never came out to her late mother, Gulati charts her coming to terms with what might have been had the truth been spilled, while also profiling multiple New Delhi homosexuals and their relationships with their parents. Moving to the point it feels it could be a vital work in the land it depicts, “I Am” digs for big answers in a place where tolerance has much further to go, yet thrives on small, universal family moments.
Keeping with that recurring desire to grab hold of the past, the love-triangle drama “August” sees playboy Troy (Murray Bartlett) return to L.A. to re-enter the life of his ex, who’s now living with a new lover but can’t resist familiar urges. Across the board, the film is exceedingly well-acted, but director Eldar Rappaport bludgeons the good movie he’s got with a feeble grasp of craft and asinine structural choices. Senseless establishing shots are rampant, while a harshly edited broken chronology generates needless confusion. No one should have to work so hard to follow something so creatively desperate.
Much more assured is “Mangus!,” an almost recklessly odd black comedy that manages to offer a unique voice amidst the ever-surging new wave of indie quirk. Centering on the irrepressible title character (Ryan Boggus), a Carrot Top doppelgänger whose only wish is to play Jesus in his high school musical, this Texas-set camp treasure is at once frank and head-scratchingly random, following Mangus! as he loses the use of his legs but remains resolutely driven. I’ve never seen a coming-of-age tale quite like this before. The intentionally grody white-trash milieu is familiar, but the roundabout uplift of family reunification and conquering disability emerges from a novel brand of very committed humor. It’s uncomfortably hilarious.
And finally, there’s “Harvest,” a quiet German love story about two teenage farmhands gradually and heatedly succumbing to their mutual attraction during a strenuous internship. With handsome minimalism and alarming authenticity, debut director Benjamin Cantu taps into the thrilling, conflicting awkwardness of young desire, and does it so well that the sensation alone is essentially enough to sustain the movie. An aching, mature gay romance that — for once! — does not end in tragedy, “Harvest” is the very best of the QFest films I’ve seen.
For more information on these titles and many more, visit www.qfest.com.
Contact the South Philly Review at editor@southphillyreview.com.
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