HOUSEKEEPING FOR BEGINNERS

Directing: A
Acting: A
Writing: A-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

I don’t know why, until I actually watched Housekeeping for Beginners, I thought it was a Spanish-language movie. It even took a few minutes into the beginning of the movie for it to register: this doesn’t sound like Spanish. For a hot second I thought it was Portuguese. Was this movie Brazilian? I looked it up: of all places, this film is from North Macedonia. Have I ever seen any North Macedonian films before? Apparently, I have—Honeyland, a documentary I actually felt was the best film of 2019. And while that one was the true story of a rural beekeeper, this one is about an urban, blended queer family in the North Macedonian capital of Skopje. (It turns out, I even saw the previous film by the director of Housekeeping for Beginners: You Won’t Be Alone, about a shape shifting witch in 19th century Macedonia, which I did not like nearly as much, and did not have North Macedonia as a producing country, while this one does.)

One might rightly wonder how the hell I started from Spanish to that: within a European context at least, this film could hardly be further from Spanish. Such is the legacy of colonialism, I suppose—the English are hardly the only ones in the world to have such a history. Spanish is actually the second-most spoken native language in the world (behind Mandarin), which can make it easy to forget: there are 16 times as many people in the world who speak some other language. In North Macedonia, the dominant language is Macedonian, but there are other officially recognized languages, including Albanian, Turkish, Bosnian, Serbian, and one that becomes a key plot point in Houesekeeping for Beginners: Romani. That last one is the language spoken in the neighborhood of Shutka, an autonomous Roma community on the outskirts of Skopje.

It turns out, there is a lot to learn about this small corner of the world—a country of just under 10,000 square miles (barely larger than Vermont), a population of 1.8 million (about the population of West Virginia), its capital a metropolitan population of 537,000 (about the metro population of Huntsville, Alabama). Such is the case with just about every international location you can think of, actually—but here, writer-director Goran Stolevski, an openly gay thirtysomething man born in Macedonia who grew up in Australia, finds a unique way to turn our attention to it.

It’s not often we get queer stories in global cinema that blend queer life with racial and ethnic concerns, making Housekeeping for Beginners an unusually intersectional story. When the film opens, we see what appears to be two teenagers, Ali (Samson Selim) and Vanesa (Mia Mustafi), belting out along to a song they both apparently love, using household items as fake microphones. It’s a deceptively charming and simple scene, and only moves into a portrait of a rather chaotic household.

And the home includes a lesbian couple, Dita (Anamaria Marinca) and Suada (Alina Serban), and their gay housemate Toni (Vladimir Tintor). As we just hang out with this household for several minutes, it takes a little while to fully register what all the relationships are. Vanesa, and insanely cute little Mia (Dzada Selim) are Suada’s children. Ali, just a few years older than Vanesa, is Toni’s 19-year-old hookup—the opening scene of him singing with Vanesa really driving home how he’s rather young.

But, there are several other queer teens who also hang out at the house, which serves as a de facto safe house for kids who are rejected by their families or communities. And here, in a country with no legal recognition of same-sex couples or their children who are not blood relatives, this chaotically supportive mini-community they have created for themselves is massively disrupted when Suada is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

The first third or so of Housekeeping for Beginners focuses on this lesbian couple, how they deal with a prognosis understood early on to be hopeless, and how they drag their feet in regards to informing the family. It’s not a spoiler, per se, to say that Suada dies, because the overall point of this film is Dita dealing with both her promise to Suada that she will be the children’s mother going forward, and in particular Vanesa’s passionate rebellion against that scenario, all while navigating the legal hoops and deceptions necessary for her to stave off any threat of the children being taken away. Toni, for his part, is resistant to being pressured into playing the part of a straight father / family man type. Ali organically settles into his own position in the family, his relationship with Toni having complications of its own.

I was fully absorbed and moved by ths movie, a rare feat of ensemble storytelling in which every principal character has dimension and character development. It should be noted, also, that both Ali and Suada happen to come from the aforementioned Shutka community, a people for whom “gypsy” is considered a bigoted term, and they are people of color—making Dita and Suada not just a lesbian couple, but an interracial couple, and then Dita a White woman raising children of color. There are many references to this dynamic in the film, and when Vanesa insists on seeking out a grandmother in Shutka she hasn’t seen in several years, deep cultural differences quickly become apparent.

I can only imagine Housekeeping for Beginners would be seen in a far more intricate way by Macedonian audiences, and I would be fascinated to learn how the film was received there—it was indeed their submission for the Best International Feature award from North Macedonia, but, criminally, it did not make the cut among last year’s nominees. This is a film that absolutely deserves attention, both in its home country and abroad—even the most frustrating characters are deeply human, and the domestic situation portrayed is emblematic of evolving ideas of family the world over. I won’t soon forget this one.

Love makes a family, and so does not taking any shit lying down.

Overall: A-

DRIVE-AWAY DOLLS

Directing: C
Acting: B
Writing: C+
Cinematography: B-
Editing: C-

Here’s a protip: if you go to the movies a lot, and you see the same trailer before every single one of those movies, that’s a move that smacks of desperation. This is doubly the case if the movie in question opens in February, otherwise known as “Dumpuary,” the month when studios dump their movies they know aren’t going to work. And they they market the shit out of it (Argylle, anyone?), hoping to maximize opening weekend receipts before bad word of mouth can tank it.

Why did I even bother going to see Drive-Away Dolls then, you might wonder? Well, this one has relatively mixed, almost teetering into positive, reviews. And more importantly, it’s directed and co-written by Ethan Coen, writing with his wife and longtime collaborator Tricia Cooke. And Ethan Coen, along with his brother Joel, have long been among my all-time favorite directors—when they are working together. In 2021, Joel branched off on his own to bring us The Tragedy of Macbeth—he went highbrow, while Ethan went decidedly lowbrow. The secret to their success has historically been a unique blend of the two. It’s clear that these two just aren’t as great apart as they are together. Unfortunately, Drive-Away Dolls doesn’t quite work.

I wish I could tell you that Drive-Away Dolls were the “proudly unimportant lesbian comedy” that it was reportedly intended to be. It’s the perfect time for such a thing. This movie, however, could have been a tight, hilarious, 30-minute film short, which Ethan Coen managed to turn into the longest 84-minute movie I’ve ever sat through. How do you make a movie with interstitial scenes that feel like filler? Coen pulls off a genuinely dull magic trick. To be fair, in the end these psychedelic interludes—one of which inexplicably renders a twirling pizza with its toppings floating away—prove to be crucial to the plot. That doesn’t change how inessential and overlong they feel in the moment.

The one genuinely good thing in this movie is Beanie Feldstein, in a supporting role as a cop ex-girlfriend of one of the two protagonists. The leads, Margaret Qualley as Jamie the thick-accented Texan living in Philadelphia and Geraldine Viswanathan as Marian the repressed bookworm friend, have genuine charisma. They are also both straight women playing lesbians, and Feldstein feels a little like “legit lesbian cred” getting tossed in there for us queer audience members actually paying attention to these things.

(The original title was supposed to be Drive-Away Dykes, and then it got sanitized. And while it’s entirely possible either of the two leads could identify as queer, they are hardly the kind of out-lesbian actors that would have been more appropriately cast in the roles. Furthermore, and I did not realize this when first writing this review and am having to go back and edit a bit, Ethan and Tricia are essentially in a polyamorous relationship, still married to each other but both with other partners, and Tricia partnered with a woman. This would seem to give the film more “queer cred” than I initially assumed, but here’s the thing: it really changes nothing about how this film comes across.)

Feldstein, who was truly wonderful in Bookstmart (in which, ironically, she plays a straight girl best friends with a lesbian), really needs to be cast as the lead in another comedy that’s actually good. It’s what she deserves. It’s what we all deserve.

Should I tell you anything about the plot? It doesn’t matter, you don’t need to see this movie, but whatever. “Drive-away” is a term for drivers for hire who take a rental car from one location to another. Jamie and Marian take a quasi-spontaneous getaway, from Philadelphia to Tallahassee, by means of such a job—and wind up taking someone else’s job by accident, thereby also making off with the horrifying and/or hilarious contents of a hat box and a metal briefcase stashed in the trunk.

Coen apparently called in a lot of favors, because the cast of characters Jamie and Marion encounter on this road trip is truly stacked with stars: Pedro Pascal in a shockingly small part; Colman Domingo as the leader of the trio on Jamie and Marion’s tail; Bill Camp as the car rental clerk; Matt Damon as a Florida senator. For some reason, this movie is set in 1999, maybe so that the many questions Jamie asks at Florida businesses about whether they support queer people won’t feel too politically charged. Except, of course, this movie still exists in 2024, and the references stick out to the point of distraction, especially considering how little it has to do with the actual story.

Which brings us back to that “proudly unimportant” bit. Even proudly unimportant movies should aspire to something better than pointless at best and tedious at worst. More than once I thought while watching this movie, What are we doing? For most of its time, it’s just killing time. And a movie that is just killing time feels like an eternity—not what you want for what’s supposed to be a breezy, quirky comedy. To be fair, it did get a couple of good laughs out of me, especially one visual gag involing a dildo. It comes along far too late, after I grew exasperated with this movie’s inability to settle on a tone.

A collective less than the sum of its lesbian parts.

Overall: C+

THE ORIGIN OF EVIL

Directing: C+
Acting: B+
Writing: C+
Cinematography: C-
Editing: C-

Here’s something I’ve never said about a movie before: The Origin of Evil might just be too French or its own good. Full of unlikably arrogant people, with an inflated sense of self. Not all of the French are like that, I’m sure; these are stereotypes. But this movie isn’t doing them any favors.

In spite of its bevy of talented performers, The Origin of Evil lost me early on. It gets progressively weirder, in less compelling ways. Nathalie (Laure Calamy) is visiting a father, Serge (Jacques Weber) she’s never met before. She progressively gains his trust, to the suspicion of his wife, Louise (Dominique Blanc); his daughter, George (Doria Tillier); his grandaughter, Jeanne (Céleste Brunnquell); and their longtime housekeeper, Agnès (Véronique Ruggia), all of whom live in a giant, overly cluttered house together. I won’t spoil the many narrative left turns that follow, even though one of the few things that impressed me about this movie is how unremarkable it is for all its twists.

I will say this: we never get a sense of Nathalie as a whole person, or what really informs her actions. I knew little about this film going in, and when Nathalie is shown dialing Serge on the phone, she appears nervous to the point of terrified—a detail that makes less sense in retrospect once the film is over. “What are you playing at?” is something she is asked at one point, and I was already asking it. There are moments early on when it feels like The Origin of Evil will be a straightforward family drama, the title notwithstanding, but things prove to be far more complex than that. Just not in any way that particularly satisfied me.

This film has many unearned pretensions, not least of which is the title—these are shitty people, basically all around, but evil is a bit loaded for what ever actually happens onscreen. Nathalie works at a fish packing factory, and the opening title card appears superimposed over lined trays of fish, with ominous music. You would think the fish, or the factory, would play a particularly crucial part in the plot. They don’t.

If there is anything to love about The Origins of Evil, it’s the ensemble cast of nearly all women, with only one exception: Serge is the only principal character who is a man. He’s an asshole, but all the other women also prove to be either assholes in their own right or sociopaths, with the possible exception of Jeanne—but given the fucked up family she’s in, give her time.

The film runs slightly over two hours, though, and the first half in particular moves so slowly, it might play a lot better with a good fifteen or twenty minutes cut out. Things do pick up in the second half, and get a bit more exciting, but for me it was too little too late. I spent more time thinking about when this movie would end than I did about what was going to happen next.

I have to mention the cinematography, because some of it just plain sucks. Why the hell is a movie like this employing the use of retro split screens, with thick black lines separating the different feeds? The first time it happens, Nathalie is just sitting at a table having dinner with Serge and his family—five people, three sections of a split screen, each of them cutting to a new person saying something or making noise, including every time Jeanne gets a text notification. Why do we care about all this? I have no answer. A few later scenes employ the split screen as well, and you get the sense that director Sébastien Marnier thinks he’s doing something clever with this material. He isn’t.

I have to acknowledge that talent went into the making of this film, particularly the cast, and the set design. I’d love to see all of these people’s work in a less tiresome movie.

It’s not nearly as fun as this might suggest.

Overall: C+

MUTT

Directing: B
Acting: A-
Writing: B
Cinematography: B
Editing: B+

I’m sure I shouldn’t be, but I’m a little stuck on the title of the film Mutt. Ironically, googling slang meanings of the word brings up, among a few other things, “stupid person,” and I feel a little stupid not getting it in the context of this film. Evidently it can also be a derogatory reference to someone being multiracial, which indeed, the film’s protagonist, Feña, is—he has a Chilean father and a White mother. Feña’s racial background is not in the least bit a driving force in the story here, however.

His transness, on the other hand, is. And the story here takes place over the course of one 14-hour period, in which quite a lot happens, not least of which are his reconnection with, in turn, an ex-boyfriend, his younger sister, and his father. All of them have been estranged, to one degree or another, from Feña since he started his transition.

John (Cole Doman) is returning after a year and a half in Philadelphia, to look after a sick mother. Zoe (MiMi Ryder) has run away from school for the day to hang out with Feña in the City. And Pablo (Alejandro Goic) is flying in from Chile to see Feña for the first time in two years.

Mutt has a fair amount of exposition, all of it well integrated. Anyone with a cursory knowledge of Spanish—and Feña is bilingual—would expect Feña to be a feminine name, but Feña is actually specific about this: “It’s one of the few gender neutral names in Chile.” This film is also unusually frank about a young trans person still fresh from the transition process. Feña is revealed only to have had boyfriends and relationships with men all his life, and this desire does not change after transition—an aspect of transness not often represented onscreen. John, the strikingly gorgeous ex-boyfriend, shows no signs of his physical attraction abating post-transition, nor is there any hand-wringing about sexuality on anyone’s part, something I really respect. John also delivers the cutting line, “People don’t hate you because you’r trans, people hate you because you’re an asshole.”

I don’t know if we’re meant to think Feña is indeed an asshole, but Lio Mehiel, the trans actor who portrays him, never gives any indication that he is, per se. Maybe he was an asshole to John? In an early scene, he references how they made each other worse when they were together. Feña is so earnest and well-intentioned, if somewhat of a basket case, it’s difficult to imagine.

There’s a lot I really liked about Mutt, but I had trouble with a lot of the dialogue, particularly in the first half of the film, as it felt underwritten, not quite contrived but bordering on inauthentic. Not in terms of anyone’s background or identity, just as regular people and how people in the real world talk. If often felt just “off” from regular conversations.

This changed with pivotal scenes, both between Feña and John, and between Feña and Pablo. In the end, I was moved and I shed a couple of tears. There’s something to be said for a film which, while imperfect, offers a unique point of view.

In the process of writing this review, I came across a GoldenGlobes.com article in which Lio Mehiel is quoted as saying, “I really identify as a mutt. I got that phrase from a filmmaker friend of mine. I am a mutt in that I am of mixed ethnicity (Puerto Rican and Greek). I have mixed genders. I am also a Gemini.” Setting the dubious relevance of astrology aside, this brings the film’s title into sharper focus—particularly in terms of both ethnicity and gender, simultaneously. See, we went on a journey in this very review itself. I still maintain that a film’s title should not need external explanation.

The dialogue may not be strictly contrived, but the plotting is, a bit. We’re telling a lot about Feña in just one 24-hour period, starting late at night and ending late the next night, and the conceit doesn’t do much for the storytelling. To its credit, however, I did feel enriched after seeing this film.

Feña is a walking example of intersectionality, or so we’re supposed to gather.

Overall: B

ARISTOTLE AND DANTE DISCOVER THE SECRETS OF THE UNIVERSE

Directing: B+
Acting: B
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

And here we get yet another charming, moving, gay coming-of-age story that just makes me wistful for what I could never have. Even if I could never have had the experience of the young characters in this story, what might it have been like for me had there even been a movie like this to watch when I was a teenager? When I was sixteen, I was alone in my bedroom, secretly lusting after the gay men in Madonna’s “Erotica” video.

There’s a bit of irony there, the means I had of tapping into dark sexual fantasy, as compared to Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, which is almost shockingly innocent, about the blossoming of young love, of a kind the protagonist does not understand nearly as well as, amazingly, his parents do. This story, actually, is comparatively chaste, the physicality never moving beyond a couple of kisses, the holding of hands. It’s a good two thirds of the way through before it even gets to that. This movie is perfect for young kids around the age of puberty, maybe just past it. And what a beautiful thing, to get something legitimately age-appropriate that explores these themes, asserting that kids of all kinds are perfect just the way they are.

This kind of shit gets to me, it’s so far removed from the experience of my youth. Some stories work by being relatable, and others are more aspirational. I can only guess as to what it’s like to be a young person today with access to a movie like this—which, incidentally, is based on a multiple-award-winning 2012 young-adult novel by Benjamin Alire Sáenz, which I have immediately put on my reading list.

It appears, though, that this film is a pretty faithful adaptation, with many lines of dialogue lifted directly from the source text. If I have any genuine criticism of this film, it would be that sometimes the dialogue doesn’t necessarily translate perfectly to the screen—I must admit, at times, I found the script, co-written by Sáenz himself and director Aitch Alberto, distractingly just outside the realm of real-life delivery. Some of the lines feel a little oversimplified and slightly stilted.

Ultimately, it’s a small quibble—there are just so many other things to love about this movie, not least of which is the very specific universe in which it exists, about Mexican-American families in 1987 El Paso, Texas. Aristotle (Max Pelayo), or Ari for short, is a solitary boy who is unaware of his own abiding loneliness. He’s been faltering at swimming lessons, and then meets Dante (Reese Gonzales), who volunteers to teach him how to swim. They become fast friends, and maybe the first third of Aristotle and Dante is just a lovely, leisurely paced portrait of the evolution of their friendship. Nothing more is even suggested until Dante’s family moves to Chicago for a year thanks to his professor dad’s job, and in one of Dante’s letters he slightly scandalizes Ari by bringing up masturbation (this is the most frankly sexual the movie ever gets).

During their year apart, both Aristotle and Dante pursue relationships with girls, presumably because that’s all that occurs to them, and it’s just what’s expected. It’s great to see that, unlike many other films about gay people, the interactions with girls stay healthy and never end in any melodramatic heartbreak. This is much more about these boys slowly realizing who and what they are.

The truly unique element here is Ari’s parents, who are giving him knowing looks largely from the start. Ari has a beloved aunt who visits and when she tells him “You are perfect just the way you are,” it feels incongruous to him, and to a degree, even to us as viewers, that early on. I wasn’t even sure at first whether we were meant to understand that Ari’s parents know he’s in love with Dante before Ari does. I found myself thinking of the deeply empathetic father played by Michael Stuhlbarg in Call Me By Your Name. The key difference here is that these parents are not as articulate, maintaining a family secret about Ari’s incarcerated brother that keeps them, and especially his father, largely silent.

Perhaps most notable is how Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe avoids stereotype at every level—quite plausibly because both writer and the director are of Latin-American descent, telling a story about Mexican-American characters. There is a uniquely heartwarming mix of specificity and authenticity here, while also avoiding any of the cliches of toxic masculinity in parenting. Ari’s parents are clearly imperfect, just like anyone, but their love and concern for him is never in doubt.

We don’t get as much about Dante’s relationship with his parents, perhaps because they are portrayed as progressive intellectuals and we are meant to assume they’ll be fine. Dante does worry in one of his letters about their reaction to him, but the narrative never revisits that thread.

I suppose you could say that, had I been a producer of this film, I’d have had notes. On the other hand, sometimes imperfections add to the charm. While I found myself debating exactly how good I thought this movie was in its first half, it really came together for me in the end. I was both charmed and deeply moved by it, practically weeping by the time these boys finally come around to their inevitable fate. That’s not a spoiler, because you should know that this is a coming-of-age love story and not a tragedy, and that’s how they go; besides, the value is in the journey, the experience, both for them and for us. This is one movie I will likely seek out for a rewatch.

Sometimes a connection becomes an opportunity for discovery.

Overall: B+

MONICA

Directing: B+
Acting: A-
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B

Monica takes subtlety and understatement to new levels. There’s never a moment that explicitly states that the title character, who is returning home after many years to look after her estranged, ailing mother, is a trans woman. She’s played, however, by trans actor Trace Lysette, previously seen as a regular supporting character on the rightfully acclaimed Prime Video series Transparent. A lot of times it’s said—a lot of times by me—that going in cold would enhance a movie watching experience, but I would argue that, in the case of Monica, these are details that are helpful to know going in.

Monica’s mother, Eugenia, is played by Patricia Clarkson, a reliably welcome screen presence. Here, at the age of 63, she plays a woman deteriorating from a tumor. We learn that she doesn’t recognize Monica, who has come at the invitation (or maybe pleading) of a sister-in-law she’s evidently never known, as the family needs help. Eugenia’s first assumption is that Monica comes from the hospice care she insists she doesn’t want.

Again, something Monica never makes explicitly clear is when Eugenia figures out who Monica really is. There’s no dramatic apology, no speech. There is a bit of a speechless, tearful breakdown, which perhaps stands in for an apology. Over time, Monica and Eugenia inch toward an emotional connection.

It really must be noted: “time” and “inch” are key words here. As directed and co-written by Italian filmmaker Andrea Pallaoro, and particularly as edited by Paola Freddi, Monica moves at a truly glacial pace. This element alone is likely to turn off a lot of viewers, even as it moves critics—including me. Monica is quality work, but hardly populist. It is far more artful than it is entertaining. It has a strangely unusual aspect ratio, nearly square in shape, with very long shots that stop short of being mundane.

That said, I found this film to be deeply memorable and affecting. The acting is excellent, and it’s wonderful to see a trans actor so well cast in the leading role of a trans character. Trace Lysette is more than up to the task, and I’d love to see her cast in more roles that are more widely seen. She’s one worth looking out for.

This is rarely an effective selling point, but by the end of Monica, it felt well worth the quiet, meditative experience. It’s not a slog; it’s just slow. And in this case, the editing is deliberate, almost pointed. You live in Monica’s world with her, experience highs and lows, none of them borne of the kind of trauma that history has taught viewers to expect. One might suspect that was the intent. This is the kind of skilled subtlety that offers you some space, a kind of distance in which the effects seep into you. It’s a uniquely impressive achievement.

A different way of facing each other.

Overall: B+

SIFF Advance: HIDDEN MASTER: THE LEGACY OF GEORGE PLATT LYNES

Directing: A-
Writing: A-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: A-

Who the hell is George Platt Lynes? I had no idea, myself, until seeing this documentary film about him listed in this year’s Seattle International Film Festival schedule. It turns out, he was an artist of photography, in his prime in the 1920s and 1930s, who was by all intents and purposes openly gay. More to the point, he was incredibly talented, his work was infused with male sexuality, and that combination is likely the biggest reason his vast and stunning body of work has gone unnoticed for decades.

Anyone who knows anything about the cross section of art history and gay history has heard of Robert Mapplethorpe—who was clearly influenced by George Platt Lynes. Lynes pre-dates even Mapplethorpe by a good five decades.

After seeing Hidden Master, I am dying to see a major exhibition of Lynes’s work. But, as director and co-writer Sam Shahid tells us, no American museum will touch this body of work. Several art historians and curators are interviewed for this film, and Shahid briefly includes some commentary on the “double standard” of art exhibition that plasters the naked female form all over the place, even when sexually evocative—sometimes even provocative—and yet won’t do the same for the naked male form, which by contrast threatens people. There appears to have been multiple books published about him and his work, however, and I just placed a hold on the single one of them apparently carried by the Seattle Public Library.

That book was published in 1994 and evidently focuses on the body of work Lynes left to the Kinsey Institute—one of many fascinating things about George being that he both became good friends with famed sexologist Alfred Kinsey, and was an active participant in his research. Hidden Master, the movie, is a far more contemporary look at Lynes’s life and work, having been finished nearly three decades later.

What’s more, this film, ten years in the making, features interviews with multiple people who knew Lynes personally. In all but one case, the interview subjects passed away shortly after the interview, giving the film a bit of an “under the wire” quality. We’re talking about a photographer who was himself a stunningly beautiful young man a full century ago, after all. Even the interview subjects who knew him would have had to have been young even compared to Lynes when they knew each other—in the forties, or perhaps the early fifties. George Platt Lynes dyed of lung cancer in 1955, at the fairly young age of 47.

The crucial element of Hidden Master, though, is the countless examples of his work featured: a seemingly endless slide show of gorgeously rendered, black and white photos of male nudes, no less beautiful for how unsubtle they often are. The lighting of his subjects is incredible, and the themes of sexual desire are stunning, particularly for the time—people don’t know today how early on there was precedent for art like this, and that’s what makes this film so crucial. I could not stop thinking, as I saw example after example of Lynes’s photography, that I could have easily believed this work had been done today. God knows I never would have assumed these photos were taken between the twenties and the forties, without them being contextualized for me.

A fair bit is made of Lynes’s “physical snobbery,” in that he never chose average looking people as his subjects. His nudes were nearly all young men, and without exception the men were beautiful. Lynes also worked as a fashion photographer, his female subjects also exclusively beautiful. In apparently one exclusive case, he even had a sexual relationship with one of his women subjects. There are nude photos of her as well.

It should be noted, not all of his photos were sexual, although he seemed to have an appreciation for the naked human form whether it was sexualized or not. He even took nude photos of his brother, who was straight, and helped find more models culled from his college friends.

Which is to say, in just about every way you can imagine, George Platt Lynes was so far ahead of his time it’s mind boggling. This was a man fully self-possessed, comfortable in his own skin, casually defiant in his sexuality—all a full hundred years ago. He was himself so beautiful he fit right in with his subjects. He pushed boundaries in more ways than with his sexuality, also sensual, nude photos of Black and White men together. From today’s vantage point, there is an element of privilege there that both cannot be denied and which was about a century away from being even a hint of a part of anyone’s vocabulary. It’s even acknowledged in this film that the racial provocativeness has an element of exploitation to it.

Although not a lot of time is spent on it, there is some acknowledgement in Hidden Master that Lynes was an imperfect man, sometimes a little manipulative, particularly in sexual situations. To me, these details are classic elements of people whose beauty allows to get away with what others can’t. Somewhat on the flip side of this, Lynes was also the third partner in what we now would call a polyamorous relationship, and which itself lasted decades. Even by mainstream queer standards this is incredibly forward-thinking. There is no indication Lynes thought in these terms at all, however. He was only ever just completely and utterly himself.

I do appreciate the sexual frankness of Hidden Master, clearly a positive byproduct of having a queer story told by queer people. Given the nature of virtually all of Lynes’s male nudes, it would make no sense to shy away from it. It turns out Lynes did also take a few sexually explicit photos, just a couple of which do we see, during a brief discussion of the fine line between “art” and pornography, and how it gets applied differently between men and women. In any case, I could not find any indication that Hidden Master has received an MPA rating at all, but this film is definitely not for children.

I feel a deep, abiding appreciation for this film—not just its construction, but its very existence. It’s full of people who lament the lack of Lynes’s presence in any serious look at art history, and the film makes a very strong case for this man to get the kind of appreciation he has long been denied. His personal life at his particular time in history is deeply fascinating in its own right, but nothing comes even close to the vitality of the photography work itself. Whether or not you see this movie, do yourself a favor and just look him up. I am eager to learn more just because of this film.

Both erotically charged and a multi-level challenge to the viewer: George Platt Lynes is worth your time.

Overall: A-

SIFF Advance: THE MATTACHINE FAMILY

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: A-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

Prominently featured in The Mattachine Family, as a narrative symbol, are the Mattachine Steps in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles, dedicated in 2012 to the Mattachine Society in memory of Harry Hay, who cofounded the gay rights group that preceded the Stonewall Riots by 19 years. In the film, we see a couple of shots of the sign posted by the staircase, both of them too quick to retain its text fully: The Mattachine Steps - Harry Hay founded the Mattachine Society on this hillside on November 11, 1950. Hay died in 2002 at the age of 90; 2012 would have marked his 100th birthday.

As our protagonist, Thomas (Nico Tortorella) and his lesbian best friend (Schitt’s Creek’s Emily Hampshire) are hiking up a hill to these steps, it is pointedly noted that the Mattachine Society advocated for White queer people. At another moment, though, Thomas’s voiceover narration ponders the chosen family of his husband, Oscar (Juan Pablo Di Pace), and their close friends, and how seventy years ago, they would have called themselves a “society.”

Hene the title The Mattachine Family, which is to be taken both figuratively and literally: the plot focuses on Thomas and Oscar’s evolving notions of actually raising a child. They’ve spent a year fostering a child to whom they have become very attached, and now are grieving the loss after the child has been reunited with his mother—pointedly, a mother who is doing well and clearly the right place for the child. The question, then, is whether to move forward with similar efforts that might result in a repeat of the same kinds of heartbreak.

The Mattachine Family is clearly a deeply personal film, largely autobiographical as told by director Andy Vallentine, who co-wrote the script with real-life partner Danny Vallentine. The two are also parents, and all of this makes me a little self-conscious about picking at the film’s contrivances. Such things are arguably part of the point, though: what movie made in Hollywood—independent or otherwise—doesn’t have its contrivances? This one just happens to have not just an organically diverse cast, but actually tells a story heretofore not depicted onscreen. This film may not be a grand masterpiece, but how notable it is still can’t quite be overstated, especially as it breezily normalizes the very kind of family many across the country are now actively working to criminalize.

Fundamentally, The Mattachine Family is about a long-term, committed couple grappling with diverging convictions about whether raising a child is the right decision for them. Instead of the more typical love story about whether two people are right for each other, this one is about how ideas of family planning test the very strength of a long-established relationship.

Watching this film, I was struck by its relative wholesomeness that exists concurrent with frank depictions of gay sexuality. It’s not lost on me that the so-called “frankness” would not necessarily register the same way if this were about a straight couple thinking about adopting a child. The key here is in how the film stands apart, just by virtue of it being a same-sex couple. Mind you, Thomas and Oscar are a long-term, monogamous couple. They’re even married.

There are some, and I don’t necessarily agree with them, who might argue that they represent the heteronormativity of “acceptable” ideas of same-sex relationships. They do have a more, let’s say, “free spirited” close friend (Jake Choi), who cheerfully talks about hopes for a threesome with his date. And it’s not like there is any moral obligation to make Thomas and Oscar more promiscuous just to remove them from notions of heteronormativity—especially if their marriage reflects the same truth of the film’s storytellers.

It’s sort of odd when a film that’s plotted in a fairly formulaic way still feels definitively like progress. The one genuine surprise was the gay father Thomas meets (Hacks’s Carl Clemons-Hopkins), who I really thought was being telegraphed as a potential source of infidelity—and then the story goes in another direction. Side note: that character’s lesbian coparent is played by none other than Heather Matarazzo, of Welcome to the Dollhouse fame, and she’s delightful as a “mommy influencer.”

Which is to say, The Mattachine Family isn’t all heavy moral dilemmas and drama. It has plenty of humor, giving it an overall very welcoming vibe. From start to finish, it invites you in, to feel what its characters are going through, to empathize with and to root for them, and the Valentines’ writing and direction make it easy to do so.

One man’s society is another man’s family.

Overall: B+

JOYLAND

Directing: A-
Acting: A-
Writing: A-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

Joyland is an ironic title, I guess. There’s not much the way of joy in this movie. There are flashes of it, for sure, but always in the face of pressure to suppress it. Maybe director and co-writer Saim Sadiq went in a different direction with the title because Melancholia was taken. Joyland is a very, very different movie, but nevertheless it maintains an almost dreamlike, melancholy tone from start to finish.

Joyland is a notable film for a multitude of reasons, not least of which is its co-lead, Alina Khan, the first transgender actor to be cast in a lead role in a Pakistani film. In certain ways, it takes Pakistan’s evolution to warp speed in comparison to American cinema: this is also a trans character, actually played by a trans actor. They’re doing representation properly right out of the gate.

That’s not to say all the depictions in this film are comfortable. There’s a moment when another character says of Biba—without judgment, mind you—“She’s not a real woman.” But this is the thing: of course she’s a real woman, but these characters don’t have the sophistication of knowledge to understand that. I immediately thought about the need to meet people where they are, when trying to invite them to some greater understanding.

Joyland may just do that, for at least some viewers. It’s an extraordinary achievement in Pakistani cinema, creating a nuanced portrait of family, gender, sexuality, and how all of these things intersect. The central character, Haider (Ali Junejo), is an incredibly meek young man, seemingly satisfied with his domestic duties as his wife Mumtaz (Rasti Farooq) is the breadwinner in their relationship, happily working a job at a salon. Haider and Mumtaz live with Haider’s older brother and his wife; their four daughters; and Haider and his brother’s elderly father—none of whom are especially proud when Haider lands a job at an “erotic dance theater.” He’s actually a completely inexperienced backup dancer, but he lies and says he’s the theater manager. It’s at this theater that he meets Biba, and quickly becomes infatuated with her.

One of the more fascinating things about Joyland is how it doesn’t define Haider’s sexuality in particular, basically depicting a kind of fluidity not often seen even in Western cinema. This is in spite of his offensive misreading and misunderstanding of Biba’s circumstances, not understanding her desire to save up for surgery (“I like you the way you are”), and awkwardly attempting a sexual position Biba has no interest in. With such avenues being explored, one can’t help but wonder how well Joyland played in its home country. The saddest thing, maybe, is that it being a mixed bag is kind of a sign of progress.

Joyland examines more than just Haider’s relationship with Biba. His relationship with his father is predictably fraught, as is that with his brother. Most significantly, his landing of a job results in his wife, Mumtaz, getting pressured to quit her job. She is forced to pick up domestic duties; she eventually gets pregnant; she is quickly miserable. Even as Joyland itself pushes boundaries, it reflects the kinds of enforced gender roles that are impossible to escape without drastic, sometimes fatal action.

Haider and Mumtaz’s relationship is fascinating because, through all of this, it stays surprisingly honest and healthy. That’s not to say that Haider can be open about his captivation by Bibi—but, given the nature of their relationship, in a different culture, they might very well have been able to be.

The characters in Joyland are exquisitely drawn, multidimensional and flawed personalities. Their motivations are often at odds, but easily empathized with. In a way, it’s about all of them accepting their fates. Some of them just take unconventional roads to get there. The fateful ending is ambiguous in its meaning, a sort of somber release. This film’s very existence, by extension, ironically offers a kind of hope its characters cannot find.

An example of Joyland’s indelible imagery.

Overall: A-

BROS

Directing: B
Acting: B
Writing: B
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

I really wanted to love Bros. And I did like it—it even made me laugh more than most comedies do. And I am a genuine fan of Billy Eichner, his overt obnoxiousness on Billy on the Street being a definitive part of his brand and appeal. And Bros is made for people who love romantic comedies, and even quite knowingly moves through all the same beats as any mainstream film of the genre. This is a film made for everyone lamenting the decline of romantic comedies, and it manages to scratch that itch by being just as serviceable a specimen as any other.

I just wanted it to be better than “serviceable,” which is, admittedly, a tall order. How many “great” romantic comedies are there out there, really? When Harry Met Sally… (1989) is arguably the best ever made; Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) seems largely lost to history and now rendered criminally underrated (seriously, if you’ve never seen that one, find it and watch it). Moonstruck (1987) is a straight up masterpiece. How long has it been since another romantic comedy came even close to the quality of these examples? Even the American Film Institute’s top 10 romantic comedies lists nothing more recent than 1993 (and Sleepless in Seattle is fun, but, if that makes the top ten of all time? this is not a genre known for most people’s best work).

How does Bros compare within a 21st-century context, then, which, frankly, lowers the bar? Four years ago Collider compiled a list of the best romantic comedies of the 21st century, and a lot of them are better films. The crucial difference with Bros is, of course, that it centers a same-sex couple instead of a straight one. And a whole lot has been made of how that breaks new ground, this being “the first American gay romantic comedy from a major studio featuring an entirely LGBTQ principal cast”—which is, it must be said, a lot of qualifiers. After all, Fire Island was already released this past spring, and it fits all but one of those same qualifiers, the only difference being it was released on Hulu. And that movie is certainly as good as Bros; some might say it’s better (on average I liked them about the same, for slightly different reasons) and they would have solid arguments to stand on. Hell, that one stars Bowen Yang as one of the principal characters, and he’s also in this movie.

And not for nothing, but Fire Island has a leg up on Bros in that its principal characters are mostly people of color. Bros is a little self-conscious about its “diversity casting” (a loaded term if ever there was one) while never directly addressing how it still centers white characters—which in itself is not necessarily something to criticize it for, except for how it quite blatantly “checks all the boxes,” or at least all the boxes it can, in its supporting cast. Eichner’s Bobby character is the Executive Director of an LGBTQ+ museum (was it absolutely necessary for him to the the Executive Director?), but the rest of his Board consists of two trans women (one White and one Black), a Black non-binary person, a White bisexual man, and a White lesbian. This is a knowing nod to the obsession with “covering all the bases,” like the self-conscious diversity of models on a college brochure, while still managing to actually check a lot of the boxes. (Incidentally, this Board does not include any people of color who aren’t Black, nor does it have any intersex or asexual people—which, I would bet anything, it would if the movie were made another ten years from now.)

The museum itself is a clear way for the film to “educate” viewers on queer history, which I have mixed feelings about. On the one hand, this aspect of Bros did not teach me anything I didn’t already know, which made it feel kind of like a movie made to educate straight people. On the other hand, plenty of queer people also don’t know their own history, and if this movie teaches them anything at all, I’m not going to complain about that. That said, Eichner has so many extensive monologues in this movie—this guy talks, and talks—that a lot of the time, in the museum scenes, he’s throwing out so much information so fast that it often feels, again, like checking off boxes.

Bros opens with one of Eichner’s monologues, by the way, his being a podcast host (of course) offering an excuse for an introduction consisting of a large amount of voiceover. This opening bit kind of goes hard, though, which Eichner’s delivery that’s both rapid and extensive, and I got a little stuck on the idea that a solo podcast host, who evidently doesn’t even have guests on, would be a wildly popular one with a million subscribers. Bros barely gives an indication of the basic premise of his podcast (again, queer history), then mostly shows him waxing poetic about his frustrating sex life, what it’s like being gay these days, or answering live listener calls. Why the hell would so many people be listening to this?

It should be noted that Bros may be a gay story in which all the queer characters are (quite pointedly) played by queer actors, and all of that is indeed stuff to be proud of. But the director, Nicholas Stoller, is not gay, and I think this actually makes a difference, Eichnier having co-written the script with him notwithstanding. (Side note: Fire Island was directed by Andrew Ahn, an openly gay Asian American man.) There’s been an element of a lot of the press and buzz for Bros that feels a lot like straight guys patting themselves on the back for helping their queer friends get their movie made. And it’s not to say they have no reason to be proud of this movie, but there has been this widespread industry expectation that the movie will be a hit, and its opening weekend earned 40% less than projected. There is already hand-wringing about whether this means audiences aren’t “ready” for a movie like this, but there remains the possibility that the film just isn’t as great as everyone who made it thought it was.

And I know I’ve spent a lot of time picking it apart here, but I must stress that I did enjoy this movie. The more salient point is, I enjoyed it about as much as any average romantic comedy—the key word here being “average,” although I would even say this was above average, not that there’s a high bar there either; it doesn’t take much for a romantic comedy to rise just slightly above mediocrity. And to be fair, there’s a lot of things I did love about Bros, not least of which was its acknowledgment of how gay relationships are actually different from straight ones (yet no less valid); its sex scenes just as frank as any in a romantic comedy about straight people; and its unusually honest depiction of day to day queer life. (Although, and I’m sorry for constantly making the comparison in spite of its inevitability, Fire Island has a lot more casual drug use. Bros does depict the use of poppers in a sex scene, though, treating it as just a normal part of it, which for many it is.)

Plus, Bros does have a lot of very effective punch lines, and I laughed a good amount at it—albeit a little further into the film than I would have preferred; that opening sequence with the podcast-host voiceover really had me worried the movie would be actively bad. Thankfully, although there are many valid criticisms, the movie is actively good. And to be fair, it’s not trying to be anything it isn’t, either; the film itself doesn’t seem to think it’s any paragon of cinema, and only tries to offer what fans of romantic comedies want. And by and large, what those fans want is something of a specific formula, which this very much is.

Eichner’s love interest is Aaron, played by Luke Macfarlane, a guy largely known for Hallmark Channel romantic comedies—so, another example of slightly in-joke casting. Eichner plays a character I would likely find insufferable in real life, but these two men have genuine chemistry, which alone goes a long way toward making Bros work overall. It’s heartening to see even two perfectly attractive men (granted, one is much “hunkier” than the other) struggling to overcome very different insecurities, and sort of tentatively succeeding. Honestly, I would happily watch Bros again, and would likely enjoy it even more a second time, having already gotten the criticisms out of my system and allowing myself just to give into it without intellectualizing what is just meant to be a fun time at the movies. Which, to be fair, is exactly what this is in the end.

It’s unapologetically queer, unapologetically romantic, and unapologetically formulaic.

Overall: B