NewFest ’15: Girls Lost

This seed is nothing like Jack’s magic beans. It grows a flower that causes body switching, but not the kind you saw in Big or Freaky Friday. Three bullied girls of ambiguous sexuality will have the opportunity to experience life as the opposite sex in Alexandre-Therese Keining’s Girls Lost (trailer here), an adaptation of Jessica Schiefauer’s award-winning Swedish YA novel, which screens as the closing night selection of this year’s NewFest.

Kim, Momo, and Bella have always been bullied by classmates who assume they are lesbians. Naturally, the teachers look the other way, because they are bitter, low-level civil servants. The girls’ homes share a common backyard, so Bella’s greenhouse serves as their clubhouse. In her recent online nursery order she was surprised to find an exotic bonus seed, but being a teenager she plants anyway. The next day, it fully sprouts into a slightly sinister looking black flower. Juice from its buds will indeed produce the gender switch effect, but it is only temporary—and each usage clearly depletes the flower’s vitality.

For Momo and Bella, it is an interesting experience, but it does not hold deep psychological significance for them. In contrast, the transitory periods confirm Kim’s suspicions she is really meant to be a boy. Despite the pain it causes her friends, she spends more and more time in her altered state, so she can get close to Tony, their bad boy classmate, whom she suspects is also deeply closeted.

The ensuing complications regarding gender and sexuality get wickedly thorny. However, that complex rat’s nest of passions and resentments is what gives Lost so much power. This is not your average high school coming-of-age or coming-out story, but rather a supernaturally zeitgeisty love triangle. The young cast does some remarkable work selling the intricate and conflicting series of relationships, especially Tuva Jagell, Louise Nyvall, and Wilma Hollmen as Kim, Momo, and Bella in their original female selves. Emrik Ohlander, Alexander Gustavsson, and Vilgot Ostwald Vesterlund look like perfect male analogs, but only Gustavsson displays a similarly forceful screen presence.

Keining does not chicken out of showing the transition process, but the special effects team renders them in a way that is wonderfully subtle and evocative. Likewise, Ragna Jorming’s rich chiaroscuro-like cinematography and Sophia Ersson’s electro-soundscape score work perfectly in tandem to create an eerie mood. While the teen angst approaches melodramatic levels from time to time, Keining explores the emotional implications of the fantastical premise with brutal honesty. Obviously, it is an appropriate fit for NewFest audiences, but the characters’ insecurities should resonate for a wide range of “outsider” teens. Recommended for fans of teen urban fantasy, Girls Lost closes the 2015 NewFest this Tuesday night (10/27) at the Bow Tie Chelsea.

NewFest ’15: Sisters of the Plague

There is no shortage of locations for Jo’s haunted French Quarter tours. Unfortunately, she can’t stop bringing her work home each night. Lately, she has been beset by weird visions and feelings of dread. She suspects it all has something to do with her mother’s premature death. The circumstances surrounding the incident remain murky, but that is true of much that you will find in Jorge Torres-Torres’s Sisters of the Plague (trailer here), which screens as part of the inaugural Queer Horror Night at this year’s NewFest.

In retrospect, Jo was probably asking for trouble when she participated in staged “witchcraft” shows for her tour patrons. Rather than cheesy shtick for the tourists, they look pretty real, but perhaps that is a bad thing. Although her mother has been dead for a while now, Jo still has unanswered questions. She was hoping her formerly-estranged drunkard father Bob would have some answers when she let him move in, but they are still rather standoffish around each other.

For obvious reasons, Jo’s girlfriend Kate is less than thrilled to have the constantly hacking, hard drinking Bob in such close proximity. Jo’s increasingly erratic behavior gives her further reason to conclude this family just isn’t cute anymore. Yet, Jo is sufficiently lucid to recognize she has a problem. Proactively, she seeks help from an old school psychic in some of the film’s best sequences.

In Plague, Josephine Decker and her Butter on the Latch co-star Isolde Chae-Lawrence reunite under the direction of Torres-Torres, the editor and associate producer of Toad Road, so it is hardly surprising this outing feels like an unholy marriage of those two hipster films. At least Plague is long on atmosphere, as you would jolly well hope from a movie set in New Orleans. There are a handful of eerily suggestive scenes, but Jo’s connective drama gets downright laborious.

Despite her bold extremes, there is something oddly distancing about Decker’s performance. Chae-Lawrence gives viewers somewhat more accessible energy and attitude to work with, but it is still hard to fathom why she sticks around as long as she does. However, Thomas Francis Murphy deserves all kinds of credit for his uncomfortably gross work as Bob.

Of course, it is hard to go too far wrong when using New Orleans as the backdrop for a ghost story involving long buried secrets. In fact, there is something impressive about its rigid aesthetic, not unlike Sarah Adina Smith’s The Midnight Swim, but it wouldn’t have killed anyone to embrace a few more genre indulgences. It is an intriguing film to parse and dissect, but most cult film fans will prefer something a little more fun. Recommended almost exclusively for fans of Decker and producer-co-writer Jason Banker, Sisters of the Plague screens this Sunday (10/25) at the Chelsea Bowtie, as part of NewFest 2015.

NewFest ’15: You’re Killing Me

Even the reality TV obsessed youtube video-producing George and Barnes find Maya Angelou’s bromides ridiculously cheesy. However, they probably should take the one about “when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time” a bit more to heart. Unfortunately, they assume good-looking Joe Palmer is joking whenever he talks about being a serial killer. Oh, but he’s not kidding. As a result, their circle of friends will dramatically contract in Jim Hansen’s pretty damn funny gay slasher comedy, You’re Killing Me (trailer here), which screens as part of the inaugural Queer Horror Night at this year’s NewFest.

Palmer doesn’t really know his pop culture references, because he was just released from the nut house. It seems his treatment didn’t take. In the past, he only killed small animals, but he is about to graduate to people. Since he is not comfortable with sex, he will just kill his new boyfriend instead. At least the late Andy puts him onto George and Barnes’ videos. When Palmer makes a point of bumping into him, George assumes it is a meet-cute, but he really is stalking him. In fact, Palmer has an endless supply serial killer jokes. George thinks they are a riot, but they are the cold, hard truth. Eventually, Barnes starts to suspect something is not right about Palmer, but by that point, the bodies are really starting to pile up.

Frankly, YKM skewers our contemporary reality TV-viral video obsessed society with more wit and satiric insight than just about any recent comedy, regardless of orientation. Hansen never really nostalgically calls back to fan favorite horror films of years gone by, but he is certainly not stingy when it comes to blood and guts. Essentially, the humor operates on two levels, blood splattered slapstick and highly exaggerated but still wickedly smart cultural criticism. If that isn’t enough for you, Mindy Cohn from The Facts of Life also shows up at the darnedest time.

Yet, despite the gory nuttiness, YKM still has a good heart. In large measure, this is due to the riffing camaraderie of George and Barnes’ friendship. Co-writer Jeffery Self and Bryan Safi are terrific as the aspiring celebrities. Self also maintains the energy level almost single-handedly when playing off Matthew McKelligon’s suspiciously reserved Palmer.

YKM’s characters are mostly gay (and they probably have to be, because not a lot of straight guys are so well versed on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills), but the humor is blackly universal. If you enjoy films like Tucker & Dale vs. Evil, you should dig it just as much or more. Highly recommended for horror mash-up fans, You’re Killing Me screens this Sunday (10/25) at the Chelsea Bowtie, as part of NewFest 2015.

NewFest ’15: Everlasting Love

Sex does not get much more dangerous than this. A professor might think he is engaging in a moderately risking bit of cruising, but it puts him on the radar of a decidedly sinister circle of friends in Marçal Forés’ Everlasting Love (trailer here), which screens as part of the inaugural Queer Horror Night at this year’s NewFest.

If you are expecting to hear the disco version of Robert Knight’s R&B hit, forget about it. However, this thicket of woods in Barcelona is a lot like the club in Friedkin’s Cruising, except it draws straights and lesbians in search of hook-ups as well. Carlos, a middle-aged Chinese language instructor often comes there for the obvious. He also recognizes the attraction of one of his shy students. Toni is not really his type, per se, but at the right time, in the right place, anyone is Carlos’s type.

Unfortunately, Toni has trouble accepting the whole one night stand thing. This troubles Carlos, but he should really be worried about Toni’s friends. Although Forés only shows us oblique glimpses, it is enough to understand these kids are profoundly bad news.

Although just under seventy minutes, Everlasting is a fascinating example of how visual perspectives can elevate feelings of dread and suspense. Cinematographer Elías M. Félix’s wide-angle shots give us a disorienting view of events that conceals as much as it reveals. By the same token, it gives the film a lush, exotic vibe that bizarrely compares to Hou Hsiao-hsien’s The Assassin in that strictly limited respect.

Considering Aimar Vega’s Toni is intended to be a shrinking violet who appears to withdraw into himself like a turtle on-screen, Joan Bentallé deserves most of the credit for carrying the film like a pack mule. As Carlos, he is roguishly reckless and hedonistic, yet viewers will squirm for him as he unknowingly facilitates the inevitable.

Everlasting is creepy and economical. It also ends on a defiantly surreal note reminiscent of Park Chan-wook’s iPhone short, Night Fishing. Despite its restraint, the unsettling mood should definitely appeal to fans of horror movies and dark thrillers. Recommended for open-minded art-house genre fans, Everlasting Love screens this Sunday (10/25) at the Chelsea Bowtie, as part of NewFest 2015.

NewFest ’15: When Bette Met Mae

Mae West practically single-handedly saved Paramount from bankruptcy, while Bette Davis was the first actress to bring a little glamour to the hardboiled Warner Brothers studio. Yet, despite their mutual admiration, it took decades for the two movie stars to finally meet. Optometrist and volunteer bartender Wes Wheadon was a fly on the wall when they did and he has the standard audio cassette recording to prove it. With the help of lip-synching actors, he recreates the lively early 1970s dinner party in the hybrid documentary When Bette Met Mae (trailer here), which screens during the 2015 NewFest.

Davis had four husbands and West never had a shortage of men, but both became gay icons, in part through drag show impersonations. It was a phenomenon they discussed on that night in 1973, so WBMM is not so out of place at NewFest. Sadly, the movie business had largely forgotten them at this point, but Davis still worked regularly in television, resenting nearly every minute of it. Having invested wisely in real estate, West did not need to work at all. Still, neither was the type to sit about idle.

Despite its obvious artificiality and the disorienting distance between the on-screen figures and their voices, it is rather lovely to hear the real life Davis and West again, in any context. The former was especially her tart-tongued self, venting her spleen against agents, producers, and former SAG president Ronald Reagan. In retrospect, most historians give Reagan credit for standing up to the moguls, but clearly anything less than a May Day storming of the studio barricades would not impress Ms. Davis.

Wheadon, who had already been pulled into Bette Davis’s orbit through mutual friends at the dinner party, serves as an easy-going and informative host. He augments the gossipy conversation with some intriguing background and context on the often overlooked later years of the two stars’ lives. It is particularly amusing to hear New York publicist Gary Springer (whom those of us who cover film and theater know and respect quite well) speak of an evening at Town Hall his father produced. Conceived as a sort of 92Y-style Q&A, it became a command appearance for the royal Davis to receive her adoring fans (who were apparently 99% gay men). Nevertheless, since the breezy forty five minute dish session constitutes the core of the film, Wheadon can barely stretch it past sixty minutes.

Karen Teliha and Victoria Mills are both the respective spitting images of Davis and West, but Teliha also shows a command of the former’s instantly recognizable mannerisms. She seems comfortable in Davis’s skin, whereas Mills does not. However, the night was largely Ms. Davis’s show, so we can just watch and listen to her do her thing.

The graphics and Jack Anderson’s cinematography have a retro vibe that look like they might have been produced in 1973, along with the muffled audio. Yet, there is something appealing about its throwback grunginess. It is also a NewFest selection that could draw a lot of straight fans, because Mae West was Mae West and Bette Davis was smoking hot in The Letter and The Man Who Came to Dinner. Recommended for fans of Golden Age Hollywood, When Bette Met Mae screens Thursday afternoon (10/22) with the short film, Who Stole the Ruby Slippers, during this year’s NewFest.