review of the filmfestival 2005
2006 2004 2003 2002 2001

This time the "verzaubert" queer filmfestival took place a bit earlier, from 11/17/05 to 11/24/05. Otherwise everything was like last year: Residenz-Kinos, Kaiser-Wilhelm-Ring 30-32. A ticket stills cost 8,00 €. Within one week the best new queer cinema productions 2005! Most of the time Matthias was in on it, and once Michael too, so that I could obtain different evaluations.

Thursday 11/17/05 20:00 Residenz 1 Opening - C.r.a.z.y. - Canada 2005, 127', french original version with english subtitles

The film "Crazy", which is really worth seeing, is a coming-out-drama and at the same time a contemporary document of Montreal from the sixties to the eighties. Zachary, the youngest of four children, growing up in a bourgeois and catholic home, stepped out of line from the very start, as he was born on Christmas Eve. While his mom Laurianne believes him to be something special, for his dad Gervais the "slightly different son", who enjoys girlish games and "Major Tom", seems to be a closed book. Zachary's father is not the typical "petit bourgeois". He likes French chansons, which he sings along enthusiastically, and cool drives with his old American limousine, often joined by Zachary, who enjoys them, too. When Zachary is in his puberty, their relationship gets more complicated. Gervais endeavours to cure his son of his homosexual inclinations, while Zachary has great difficulties finding his own way. It even comes to dramatic and irrational actions, for instance when he passes a crossing with his moped at high speed, although the traffic lights have turned red. „If I come out of this without a crash, everything will change."

The film deals with the development of the whole family during two decades, concentrating on the relationship between Zachary and his father, which is much more intense than his relationship with the three elder sons, although - or perhaps because - Zachary is completely different.

"Crazy" is a beautiful and credible film, full of suspense and humour. Zachary's episode in Israel, however, where he tries to find self-fulfillment, seems a bit far­fetched and interrupts the flow of the story, but when he comes back to Montreal the threat of the plot is resumed.

Homepage: concours.canoe.com/concours_crazy   (Quicktime - trailer on the page)

order "C.r.a.z.y." DVD at amazon.com (NTSC, Region 1, French version with English subtitles)

Thursday 11/17/05 22:30 Residenz 2 - Vanilla - USA 2004, 47', English original version

The film deals with the story of the teenager Jeff, who finds the sinister "Bay Side Strangler" lying dead in a park. He shot himself after having strangled some boys (the strangling scenes are shown in beautiful and florid pictures), whom he had picked up in a beautiful and florid gay bar before. Jeff feels magically attracted by the world of the dead serial killer and soon begins to dream of "rough sex". Eventually the borderline between dream and reality gets blurred; lechery and death lie close together.

To call this miserable film an erotic thriller ("Verzaubert" film catalogue), is really a cheekiness. Especially the role of the serial killer is a complete fiasco. (I expected a destructive lover with an expressive face, and not an elderly leather bodybuilder queen, see pic.) In some parts the screenplay is unintentionally comical, and the whole film seems amateurish to me. In short: Almost everything went wrong - with the exception of Ryan Ellen"s (Jeff) piece of acting.

I have nothing against "low budget films", limiting the costs of the technical part, but i have much against "low talent films"! Only a fan of "breath-control-sex" may enjoy this 'opus', as there are not so many strangulation pornos on the market.

Friday 11/18/05 19:30 Residenz 1 - Ethan Mao - Canada, USA 2004, 88', English Original version

A Chinese family of a millionaire in Los Angeles that consists of a capitalist and authoritarian father, two natural sons, the American stepmother, whom he married recently, and her eldest son. Ethan, eighteen years old, is thrown out of the house by his father after he has found a gay porno magazine in the boy's room. Ethan struggles on as a hustler on Sunset Strip. There he comes to know the young attractive Latino Remigio, a drug dealer, who accomodates him at his flat. Their platonic love is put to a test, when Ethan - with Remigio's help - plans to go back to his home on the sly, in order to steal a souvenir of his dead mother. Of course, everything goes wrong. Father, stepmother, brother and half-brother return too early, and thus Ethan is forced to keep his relatives at bay, threatening them with a gun. Old scores are settled, and the stepmother plays a double game.

Her cynicism is highly amusing as well as her wicked comments. She even tries to hit on Ethan's lover Remigio right under her stepson's nose. As to the subject "debt and atonement" between father and son, brother and brother, Latin lover and Asian queen, inclusive declarations like „I really do love you!" - „Honestly, we have always loved you!" - „How far should we go for our love?" - many questions concerning the dramatic quality of the film remain unsolved. One must have dived deeply into the world of soaps to find traces of real life in those shallowly emotional demonstrations. Only a person who consumes two or three soaps per day may enjoy this mixture of Denver Clan and Asian eroticism, pepped up with a bit of rent-boy-romanticism.

Homepage: www.marginfilms.com/ethanmao    Trailer (Quicktime)

order "Ethan Mao" DVD at amazon.com (NTSC, Region 1)

Saturday 11/19/05 17:15 Residenz 1 - Gas - Italy 2005, 100', Italian original version with English subtitels

A suburb of Rome. Four youngsters and two girls kidnap an elderly man, whom they take to a bunker below a closed down factory, where a long night with alcohol, drugs, sex and tortures - accompanied by hard techno-beat - begins. We learn more about the gang in flashbacks, especially about Luca (Lorenzo Balducci - very attractive!), who is 24 years old.

After his girlfriend's gay brother has returned to Rome, Luca realizes that he can't continue leading a conformist life. But nevertheless he shrinks away from a real "coming out" and prefers to practice his homosexuality on the sly. The other four kidnappers also live in an atmosphere of unattainable wishes, frustrations and bottled-up aggressions.

At first it is not clear, why the five members of the gang joined in the horror trip to torture any old person in a very cruel manner. Towards the end of the film, however, the "fog lifts" and the relations between the different persons are cleared up. The finale is quite tough and reveals a consequent ending, but this film is nothing for weak nerves.

Homepage: www.intramovies.com/movies/2429.htm

Saturday 11/19/05 19:30 Residenz 1 - Transamerica - USA 2005, 103', English original version

The transsexual Bree (almost a woman) living in California is looking forward to her sex change that will soon be carried out, when she gets a telephone call from a youth detention centre in New York. To her greatest surprise she is informed that she has a son who serves a sentence because of drug abuse. Toby is the "result" of a long forgotten experimental night, when Bree's name was still Stanley. All her hopes to solve the problem in no time are in vain, as her therapist is only ready to speak in favour of the sex change when Bree is willing to accept the responsibility for her past life. Thus she picks Toby up from the prison without telling him the truth, and he mistakes this strange and stiff woman for a missionary.

Afterwards Bree tries to put up the boy at his stepfather's home. (The mother has already died before). The total failure of her attempt is not the stepfather's fault - he welcomes the boy warmly: „My son, how much I've missed you!" -, but Toby's. He reacts in a completely different way: "You missed my willing mouth! You missed my small sexy arse!" Finally the meeting ends in a fight, and Bree realizes that the stepfather's home is not an ideal accomodation for Toby.

Eventually the two strange persons set out on a trip through the USA heading towards the west coast, and at last they arrive at Bree's parents' home in Beverly Hills. Her mother's horrified reaction at the sight of Bree wearing female clothes is very amusing as well as the rapid change of her mood when she hears that this beautiful boy is her grandson. At that moment I couldn't help laughing till I cried, although I'm a hard-nosed cinema-goer.

This film is an absolutely funny comedy with a lot of sitcom, but it never slides into cheap tomfoolery (in the style of Mambo Italiano). Due to Felicity Huffmann"s ("Desperate Housewives") excellent piece of acting as Bree the leading actress neither loses respect nor dignity. This performance added to my knowledge of transsexual persons. An outstanding screenplay and a coherent finale, an entertainig film that makes you laugh, but you also feel enriched! The spectators of the "Verzaubert Filmfestival" (in Cologne, Berlin, Frankfurt and Munich) chose this film as number 1 of the festival. In my opinion this was the right choice.

Felicity Huffmann received a Golden Globe 2006 as "best actress" for her performance in this movie, and she deserves it. If you missed this film it's likely to be performed at your cinema this year, watch it! If you have a DSL internet connection, have a look at the foolowing link: even the trailer will make you laugh.

Homepage: www.transamerica-movie.com (trailer on the intro page)

order "Transamerica" DVD at amazon.com (NTSC, Region 1)

Saturday 11/19/05 21:45 Residenz 1 - 50 ways of saying fabulous - New Zealand 2005, 90', English original version

What is a poofter? A poofter is a boy in his puberty, who is much too fat, has boobs and uses to wear a female outfit. Such a boy is Billy, who lives in a rural part of New Zealand in the seventies, when the whole world is still intact. Most of the time we see Billy biking through the beautiful landscape, during the day and also at night under a starry sky. Being a boy with much fantasy he sometimes sees an Ufo flying past. Billy has no real friends at school with the exception of the flat-chested Lou who lacks female atributes in the same extent as Billy has too much of them. Contrary to him she is heterosexual. Billy soon takes part in masturbatory games with his new classmate Roy, who is even less popular than Billy. After some time he breaks off the relationship in order to "keep" himself for the masculine farmworker Jamie, for whom Lou falls, too. Their childlike games escalate into jealousy, brutality and betrayal.

Children play the games of adults - that's the starting position of the film, but it is neither a children's film nor a gay one. Thanks to Andrew Peterson's (as Billy) refreshingly exhilerated way of acting the film is very humorous. In the beginning, however, one may have difficulties in accepting him as a role model, but later the film gets an original charme through Billy's smartness; all this is supplemented by a lot of sitcom. The end of the film doesn't fully convince, as a real development of the characters is lacking: Children are children again, friendships are renewed, and everything is like before.

Homepage: www.fiftywaysofsayingfabulous.com (trailer on the page)

Sunday 11/20/05 19:30 Residenz 1 - Time to Leave (Le Temps Qui Reste) - France 2005, 86', French original version with German subtitles

This is the latest film by the French cult director Frangois Ozon ("8 women", "Swimmingpool", "5x2"). Thus the "Residenz 1" cinema was quite crowded.

The fashion photographer Romain (an excellent piece of acting by the very attractive Melvil Paupaud) leads a fast life that is marked by strenuous photo shootings, money and drugs. One day his doctor informs him that he has a malignant brain tumour and a life span of about three months. lnstead of beginning a chemotherapy - the success will be doubtful - he makes up his mind to spend the time that is still left with dignity.

He visits his grandmother with whom he shares a common fate: „We will both die soon." Jeanne Moreau acts the part of the grandmother. Seeing her over the top acting it's hard to say whether a role had to be casted or a French actress icon had to be added to the film in order to give it more weight. Which this film does not require at all.

Romain's encounters with other persons are not so declamatory and therefore more convincing, especially his contacts with his parents, his sister and his lover Sasha. In the course of the film Romain's attitude towards them changes. In the beginning he is still arrogant and indulges in negative emotions. He tells his sister that he dislikes her. He wants his lover to move out of his flat because he doesn't love him any longer. But he soon realizes that the persons, who will still be on earth, after he has died, are vulnerable too, and he changes his attitude towards them. The climax of the film is Romain's coincidental encounter with a waitress of a fast-food restaurant. Her unusual request has far-reaching consequences - reaching far beyond his death.

'Time to Leave' is a beautiful, quiet, intimate and melancholic film, that avoids a chaos of emotions. It's like watching real life. And it seems as if the last weeks in Romain's life are his better ones.

Homepage: www.francois-ozon.com   Trailer

order "Time to leave" DVD at amazon.com (NTSC, Region 1)

Monday 11/21/05 19:30 Residenz 2 - A Love to Hide (Un amour à taire) - Frankreich 2004, 103', French original version with English subtitles

Summer 1942. Paris is occupied by the Germans. The bourgeois Jean hides his Jewish childhood friend Sarah at the home of his secret lover Philippe, who is a resistance fighter. He gets forged papers for her and also a job at his parents' flourishing laundry service. But Philippe is not very enthusiastic about this solution because the situation becomes more dangerous, and as to Sarah, she seems to be in love with Jean.

What seems to start as a ménage à trois with a Nazi setting escalates into a horrible situation, when Jean's brother - being his rival - denounces him to the police. Jean's temporary imprisonment becomes permanent, when a member of the SS recognizes him as the young man who danced with a homosexual German officer in a club, who later on committed suicide. While Jean is the helpless victim of the brutal Nazi thugs, his parents and his repentant brother try hard to get him free. Too late! Jean is already transported to a re-education camp in Germany. With many other young men, who are labelled with a 'pink angle' he has to work in a quarry. This is shown with an unabashed openness that makes the spectators shudder. When Jean is taken back to Paris after the war he is a 'ghostly', disturbed young man who doesn't respond to his environment and has lost his personality: German physicians had used him as a proband for lobotomy experiments (that means, in order to "heal" the sexual "abberation" they cut through nerve tracts in his brain).

It is extremely depressing that all the horrifying details of the film are based on true facts, still unknown to many people: After the war neither the Germans nor the French reappraised the injustices committed to homosexuals by the Nazis - and nothing changed for several decades. Even nowadays the knowledge about the treatment of homosexuals during the Third Reich is fragmentary, and - as most time witnesses are not alive any more - it likely will remain that way. Moreover the French don't want to be confronted with the fact that some people assisted the Nazis deporting prosecuted minorities. It will be harder now to deny this fact, thanks to this film.

A film that was overdue, I wished it had been produced and performed in 1950: Some of the homosexual time witnesses would probably have spoken up, and the new democratic after-war West-Germany would not have kept the paragraph 175 StGB (penal code, this paragraph forbade homosexuality) in the version of the Third Reich legislation for two more decades. Perhaps it would not have taken 40 years until a West German president (Richard von Weizsäcker) for the first time finally acknowledged the sufferings of the homosexuals during the Third Reich.

order "A Love to Hide" DVD at amazon.com (NTSC, Region 1)

Additional recommendations which cover the topic:
order "Paragraph 175" DVD at amazon.com (NTSC, Region 1)
order "Bent" DVD at amazon.com (NTSC, Region 1)

Tuesday 11/22/05 21:45 Residenz 1 - Loggerheads - USA 2005, 95', English original version

One day the handsome vagabond Michael turns up at a small beach resort near the coast of North Carolina. He is driven by the idea to rescue a threatened species of tortoises called loggerheads. George, who runs a hotel at the coast, takes Michael in and falls in love with him. They both spend many nights on the beach in search of the tortoises...

Not far away - at the conventional town of Eden - a priest and his wife watch the new neighbours moving in. At the last moment Elizabeth, the priest's wife, carrying a welcome cake manages to turn back, when she sees two men kissing at the front door of the neighbouring house. She discusses the problem with her devout husband, and they come to the conclusion: „Let's wait and see. It's better not to invite them to mass on Sunday." But behind Elizabeth's conventional facade there is a more serious worry...

The conformist Grace gives up her job and starts off to find her son. Some years ago her mother induced her to put him up for adoption. Sleuthing him leads Grace to North Carolina...

The different worlds of the three persons (Michael, Elizabeth and Grace) are only loosely linked together, and this doesn't change in the course of the plot, although a certain relationship between the characters exists. With a slight melancholy the film shows us three human beings who are in search of fulfillment, but are not able to find it. Only Michael has the talent to let himself drift. Elisabeth and Grace, however, gradually learn, that all things are in motion, that it is useless to cling to them - regardless of individual wishes. The positive features of the film: The characters use to talk to one another, and because of their mutual understanding are able to acknowledge their limits. Only the priest completely fails. He doesn't give up his prejudices, evades a discussion with his wife and prefers to make a mendacious homily in the chapel of Eden on Sunday.

The wonderful camera work and the quiet pictures - unusual for American movies - emphasize the melancholic and hopeful atmosphere.

Homepage: www.loggerheadsmovie.com    (trailer on the page)

order "Loggerheads" DVD at amazon.com (NTSC, Region 1)

Thursday 11/24/05 21:45 Residenz 12 - Closing: Mysterious Skin - USA 2004, 99', English original version

The setting of the film is the small town of Hutchinson in 1981. When the eight year old Brian wakes up in the morning he is obviously distressed, because he has a nose-bleed and a complete blackout, not knowing what happened during the last five hours of his life. There is another little boy. His name is Neil. One day his baseball coach takes him home. Here Neil hopes to get the fatherly love he is missing so much. (His mother is living alone, permanently changing her male acquaintances.) In the coach's flat he is in the centre of attention, and he believes that he is truly loved for the first time. But Neil soon finds out that the coach has by no means "honourable intentions", as he is sexually attracted by small boys.

One day the distressed loser Brian meets Neil, who lures him into a trap and tortures him. Shortly afterwards Brian can"t remember what really happened, because he has another blackout. He wakes up lying on the floor, again suffering from a nose-bleed.

Years later Brian is quite sure that his blackouts were connected with the assaults of aliens; and he is convinced once having seen an Ufo. He watches a television show with a young handicapped woman, who also believes in the existence of Ufos, but the encounter with her gets him nowhere.

Meanwhile Neil has become a good-looking cynical rent boy, who passes his time with Wendy, his childhood girlfriend, and Eric, a "mega queen", but in fact he doesn"t care for anybody or as Eric puts it: "Neil is like saturn, and we are mere planets, orbiting around him."

Brian tries to find out something about his blackouts, and on an old photo of the children"s baseball team he identifies one of the aliens, who tortured him. It is Neil.

Thus the circle of the partly bizarre story gradually closes, but not before the final sequence of the film, (which should not be revealed), everything falls into place. The whole story is told in a thrilling way - with shocking insights into the personality of the punters, their bourgoisie, mendacity, greed, ridiculousness, despair and brutality. Part of the film deals with the subject of AIDS. In the late 80s medication was not yet available, and thus we are confronted with distressing pictures of a punter whose skin is covered with caposis sarcomas - pictures seldom seen nowadays.

The film is based on a novel by Scott Heim. Although it seemed to be extremely difficult to make a film of such an explosive subject, the director Gregg Araki succeeded in creating an impressive work of art.

(Inofficial) homepage: www.rottentomatoes.com/m/mysterious_skin    Trailer

order "Mysterious Skin" (Deluxe Unrated Director's Edition) DVD at amazon.com (NTSC, Region 1)
Scott Heim "Mysterious Skin" at amazon.com

In my opinion the films really worth seeing are Transamerica, Time To Leave, A Love To Hide and Mysterious Skin. As in the last years altogether about 40 000 spectators visited the "Verzaubert" film festival. They chose "Transamerica" as the best movie and "Mostly Willing" (France 2004) as the best short film.

On behalf of gaykoeln.com: Since 2001 we critically observe the Verzaubert Filmfest. Reviews of the festivals 2004 2003 2002 2001 are completely revised - now forming a uniform and integrated whole - and are a gay film archive that is worth reading (inclusive the Amazon.com link to the corresponding DVD).

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andreas