Gay Berlin



What had brought the legendary German director Rosa von Praunheim to near tears last week? When pumped on the matter, he replied, "I'm an old, fat gay man and I have seen many festivals. But this one was the most beautiful, so now I can die."

Hopefully, Rosa will live along enough to finish his latest epic about the homeless, The Cows Get ****ed By The Fog. But if not, at least we know it will be a peaceful death.


What might have gotten this helmer so cheerfully melancholy was that the 51st Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin (or as it's better known, the Berlinale) had amidst its exhaustive slate of current world cinema, a huge offering of films with gay, lesbian and transgendered themes. Among the Teddy Awards Committee count, there were over 38.

Included, arguably, was Gus Van Sant's Finding Forrester. Was Sean Connery's reclusive author gay just because he wore his socks inside out for comfort? Gus when asked hasn't ruled it out.

But on the other hand, Ridley Scott's Hannibal, which might just be the most unacknowledged gay film of the year, was left off. I asked Anthony Hopkins at a Berlinale press conference if his carnivorous villain was homosexual as he's accused of being in the film. Sir Hopkins replied with a wry smile that it was indeed a possibility one could contend with.

You'd be on safer gay ground with Sande Zeig's adaptation of theoretician Monique Wittig's short story, The Girl. This modern film noir, which is gloriously shot in Paris, tells of The Painter, a hot gal in men's suits, who falls for The Girl, a hot gal in gowns. The two make love and bathe nonstop, but eventually The Man, The Girl's boss, gets jealous and tries to have The Painter's lights punched out. Every scene here is breathtakingly planned out, and the leads are stunning to watch. Sadly, Zeig was more partial to pushing some inane philosophical concepts as opposed to entertaining us, and the film has as much excitement as a Cracker Jack box without a prize.
Lesson learned: You can read theoreticians. You can **** theoreticians. Just don't adapt their work into movies.

Everyone's favorite photographer turned MTV video maker turned film director, Bruce Weber, showed up with some Chop Suey. This is a staggering collage of some of the influences and people in Weber's model life. He takes us to a wrestling camp where he discovers the attractive and adorably shallow youth Peter Johnson whom he makes into a national model. We also get to meet the British desert explorer Sir Wilfred Thesiger and are then forced to peruse Weber's photo collection at high speed. But the really magical points are snippets of an interview with the late Diana Vreeland in her very red living room and a superb look at the fascinating life of lesbian singer Frances Faye. But when not chronicling these two gals, far too often Weber's camera is on overdrive, and you actually have to close your eyes to stop your stomach from churning. Some folks will call this film avant garde or blissfully trendy; others might settle for self-indulgent with moments of brilliance.

Another highlight for some was Ferzan Ozpetek's Le Fate Ignorant (Blind Fairies). This Italian-German production from the director who previously blessed us with the Turkey-based Steam focuses on an AIDS nurse whose husband is killed by not one but two automobiles as he crosses the street while fiddling with his cellular phone. Not unexpectedly, she gets depressed until she learns he was cheating on her with a homosexual. That gets her really depressed until she finds herself suddenly embracing the transsexuals, queens, and crazed immigrants that had peopled the world her hubby had often escaped to. Imagine an Almodovar film without sarcasm or whimsy. Not bad.

Jerry Springer might call Kate Davis' Southern Comfort an inside peek at Southern White Trash Transsexuals and Their Ilk, but this is an extremely soul-stirring documentary that has elicited a tear or two from even the most hard-boiled. Its star is Robert Eads. Born a girl, this wry soul transforms herself into a cowboy-hat-wearing gent who resides in the most rural part of Georgia. Finally, able to live the way he wants with the friends he wants, Robert finds it slightly ironic that his world is suddenly being struck down by ovarian cancer. Apparently you can remove the breasts off a girl, but not her female gonads.

In Le Roi Danse (The King is Dancing), everyone is happy with their god-given gonads but little else. Directed by Gerard Corbiau, who's best known here for his castrato drama Farinelli, here's another lavish costumer complete with lust that's served up both as repressed and on the table. Fourteen-year-old Louis XIV is not allowed to rule, but he can frolic all he wants to. Bit to frolic well, one needs the proper music, so the young bisexual Florentine composer Jean-Baptiste Lully becomes both the court composer and the king's pal. Their relationship changes, however, when Louis does begin his reign and actually starts believing he is a god. Corbiau has fashioned out of this material a rococo, shimmering tale of a one-sided love that didn't know whether it's based on true affection or ruthless ambition. The visuals are overpowering. As for the drama, it might help if you are a Francophile, a history buff, or a costume freak. But then don't most of us fall into at least one
of these categories?

Hopefully, none of will fall into The Dark side of Daren. This is a 68-minute look at Maximilian Moll's relationship with an attractive, utterly boring and self-involved coke addict. You see Daren shaving his chest and cutting flowers in his L.A. yard ad nauseam throughout this dreary ordeal that had audiences running for the exits. This love letter to the lame gives banality a bad name.

One of the audience favorites though came from Thailand. Yongyooth Thongkonthun's truly hilarious Sa Tree Lex (The Iron Ladies) is based on a factual story. Recently, a group of drag queens, a sex change, and one heterosexual man decided to form a volley ball team and they won the national championship to everyone's dismay. Bought by Strand Releasing, expect this comedy to be a giant crossover hit in the States. It's superbly silly and effective.

Sue Maluwa-Bruce's graceful Forbidden Fruit, a 30-minute short, might be the most gutsy film to be shown at the Berlinale. This tale of two rural lesbians who are separated after they're discovered kissing by a lake was shot in Zimbabwe. The actresses hired to play the two leads chickened out the day before shooting so Bruce had to tell her tale by looking directly in the camera, and this conceit works.

Daren Minahan's Series 7, which garnered much praise in Sundance, creates a TV reality show where the winner has to kill all the other contestants. One is a formerly gay man with testicular cancer. It's a black comedy.

The Fluffer, directed by both Richard (Grief) Glatzer and Wash (Devil is the Bottom) West, on the other hand is just a mess. Here again is another of those gay offerings where there's a great title, a sexy lead for the posters, and pure incompetence everywhere else. This melodramatic tale tells of a young man who rents Citizen Kane at a video store and is accidentally given Citizen Cum. He immediately falls in love with the lead, Johnny Rebel (Scott Gurney), and shortly becomes the cameraman for the porn company. Soon he also becomes the fluffer for the stars who can't get it up. What has comic potential instead turns into a sappy muddle complete with murder, drug addiction, and an abortion which is another way to describe this effort.

Others features to note that will be coming your way at various gay festivals include Hoang A. Duong's short, Tom Clay Jesus (USA), in which a gay man finds that a newly grown beard and a fake Hispanic name can find him love; Sandi Dubowski's Trembling Before G-d (USA) is a prize-winning documentary that explores the painful world of gay Orthodox Jews; RD Robb's terrific Don's Plum covers a night at a restaurant where a group of annoying 20-year-olds eat and *****. Sadly two of its stars, Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire, won't allow you to see it in North America; Leah Pool's frenzied Lost and Delirious (Canada) which stars Piper Perabo as a teen who falls for her roommate in an all-girl's school. All goes well, until her mate decides to turn straight. Poor Piper will never be the same; and Shelly Dunn Fremont's and Vincent Fremont's raucous Pie in the Sky: The Brigid Berlin Story pursues the former Andy Warhol Superstar as she eats one key lime pie after another. A must-
see as were so many others. Those Germans really know how to serve it up if you overlook the sauer kraut.