It was a starry night when thousands of Montrealers plopped down on home-brought folding chairs to watch Jodie Foster in Victorian drag. With Anna and the King dubbed in French and screened for free on a closed-off thoroughfare, pockets of happy lesbians could be picked out by the surreal bliss emanating from their enraptured faces. Now if only k.d. lang had done the soundtrack.

But gay and lesbian perfection could be found among the 360 offerings from 55 countries being screened at the 24th Montreal World Film Festival. This year as in every other, queer films were well represented, although sometime only with French subtitles, making Nagisa Oshima's Gohatto (Taboo), a tale of gay Samurai, out of reach for Anglophiles. There were also such standard gay festival favorites as The Broken Hearts Club starring TV's Superman and Frasier's dad as part of a clique of gays in search of true love in a shallow environment. Gurinder Chadha's What's Cooking? looks at four ethnic families in LA and how they deal with Thanksgiving. Julianna Margulies and Kyra Sedgwick shine as a lesbian couple dealing with the very Jewish Lainie Kazan's misgivings over their same-sex carryings-on, especially so near her turkey.

But there were also many discoveries and even a star or two to chat with. Gong Li, for example, who was so memorable in Farewell, My Concubine.

In her hotel suite, I queried, "Do you ever look in the mirror and ask, "Why do people think I'm so special?"

Laughing, Gong Li replied, "I do ask myself that question."

She also noted she never recorded an album of Madonna songs as the press reported, and she sometimes covers her face with cucumbers. "I'm not sure if it really works."

Elsewhere Irani director Mariam Shahriar was pushing her film Daughters of the Sun, a searing look at the plight of women in Iran. While not overtly gay, more an exploration of gender, in it, her heroine shaves her head and passes as a man to obtain a job as a weaver of rugs. Think Yentl without songs. Shahriar shared, "The censors in Iran wanted me to get rid of some of the scenes. They've held up the releasing for a long time. They made me suffer and aged me about ten years. "

Another film causing an uproar in its home country is Baise Moi (**** Me). Imagine a hard core version of Thelma and Louise with a good dose of Russ Meyer's Faster Pussycat Kill Kill thrown in. Helmed by porn director Coralie Trinh Thi and starring two porn actresses, the low-budgeted feature created a furor when the French government tried to pull it out of theaters.

Baise Moi follows a rape victim and a prostitute who join forces against the male of the species. The duo only cease their executions when having sex with guys they choose in the style they want. But even in the midst of heated intercourse, the two are watching each other get off. It's not until the finale, though, that they kiss on the lips. (P.S. If you don't enjoy watching a male chauvinist pig get shot up the anus, stay away.)

The premier gay film here was Sébastien Lif****z' Presque Rien (Almost Nothing), a startlingly sensual look at two teenage boys falling in love and finding that isn't enough. Mathieu comes from a well-off neurotic family. Cédric, 18, is a gorgeous example of working-class spunk. After spotting each other on the beach, they're quickly copulating. But even explicit shots of foreskin manipulation never for an instant bring your mind down to gutter level. The film's that good.

Roland Suso Richter's A Handful of Grass tells of a young Kurdistan boy imported to Germany to sell drugs. There's only one gay moment but it registers. The 10-year-old is pulled into a building lobby by two skinheads wanting the drugs he's already swallowed while being chased by cops. Upset they can't get high, the teens plan to rape the boy orally and anally and go into detail. Thankfully, they're interrupted. But in the end, the youth doesn't react as if this were his first such encounter.

In José Álvaro Morais' Peixe Lua (Moon-Fish), the following excerpt's enacted from a Federico Garcia Lorca play:

Young Man 1: "If I turned into dung...."

Young Man 2: "I'd turn into a fly."

Now that's true love. The two characters spouting these romantic lines are part of an extremely confusing Portuguese film where all the fellows are gay, bisexual or semi-drag queens.

The amateur actors are from two families. The poor one consists of the handsome bisexual Gabriel, his mother the butcher, and a hot young brother who's a matador. Gabriel's godfather is the head of the rich family containing the about-to-be-wed Maria; her gay sibling, the musical and sensitive Ze Maria; and the married bisexual Afonso. All three've been to bed with Gabriel, but only Ze Maria and Maria really love him. In one flashback, Gabriel has sex in a bathroom stall with Maria while a gay hustler and his john get at it in the next one. When Gabriel sees their shoes, he really gets turned. This all may add up to something, but you might have to travel to Portugal to discover what.

Then there's the dear Marquis de Sade in Sade—and in this take on the scandalous writer's life, he really is a dear. Imprisoned in a former convent, Sade gets to spout, "Nature goes where it will" and "Everything that you can imagine, I have done but I am not a murderer." His best friends are the virginal Emily and a gorgeous young gay man whose sugar daddy is a bewigged, obese, disintegrating dandy.

To Sade, homosexuality is just another enjoyable aspect of life, and he's not above grabbing a **** it walks by. But his main goal is Emilie's defowering with the aid of a hunky gardener. This so-so shocking finale of the film has Sade, after getting whipped, choreographing Emilie's fornication as if it were the closing number of a dinner theater revival of Guys and Dolls. P.S. The gay hunk watches through a window before joining in. You won't blame him.

In Ali Zaoua, director Nabil Ayouch spotlights Casablanca streets littered with discarded children. Some form gangs for self-preservation. In this Moroccan production, four 12-year-olds split from one such gang. Ali, their leader, consequently gets stoned to death, and his three mates spend the rest of the film trying to get him a proper burial.

Along the way, the tiniest chap is gang-banged off-screen by a group of scruffy street urchins. Less violent "consentual" homosexual acts are also a part of the boys' lives. Early on when Ali's found to have some money, a friend asks: "You sold your *** again?" But homophobia drapes their conduct. When the rape victim, who doesn't want to snooze alone, cries to his associates: "You always say we can't sleep together!" he gets the reply, "We're not ******s."

Also noteworthy was Akira Ogata's Boys' Choir, a tale of 15-year-old stutterer and an effeminate male soprano who team up in their orphanage and eventually fall in love. But most unforgettable was Gerardo Vera's Second Skin, an embarrassing Spanish tale of a closeted aerospace engineer split between his family and his lover, an orthopedic surgeon. Just when you thought befuddled gays no longer commit suicide by crashing their motorcycles, you learn no matter how much the times change, they still remain the same.