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| A still from The Art of Walking Through the Streets |
Now, what makes a film queer? Does the filmmaker have to be queer? Or just the subject matter? Or both? Can films really be described in such terms? I don�t think a film has a sexuality anymore than it has a sex. It�s just as troublesome as expressions like �black literature� or �women�s writing,� as if literature had a color or as if ghettoizing writers who happen to be female by describe them as �women writers� was somehow progressive or even a good idea (looking at you, Elaine Showalter and Eavan Boland).
Apparently�according to the Wikipedia�the great Belgian auteur Chantal Akerman will have none of this �queer cinema� business, and refused a request to include her film Je Tu Il Elle (1974) in the New York Gay Film Festival. Now, I don�t profess to know how Akerman identifies in terms of her sexuality (Wikipedia helpfully categorizes her under both �LGBT Directors� and �LGBT Jews,� so there�s that), but I guess Je Tu Il Elle would meet most people�s definition of a queer film (it�s probably most famous for its extended lesbian sex scene). But when I think of the movie, I suspect I am in agreement with Akmeran herself, in that I don�t see it as a queer film, but rather just as a film. And I generally think that that�s the more aesthetically defensible position to embrace.
Well, politics aside, I have thus far watched two of the films available on MUBI from the Queer Lisboa Film Festival (and unfortunately for me, only some of these films have English subtitles, so a number of them remain tantalizingly out of reach); these films are Brazillian director Rafaela Camelo�s The Art of Walking Through the Streets(although the opening title�and I don�t speak Portuguese, mind you�but the opening title looked more like The Art of Walking Through the Streets of Brasilia) and Greek director Tel�machos Alexiou�s Venus in the Garden. A few notes on each:
The Art of Walking Through the Streets (seventeen minutes long) is a gentle film about two teenage girls�Carlotta and Ana�who are best friends and who might be romantically and/or sexually attracted to each other (they themselves don�t seem to know). The film economically shows them coming closer and closer together and then breaking apart (Ana likes Carlotta more than Carlotta likes Ana; when Carlotta goes on a date with a boy, she doesn�t understand why Ana is upset. Either Carlotta is just oblivious or the attraction was never more than one-sided). Now, I say �economically� because this is a short film, but it doesn�t seem rushed and it doesn�t seem to be missing anything. We get everything we need to know about Ana�s and Carlotta�s relationship, but not more.
Venus in the Garden is more of an avant-garde affair and it�s certainly more hit-and-miss. Over a 60-minute run time (in literature, we have the short story and the novel, and for that that which falls in between length-wise, we can call it a novella; what is the cinematic equivalent of the novella?), the film follows a male prostitute, Nikos, his pimp/madame, Monica, and a mysterious young Frenchman, Alain, who enters into an ambiguous love triangle with the two of them. They are the only actors seen on-screen in this film; we hear other voices, but we never see the speakers.
What happens in the movie? Everybody flirts with everybody. There�s talk of the three of them working in some sort of theatrical production to make enough money to leave Monica�s mother�s house, where they�re living in the mother�s absence, but this business of the theater is never really elaborated on. The film�s main raison d�etre, I suspect, is the series of beautiful compositions that are sprinkled throughout it. The film is in black-and-white, so these almost inevitably look good. Paul Simon famously sang that �everything looks worse in black and white,� but what the hell was he talking about? Everything looks significantly betterin black and white. I am reminded of an anecdote from Salon.com�s film critic Andrew O�Hehir, in which he recounts a conversation between Lars von Trier and Martin Scorsese following the release of the former�s Antichrist. Scorsese praises the beauty of Antichrist�s opening sequence (Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg�or their body doubles, at least�having sex in black and white and slow motion while their infant opens the window of their apartment and tumbles out to his death). Von Trier responded to Scorsese by saying�and I�m paraphrasing here slightly��Well of course it was beautiful! It was in black and white and slow motion! I cheated, basically.�
Well, I suspect that Alexiou has cheated. The film may be largely inexplicable�that�s not the right word, everything that happens in it is certainly explicable, it�s just that I hesitate to use the word �pointless��but it looks really, really good.
So, those are just two samples from MUBI�s Queer Lisboa films, currently streaming for free on their website. If you happen to speak Portuguese, the number of them that you can watch with understanding increases by about twofold, so go ahead and do that if you can. I remember their presentation of Queer Lisboa last year, and how it was followed up by selections from a Korean short film festival. Hopefully that will follow this year as well.
