The second-oldest LGBT film festival in the world continues in Chicago, as Reeling: The Chicago LGBTQ+ International Film Festival continues in Chicago through Thursday, Sept. 29.
For complete festival information, including special guests, special events and updates, and to buy tickets, visit REELINGFILMFESTIVAL.ORG .
LAZY EYE (***) (Sept. 28, 7 p.m.)
Even though it was made by Tim Kirkman, whose "Dear Jesse" and "Loggerheads" I admired, if you had described "Lazy Eye" to me I would have bet any amount I would hate it.
It basically consists of the most conversation between two men I don't find particularly attractive (sorry, guys) of any film since "My Dinner with Andre." (I got bored typing that sentence.)
Well, as the *** rating indicates, I would have lost the bet. The guys are real, their situation intriguing, the dialogue interesting and the backgrounds, including Joshua Tree, California, better than the interior of a restaurant.
Dean (Lucas Near-Verbrugghe) has the visual impairment of the title (because who would go to see a movie called "Amblyopia"?) and is struggling with progressive lenses. He gets an email from the great love of his life, Alex (Aaron Costa Ganis), who disappeared 15 years ago after a hot summer in New York (some of which is shown in flashbacks). He's seeking to reconnect.
So Dean invites him to his desert house, where they immediately jump into bed. Though there are questions, the men obviously still have feelings for each other. So they talk. One of the conversations is so long one of the men needs a bathroom break in the middle. But it's good talk which never reached even my low threshold of boredom.
For all we learn about the men, Alex retains some mystery. How did he get to be independently wealthy? Were there some shady dealings that cause him to maintain a "small footprint" on the Internet?
Around the midpoint of the film a twist is introduced which indicates that if things are headed the way they appear, they're going to have to take a more intricate route to get there.
After this description you're probably betting you won't like "Lazy Eye." It's my turn to win!
SOUTHWEST OF SALEM: THE STORY OF THE SAN ANTONIO FOUR (** 1/2) (Sept. 28, 7:15 p.m.)
Sometimes I wonder if there aren't more innocent people rotting away in prison than guilty people wandering the streets. This thinking is encouraged by documentaries like "Southwest of Salem," the story of the "San Antonio Four," four lesbians who were wrongfully convicted of gang-raping two girls, 7 and 9, in 1994.
The film is presented as another victory for the Innocence Project, which has achieved many a legal miracle, often by presenting new DNA evidence. In this case three of the four women served most of their 15-year sentences before being released (the fourth served about 15 of 37 years), and at last report had been awarded new trials in hopes of being fully exonerated. It's progress but not yet victory.
The theory the film puts forth is that the supposed victims, one of whom finally recanted, were put up to inventing the story of being raped by their aunt, Elizabeth Ramirez, and her friends, Cassandra Rivera, Kristie Mayhugh and Anna Vasquez, by their father, Javier Limon, because Ramirez had resisted his advances when he was her brother-in-law and his proposal after he had divorced her sister.
Homophobia played a big part in the convictions. It was hard to find jurors in San Antonio who didn't believe all gay men and women were predisposed to molest children. There were also stories circulating at the time — and here's where the reference to Salem in the title comes in — of a cult engaging in Satanic ritual abuse of children.
The women were tried in 1997 and 1998 and imprisoned after losing appeals in 2000. A decade or so passed before people started reexamining their case, partly because many areas of forensic science had been debunked. One of the "victims," now grown, told the truth in 2012, despite pressure from her family. Vasquez was paroled shortly afterward and the other women released a year later, to be registered as sex offenders for life unless they're exonerated on appeal.
It's quite a tale — a real-life "Children's Hour" - and it's hard not to be sickened by the thought of the women collectively losing over 50 years of their lives. Director Deborah S. Esquenazi combines home video footage from shortly before the 2000 appeals with prison interviews and interviews with family members, lawyers and various experts. It's not the smoothest, most coherent assemblage of the available elements; but it gets the story told and it's a story that needs to be told.
Great (and very true) quote from an attorney in the film: "If people knew how little truth and justice have to do with how the legal system works, they'd storm our courthouses with torches."
TAEKWONDO (**) (Sept. 28, 9:15 p.m.)
Do Spanish-speakers have an expression like "huevos azules"? "Taekwondo" is the teasingest movie I've ever seen, gay or straight.
Fer (Lucas Papa) invites his dreamy-eyed taekwondo training partner German (Gabriel Epstein) to vacation at his father's spa, where seven of Fer's buddies are already in residence. Talk about a chorizo party!
It's eventually established that at least six of the guys are straight. One, despite talk of a girlfriend, is questionable, as is Fer, whom German is lusting after.
We're in Argentina. I know straight men in other cultures are less uptight about physical intimacy than Americans, but this is ridiculous! There's a scene where all nine guys crowd into a tiny sauna, and I've been to orgies where there was more space between naked male bodies.
Fer and German are together most of the time, usually with one staring at the other, but nothing happens. Writer and co-director Marco Berger keeps raising the stakes. There's a montage to romantic guitar music that finds them alone together in several places, including a small hot tub. Nada. They share a bedroom, where their pillow talk consists of discussing the works of Hermann Hesse; and then they share a single bed for a night.
Meanwhile the camera, which is definitely gay, gives us one close-up after another of men's crotches, clothed or naked. For variety there's a frequently used angle shooting up toward the face from the feet, so guess what's in the foreground?
A spoiler wouldn't matter, because after an hour and a half of this torture, the only acceptable payoff would be for the cast to come out in person and do everyone in the audience; and that doesn't happen.
I'd tell you more about "Taekwondo" but there's something I have to take care of first...
AWOL (***) (Sept. 29, 7:15 p.m.)
"AWOL" is the kind of romantic lesbian melodrama where you stay two steps ahead of the plot, but one of them is wrong.
The question is, Why would a recent high school graduate with skills as a mechanic and a musician want to go into the Army when she could stay home and scoop ice cream at a carnival instead? The answer is as obvious to Joey (Lola Kirke) as it is to you, until she meets Rayna (Breeda Wool, a younger Uma Thurman), a hot, older blonde with two daughters, whose redneck, truck-drivin' husband is on the road a lot.
The idea of running away with Rayna replaces military service to help pay for college as Joey's Plan A, but when Rayna doesn't have the guts to follow her heart, Joey signs up for a three-year commitment. She comes home on Christmas leave before shipping out to Afghanistan, and—
Well, when the title is "AWOL" it can't be a spoiler that the women become fugitives; but it's not that easy to ride off into the sunset together, and more surprises await.
I've got to say "AWOL" effectively manipulates the viewer because I always felt something for the lovers, even when I didn't like what I was feeling. I was happy for the love they shared but sometimes wanted to shake some sense into one or both of them.
It's a film made by and about women, but that shouldn't exclude men from enjoying it. OK, maybe some straight men. Director Deb Shoval effectively captures the atmosphere of a big small Pennsylvania town, and her screenplay, written with Karolina Waclawiak, suggests that sometimes the people who warn you about women like Rayna know what they're talking about.
ESTEROS (***) (Sept. 29, 9:15 p.m.)
I don't mind being manipulated when it's done well, and "Esteros" is a first-class cinematic handjob.
We meet Matias (Joaquin Parada) and Jeronimo (Blas Finardi Niz) on a farm in Argentina. They're young teenagers, close as brothers and always playfully fighting, even in the shower. We were young once. We know where that can lead.
Then we see Matias (Ignacio Rogers) about a decade later, returning on vacation from Brazil, where he's been working for his girlfriend's father. She comes with him, but he seems withdrawn around her.
Of course he runs into Jeronimo (Esteban Masturini), who is out and proud, and it's obvious they still have feelings for each other. In order for "Esteros" to be more than a 15-minute short (it actually began as a nine-minute short about the boys), they can't act on those feelings right away; so as scenes alternate between past and present, we breathe heavily, awaiting the inevitable. Hey, you gotta have a little foreplay.
There are no surprises. The dog doesn't even jump into the frame. The time passes pleasantly with the beauty of nature well photographed — and the guys aren't hard to look at either.
