All lesbian love entanglements start to resemble each other, as do the films that attempt to capture the falling-in and falling-out of states of mutual attraction and repulsion, loneliness and sex, orgasm and threesomes. That's okay, since behavior that repeats across cultures stands the best chance of crossing borders, opening minds, and reaching hearts. Frameline, an international festival of LGBTQ films, proudly represents the multinational movement to project images of queer experience, locally hosted by neighborhood cinemas Castro, Roxie, and Victoria in San Francisco; Oakland's Piedmont, and Berkeley's Elmwood, starting tonight, June 18.
Liz in September (Castro, 6/19; Piedmont, 6/22), directed by Fina Torres, is a sultry, somewhat sluggish melodrama adapted from Jane Chambers' milestone play Last Summer at Bluefish Cove (1981) and moved to Venezuela. Chambers got lesbian lives onto the New York stage by sticking to conventional dramatic structure, so even when new they were already creaking. In this ensemble piece centered on a cancer diagnosis, three lesbian couples hang out at singleton Margot's beachside B&B, eating, drinking, winking, and nudging. Intense, raven-haired, sinewy, plaid-shirted, motorcycle-riding, scuba-diving, competitive-jogging, fish-catching Liz goes after Eva, a pretty young wife who's lost her young son. There's lots of champagne-fueled camaraderie amidst tropical greenery near open water and a coral reef, piano and strings, SUVs, hand-painted walls, black-and-white flashbacks, and a glimpse of a full moon amidst the clouds.
The Russian and Austrian co-production Olya's Love (Roxie, 6/20) only plays once, at 11 a.m. on Saturday, and the Roxie's not that big. This documentary has all the oomph one hopes for in a queer romantic narrative and none of the filler that so often causes dyke films to implode in puddles of self-and-other-absorption. Olya Kuracheva is a tall, willowy femme, urban queer activist with chocolate brown dreds, wolf-blue eyes, and an infectious je ne sais quoi masking an aching need to lead an expansive life of integrity. The love of her life is short, muscular, butch handyman Galya Galeeva, who makes small repairs to Olya's small Moscow apartment, crisscrossed with their undies and T-shirts drying on clotheslines. They're adorable, they're in love, and they're fighting for their rights. Producing-directing combine Kirill and Ksenia Sakharnov move easily from Olya and Galya's intimate private lives to the pushback on the streets after passage of Russia's 2014 anti-gay-propaganda bill, aka the "On Protecting Children from Information Harmful to Their Health and Development" law. Olya is a sympathetic, charismatic, passionate young woman whose heart is destined to break both for herself and for her country.
S&M Sally (Roxie, 6/21; Victoria, 6/26) stars writer-director Michelle Ehlen of Butch Jamie fame, known for her urbane spin on the comedy of subtle self-humiliation, L.A. style. This naughty rom-com tracks Jamie's bumbling descent into bondage and fire play with her subletting girlfriend Jill, who's been around the BDSM scene and finds Jamie's attempts to wriggle in and out of escapades mildly amusing. Ehlen has a lock on communicating butch existential angst, the fear of non-self in the presence of a dom, with a slight lift of the eyebrows and a freezing of the eyes, hysterical. The highlight might be Jill in white corset leading Jamie in tuxedo T-shirt on a leash around a club. It takes a particular comic chutzpah to pull off such slender material.
All About E (Castro, 6/22; Piedmont, 6/24), directed by Louise Wadley, could be considered a multiculti lesbian spin on The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994), updated and grafted onto the perennially crowd-pleasing chased-by-gangsters genre. When people get in trouble in Australia, they head for the Outback, and so it is with E, a daughter of homophobic Lebanese immigrants and wife to her gay best buddy. When the couple find a bag full of money in a taxi and discover their flat's been trashed, they get the hell out of Sydney. The road trip coincidentally leads E back to the levelheaded, self-accepting, blonde ex-girlfriend she ditched to stay in the closet.
Sworn Virgin (Roxie, 6/22; Elmwood, 6/24), co-produced by Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Albania, and Kosovo, offers a fictional glimpse of an ancient tradition of women allowed to live openly as men within a strictly patriarchal culture. Laura Bispuri's film starts with Mark's boat trip and bus ride to Milan, to the apartment of childhood friend Lila, now married with a teenage daughter intrigued by the weird newcomer. Flashbacks to his remote Albanian village document Mark's incremental transition from tomboy to patriarch. The scrawny, withdrawn, slouching, squinting Mark finds work in a parking garage, gets his own apartment, tries on bras, and has furtive sex in a men's room.
The Summer of Sangaile (Castro, 6/23) is stunning on so many levels it'd be a shame to tear the thing apart just to be able to name its constituent wonders. Sangaile is another in a series of troubled butches, who cuts her inner arms with the sharp point of a metal compass in the privacy of her parents' designer chalet. Director Alante Kavaite isn't in it for the gore, don't worry. Fortunately, the poor little rich girl meets a populist femme at an airshow who sweeps her off her feet. Auste's bohemian universe is the perfect cure for Sangaile's social alienation. The camera, the costumes, the sensitivity of this co-production from Lithuania, France, and the Netherlands evokes the healing dream world of true love.