Returning to its traditional 11-day run after last year’s unsuccessful weekend marathon, the 68th San Francisco International Film Festival screens April 17-27, based mostly in the Marina, Presidio, and Mission neighborhoods, as well as in Berkeley. The lineup encompasses more than 150 films from more than 50 countries.
Anne Lai, Executive Director of SFFILM, observes, “With San Francisco’s revitalization in full swing, this year is a true celebration of the Bay, with so much homegrown talent and collaborations with fellow arts and culture organizations (i.e. SF Conservatory of Music, Pacific Film Archive, Disney Family Museum). Seeing films together is one of the most vibrant human experiences, which is what our Festival is all about.”
SFFilm always has a healthy lineup of LGBTQ-related films. This year’s six queer narrative films include the closing night feature, “Outerlands,” shot in the non-touristy Outer Richmond area.
Nonbinary Cass (Asia Kate Dillon) is barely surviving paycheck by paycheck in SF’s increasing gentrification environment, as a waiter at a high-end restaurant, a nanny, and part-time party drug dealer. Cass drinks themself to sleep, and has a one-night hookup with Kalli (Louisa Krauss), a new waitress at the restaurant. She has a potential job in Reno and asks Cass if they will watch her 12-year-old daughter Ari (Ridley Asha Batemen).
But after a few days, there’s no contact with Kalli, so Cass must take care of Ari. They are both lonely, hurt people, but they bond over a video game, Outerlands. Ari’s abandonment by her mother provokes anger but also sparks memories of Cass’s mother’s abuse of them. It’s a compelling character study, though the screenplay could’ve been improved with more background material on Cass, who’s hard to connect with in the film’s first half. This empathetic tale on the healing power of kindness, belonging, loss, and chosen family includes outstanding performances from Dillon and Batemen.
The National Geographic documentary “Sally” is one of the festival’s winners, detailing the life of an American hero, Sally Ride, the first woman astronaut in space, who flew in the Challenger space shuttle in 1983.
The core of the film is an interview with her life partner of 27 years, Tam O’Shaughnessy. Ride wasn’t out publicly in her lifetime. She met Tam as an adolescent at a tennis camp run by Billie Jean King. After King was outed and sued by a female ex-lover, consequently losing endorsements, the negative publicity scared Ride from emerging from the closet (much to Tam’s consternation), despite her sister Bear being a lesbian.
Incredibly ambitious and competitive, she could be prickly, all business, and hard to read, attributed to her emotionally closed-off mother. Ride even married a fellow astronaut Steven Hawley, unaware she was lesbian until she asked for a divorce.
NASA was sexist, with other astronauts decrying she hadn’t paid her dues. The press was awful to her, asking prying questions about her private life, family, and makeup. After the 1986 Challenger explosion, she served on the commission investigating the disaster, but distraught over NASA’s lies about safety concerns, she resigned.
The film adroitly shows how Ride’s personal and professional lives were intertwined, though cheesy, non-dialogue reenactments are unnecessary and distracting. Still Ride was a trailblazer for women and finally is getting her due, 13 years after dying of pancreatic cancer at age 61.
From Mexico, writer/director Rafael Ruiz Espejo chronicles a teen’s initial exploration of his sexuality in “The Last First Time.” Arriving from a small rural town, shy Eduardo heads into Guadalajara to take his college entrance exam. While there, he meets charismatic city urchin Mario. They spend time together, attending a surprise birthday party.
They pursue an evening of wild partying with drugs followed by sex. Eduardo’s conservative family wanted him home right after his exam, but he keeps offering excuses why he needs to stay. It’s too bad we hear none of those conversations, as it might give us some clues as to why the traditional Eduardo is willing to risk everything in a night of total abandonment. It’s a coming-of-age theme we’ve seen many times, but there’s a potent chemistry between the two actors that keeps us engaged. We are drawn into their revelry even as we suspect a potential train wreck might ensue.
Korean writer/director Joonho Park scores a home run with his debut feature “3670,” which concerns Cheol-jun, a North Korean defector living in Seoul. He’s made some close friends with other exiles, but hides from them that he’s gay. He connects with the LGBTQ community by joining a meet up group who plays games, goes to bars and parties.
He feels more comfortable with his sexuality, yet becomes stressed from trying to keep these two worlds separate. Park brilliantly explores these two marginalized groups, revealing they’re both outsiders. He shows great compassion for Cheol-jun trying to maintain integrity and form his unique identity. Park is a compelling voice we look forward to hearing in future films.
The hypnotic Vietnamese film “Viet and Nam” both entices and frustrates. It’s two interweaving stories in 2001. The first half opens in a coal mine with Viet and Nam, two miners, passing themselves as brothers, who are secret lovers only able to have sex in the dark at the beginning and end of shifts. Nam recognizes it’s a dangerous dead end and wants to leave the country with the help of an agent who smuggles people in shipping containers. Viet accuses him of just wanting to have sex with white people.
The second half is the search for the remains of Nam’s father, who died a few months before he was born, fighting for the Viet Cong in a jungle near the border. Nam’s mother has dreams about seeing him. They all travel south with veteran Ba, who served along Nam’s father and might know where the bones are buried.
They employ a psychic who specializes in finding soldiers’ remains. An abstract study on trauma and grief, this is a movie that is more ambiance than plot. One of the most potent scenes is the two men making love surrounded by glints of light that are coal crystals, making it seem as if they were above ground with the stars twinkling above them.
Banned in Vietnam, not for its queer protagonists, but because of its gloomy image of the country, “Viet and Nam” is deliberately paced, quite slow at the beginning. Two hours is too long and its esoteric murky moments might make it inaccessible for some, but other viewers will be entranced by the luminous, beautiful images and Nam’s dreamlike journey towards the past so he can move onto his own future.
“Cactus Pears” from India relates how Anand returns from Mumbai to a western Indian village to mourn the death of his father and reconnects romantically with his childhood friend Bayla. Unfortunately, there were no previews for the press, despite excellent reviews from previous festivals where it screened.
https://sffilm.org/
(All photos: courtesy SFFilm)
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