The 15th-annual Tampa International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival continues to serve up assorted prime cuts of same-sex this week, but the gayest movie in town isn’t even on the menu. Shall We Dance? is a very queer bird indeed, but it doesn’t even know it. This is the one with manly man’s man Richard Gere making goo-goo eyes at sultry Jennifer Lopez, although there’s little indication that anyone’s heart is remotely in what they’re supposed to be doing. One of the more unconvincing slabs of heterosexuality to insinuate itself upon a movie screen in ages, Shall We Dance? is a pre-measured serving of Hollywood fluff riddled with nagging sexual anxieties.
Gere plays a successful, middle-aged lawyer, seeking refuge from the drudgery of wife and kids by escaping into the arms of the black-eyed beauty (Lopez) who works at the local dance studio. Since Gere’s character ultimately can’t bring himself to even make a decent pass at JLo (Shall We Dance? might just be the most bloodless movie about infidelity ever), he settles for taking dance lessons from her, turning all that fancy dancing into some sort of symbol for personal freedom, self-expression or whatever (insert your own uplifting concept here).
Lest you start wondering if the self that Gere’s expressing is a little light in the loafers, as they say — he does really like to dance, after all, and the movie is too quaint and gutless to allow him even a smidgeon of anguish over the female who’s ostensibly his object of desire — Shall We Dance? heads us off at the pass with some gags so desperate that they seem rooted in sexual panic. The movie invites us to laugh on more than one occasion at the spectacle of two men dancing together, putting lines into one dancer’s mouth like, “Slide that hand one more inch below the equator and I’ll bust you, twinkle toes.” It thrives on lame innuendo, places Gere in compromising positions with other males in public bathrooms, dresses guys up in tight pants and funny wigs and then loudly declares their strapping heterosexuality. Methinks the movie doth protest too much.
Shall We Dance?, which tries way too hard to recreate the effortless charm of the 1996 Japanese film of the same name, seems to reside deep within a stuffy closet of its own making; its characters’ genders are projected in such ridiculously broad strokes that it often feels as if the entire cast were performing in drag. Gere does a lot of dancing but he’s basically a non-entity, with two basic, character-defining expressions: a shy, briefly flashed, nice-guy smile and (less frequently employed but still annoying) the ever-popular lost-puppy-dog look. Lopez is charismatic, at least, but she doesn’t have much to do other than stand around silently sulking or smoldering (she’s got issues, as it happens, although they’re pretty predictable ones and we have to wait until the last few scenes to actually hear about them). There is one self-consciously steamy rumba performed by Gere and Lopez but, outside of that, there’s virtually no interaction, much less heat, between the pair.
Shall We Dance? is a movie about passion that feels like it’s been systematically drained of passion, typical Hollywood twaddle defanged and de-sexed to the point of self-obliteration. In the end, all of the characters have either bonded or found fulfillment: the hootch-swilling dance instructress has stopped drinking, the brassy bleached blonde has revealed her true hair color, the bald guy masquerading as a Latin love god sheds his wig, Gere goes back to his wife, and everybody becomes what passes in Hollywood for real. Except for the movie, that is, which probably would have been better all around had the producers simply gone for it and really given us an all-out drag show. Maybe next time.
Meanwhile, back in the real real world — the one where real live gay people exist, go to movies and sometimes appear in them — the 15th-annual Tampa International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival cruises into its second week, running through Sun., Oct. 17 at Tampa Theatre and at Sunrise Cinemas in Old Hyde Park.
Moviegoers wandering into the festival mid week are likely to be more than pleasantly surprised with the line-up for Wed., Oct. 13. The evening begins at Sunrise Cinemas with the upbeat, exotic Arisan! (7 p.m.), a rainbow-hued romantic comedy that broke box-office records in its native Indonesia. Meanwhile, over at Tampa Theatre, there’s a 7 p.m. screening of the well-made but somewhat formulaic Spanish thriller False Offender, about a lesbian wrongly accused of murder. The evening ends with a real treat — Brother to Brother (9 p.m.), a smart and extremely engaging film about a conflicted African-American student’s poignant encounter with a forgotten figure from the Harlem Renaissance.
There’s another strong slate of films scheduled for Thurs., Oct. 14, highlighted by a 7 p.m. screening of Proteus at Sunrise Cinemas. Directed by the always-intriguing John Greyson (Lilies, Zero Patience), this complex and visually elegant work blends powerful realism, blatant artifice and historical anachronisms a la Derek Jarman to tell the politically charged love story of a Dutch sailor and an African herdsman imprisoned in South Africa in the 1730s. It’s a strange, challenging film, but one of the very best of the festival, recalling the glory days of queer cinema when the artsy, anything-goes spirit of early Todd Haynes, Gregg Araki and Christopher Munch ruled the roost. The other recommended Thursday offering is Nine Lives (9 p.m.), an elaborate if slightly melodramatic mosaic in which nine very different characters find their personal journeys intersecting in ways both subtle and devastating. Director Dean Howell, a Florida native, will be on hand for the screening.
Diehard art film buffs will probably want to check out Wild Side (Fri., Oct. 15, 7:30 at Sunrise), but they may not like what they see. The new film from French auteur Sebastian Lifshitz contains little of the blazing originality of his acclaimed Come Undone, and, despite moments of genuine power, its depiction of the three-way relationship between a transgendered hooker, an Arab hustler and a Russian immigrant too often borders on the artistically pretentious and gratuitously shocking. A better bet might be the award-winning Girl Play, screening at 7:30 p.m. at Tampa Theatre, and adapted by director Lee Friedlander from a pair of popular one-woman shows. Friedlander will be among the attendees at the post-screening Women’s Party held at the Radisson Riverwalk (200 N. Ashley St.).
The festival’s final weekend is jam-packed with interesting films and events, beginning on Saturday with an 11:30 a.m. selection of “Girl’s Shorts.” At 1:45 there’s The Graffiti Artist, a low-budget blast of verité minimalism that breaks stereotypes with its depiction of a wandering skateboarder attracted to another like-minded kid. Then, at 8 p.m., the festival tackles one of the hottest topics of our time, gay marriage, with the passionate and exacting documentary Tying the Knot. The film focuses in part on Tampa resident Mickie Mashburn’s efforts to receive benefits related to the death of her partner, Tampa policewoman Lois Marrero, and you can expect that issue to be explored in depth when Mashburn and local attorney Karen Doering show up for a 7 p.m. workshop on gay marriage preceding the film.
The festival goes out with a bang on Sunday with a couple of welcome revivals — the moving ensemble drama Longtime Companion (1 p.m.) and the stylish camp classic The Hunger (4 p.m.). The former hails from 1990 and was one of the first films to address the AIDS pandemic even as it ushered in a quiet revolution of movies populated by strong, non-cartoonish gay characters. The latter is Tony Scott’s 1983 proto-Goth fever dream in which vampire lovers Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie get to slink around in some very cool clothes and seduce an unwitting Susan Sarandon. Scott’s film has been hailed for its almost intuitive linking of vampirism and the blood scourge of AIDS, but don’t let that morsel of hoity-toity analysis fool you into thinking you’re going to have anything but a grand old time howling at this baby up on the big screen.
There’s more, too, from a lavish closing reception outside the hallowed halls of Tampa Theatre to the much-anticipated closing night film, Dorian Blues, but enough already. You’re probably already overloaded from all this fine print, and anyway it’s time to get out there and go see some movies.
And if you do decide to indulge your inner masochist and go see the Richard Gere turkey, by the way, please at least have the good sense to bring along some high-heeled pumps to throw at the screen.
Film Festival tickets available online at www.tiglff.com/tickets.php, or at Tampa Theatre (711 N. Franklin St., Tampa), Tomes and Treasures (408 Howard Ave., Tampa), Urban Body (715 Howard, Tampa), MC Film Festival Video (1628 Central Ave., St. Petersburg) and What2Wear (SunCoast Resort, 3000 34th St., St. Petersburg). For more information or a complete listing of films and events, visit the festival’s website at www.pridefilmfest.com.
lance.goldenberg@weeklyplanet.com or letters@weeklyplanet.com
This article appears in Oct 13-19, 2004.
