Tuesday's lineup finds still more ersatz heterosexuals being jolted to their senses in 2:37 (Tampa Theatre, 9 p.m.), a murky slice of high-school life set in the wilds of Australia. Even if the movie didn't open with an apparent suicide, we'd be sure to realize that doom and gloom are in the air from the characters' perennially pensive glances, not to mention a heavily reverbed soundtrack that includes funereal bells portentously tolling for just about everyone here.
All the requisite teen-types are on display — stoners, jocks, geeks, bulimic pretty-girls, picked-upon gays (both open and closeted) and, just in case we might not fully realize just how much pain everybody here is in, a talking head pops up every few minutes or so to remind us. Some of the performances are OK, but we've seen this vision of high-school hell a few too many times before, and we know it's all going to end badly. Not exactly subtle stuff.
If you're looking for something that yanks your emotions around with a little more finesse, Muvico Baywalk's Tuesday schedule includes two more promising possibilities: Four Minutes (7:30 p.m.) and Another Woman (9:30). A tougher, mutated Mr. Holland's Opus filtering Madchen in Uniform through the women's prison genre, Four Minutes eschews sentimental bonding clichés in its beautifully acted story of an elderly lesbian music teacher mentoring an angry young female con.
Then there's Another Woman, the emotional but somewhat tepidly directed tale of a transgender woman who returns to the family she left behind before her operation. While not a bad film by any stretch, Another Woman seems more like a made-for-TV production than something suited for the big screen, prompting us to wonder why TIGLFF doesn't simply go to the source and book some genuine transgender masterpieces like Almodovar's All About My Mother or Fassbinder's In a Year of 13 Moons.
Another excellent documentary shows up back in Tampa on Wednesday: For the Bible Tells Me So (7 p.m.), a compassionate, concise and insightful examination of the frictions and possibilities of reconciliation between organized religion, personal faith and homosexuality. At 6, a panel discussion featuring local educators, religious leaders and other members of the community will precede the screening.
Following For the Bible Tells Me So is another film about clashing cultures — The Bubble, Israeli director Eytan Fox's same-sex Romeo-and-Juliet romance between a gay Palestinian and an Israeli Jew. The film is frequently engaging and beautifully captures the essence of the parallel worlds it portrays — particularly the diversity and energy of Tel Aviv's tragically hip youth culture — but the political messages become a little much. Some of the movie's characters eventually begin to seem like mouthpieces for The Bubble's well-meaning demands for coexistence. And for that matter, do we really need yet another movie using suicide bombing as an artistic metaphor for what ails ya?
There's another interesting double feature this evening over at Muvico Baywalk as well, beginning with Spider Lilies at 7:30 p.m. This Taiwanese import fuses a sophisticated pop-art sensibility with a dreamy, nonlinear structure, telling the story of a young tattoo artist reunited with her first love, now a green-wigged "Web girl" specializing in online sex shows. Spider Lilies flits through time so casually that it's sometimes difficult to tell exactly what's going on (the grammatically-challenged English subtitles don't help either), but the film's romantic essence reads loud and clear, and some of its lovely imagery transcends words.
It's too bad about the forced and clunky voice-over that begins, ends and periodically rears its head during Holding Trevor (9:30) — because almost every other scrap of dialogue here is so natural, so witty and winning, that it more than makes up for any shortcomings of plot. The core characters — two gay pals and their straight female roommate (a configuration that seems to figure in more than a few of TIGLFF's films this year) — share a wonderfully bitchy chemistry that makes the movie a delight, even when it indulges in some atypically serious plot machinations or periodically wallows in a romantic cliché or two. This is a first feature for Rosser Goodman, and I can't wait to see what this director does next.
The festival continues through Sun., Oct. 14, past the period we're covering in this issue, but we'd be remiss if we didn't at least mention a few of the highlights from TIGLFF's final days. On Thurs., Oct. 11, there's Finn's Girl (7 p.m.), a taut thriller notable for its political scope, and for one lesbian telling another, "This whole butch-femme thing, it's a bit passé." Then there's Nina's Heavenly Delights (Oct. 12, 7 p.m.), a food and love fusion set in Scotland's Indian community (home to some of the weirdest accents on the planet). This one's so seductive that we can almost forgive the scene where everyone leaps up from the table and starts singing along to "Daydream Believer."
