O Ornitólogo (The Ornithologist)

seen at the London Flare Festival on 26 March 2017

Portuguese director João Pedro Rodrigues has created an intriguing variation of a medieval hagiography relating to St Anthony of Padua, in which Fernando, an ornithologist (Paul Hamy), gradually becomes an avatar of the saint in modern times after a boating accident on the Douro river.

The opening sequences of the film are beautifully shot as Fernando swims in the river then sits beside a small campfire on the river bank and takes out his binoculars to follow the bird life. However, the next morning when he is kayaking downstream, he is again completely distracted by his bird-watching and he is overturned in the rapids.

Quand on a 17 ans (Being Seventeen)

seen at the London Flare Festival on 24 March 2017

André Téchiné directs Kacey Mottet-Klein as Damien, Corentin Fila as Thomas, and Sandrine Kiberlain and Alexis Loret as Damien's parents, in a film covering nine months in the lives of the two seventeen-year-olds, coinciding with the difficult pregnancy of Thomas's adoptive mother.

Die Mitte der Welt

seen at the London Flare Festival on 21 March 2017

Louis Hofmann as Phil and Jannik Schümann as Nicholas star in Jakob M. Erwa's adaptation of the celebrated German coming of age novel by Andreas Steinhöfel, given Centre of My World as its English title.

Phil and his twin sister Dianne (Ada Philine Stappenbeck) live with their mother Glass (Sabine Timoteo) in a grand house called Visible, never having known their father. Phil returns from a summer camp to find the always volatile household even more tense than usual, though neither his sister or mother will explain why. In the meantime he falls head over heels in love with Nicholas, a new boy in his class at school, whom he thinks he may have met in the street once many years before. The two boys embark on a passionate physical relationship even though Phil is constantly aware that Nicholas may not reciprocate his own level of devotion.

There are several strands to the film; Phil's story is obviously the most important, but both Glass and Dianne have interesting stories as well, and the film has been criticised for failing to adapt successfully the multi-stranded narrative form of the novel. Without having read the book, it is not really possible for me to comment on this, except to say that there is quite a weight of narrative for the film to bear. (One critic suggested a mini-series would have been a more appropriate vehicle to develop all the narrative threads.)

Given the somewhat eccentric family situation - both in psychological terms, and in its physical setting in a very grand old-fashioned house - and the wealth of back story, and Phil's voiceover narrative and the occasional filmic tricks to register his heightened emotions using slow motion sequences and unexpected colour filters, the film succeeds an an interesting and at times very poignant coming of age story. Everyone is completely matter of fact about Phil's sexuality, so that on that front his only real problem, and the hard lesson he has to learn, is the nature of commitment and the often frustrating enigma of another person. However, the residual family problems also prove very demanding and contribute to the crisis in his young life

The two leads are very personable and very well able to carry the attention given to them (in particular Louis Hofmann whose viewpoint we almost always share), and Sabine Timoteo is excellent in the difficult role of Glass, a vexatious mother for teenagers who do not always relish her refusal to conform.

Hjartasteinn (Heartstone)

seen at the London Flare Festival on 20 March 2017

Gudmudur Arnar Gudmundsson directs Baldur Einarson as Þór (Thor), Blær Hinriksson as Kristján (Christian), Diljá Valsdóttir as Beta and Katla Njálsdóttir as Hanna in this Icelandic/Danish co-production set in rural Iceland during the long summer days.

Thor and Christian are close friends just emerging into adolescence in a small community which is at one level very safe, but at another very constricting and self-righteous. Thor's parents are separated (if not divorced) and we never see his father, who is Reykjavik; Thor lives with his mother and two older sisters, one of whom has artistic aspirations while the other is a spectacularly angry teenager. Christian is apparently an only child living with quarrelling parents - his father is obviously violent.

While Thor has a crush on Hanna and begins to negotiate the tricky business of engaging with the opposite sex, not particularly helped by the typically snide comments of his peer group and his sisters, Christian finds himself at complete odds with this suffocating milieu as he realsies he has ever stronger feelings for Thor, a situation which seriously imperils their friendship. Only a catastrophe helps to re-establish a fragile bond between them.

The sense of a small self-reliant community is very strong, set in the bare and austerely beautiful Icelandic countryside in summer. There's a strong contrast between the liberating possibilities of inhabiting the natural world - fishing, riding, camping, helping with farm work - and the impending pressures and compromises of adulthood. Thor's mother is criticised by her three very different children in staggeringly judgemental terms when she tries to build a relationship with an older farmer; it's all too easy to see that moral conservatism is bred very early in rural communities, leaving little room for any flexibility or the acceptance of any behaviour beyond the pale of strict norms. No wonder Christian becomes so desperate.

It's a beautifully shot film, with excellent performances from all the young actors, supported by the older generation whose characters are all too plausibly ground down by life's difficulties.

Taekwondo

seen at the London Flare Festival on 20 March 2017

Marco Berger and Martín Farina direct Gabriel Epstein as Germán and Lucas Papa as Fernando in this Argentinian about a group of male friends who spend a customary vacation together chewing the fat about their relationships with girlfriends and other women, and joshing with each other in the way of long established and mostly affectionate friendship.

The location for this holiday is an extensive villa owned by Fernando's family, endowed with pool, spa, tennis court and many bedrooms, so Fernando is nominally the host. Germán is the newcomer, a friend Fernando has made at his taekwondo class, and invited by him to join the crowd when his own vacation plans have fallen through. The complication is that Germán is gay and quite attracted to Fernando, but he is unsure of Fernando's attitude to him and very aware that the rest of the crowd is determinedly straight. The casual bragging, joking and occasional serious discussion of problems with women, and the unselfconscious ease with nudity both leave Germán non-plussed.

The film is an attractive study in homo-social camaraderie and its subtle difference from gay sensibilities. The blithe sexism, the long-standing joke that one of their number is probably gay, the extent to which the men feel sex-starved by the absence of women for even a few days, are all lightly drawn in the sunny atmosphere of hedonism, while Germán's confusion about Fernando and his natural reticence provide an amusing contrast. At least two of Fernando's friends guess Germán's interest, leading one to a quite poisonous attempt to destabilise things, and the other to ask Fernando a good-humoured but completely open-ended question about him. The resolution of his own uncertainties is left tantalisingly until the last moments of the film

It's a delightful and attractive piece, filmed often in extreme close-up and from unusual angles emphasising the sheer physicality of young men relaxing together (there is virtually no indication of how they usually spend their time or earn their living) - essentially an amusing and sunny social comedy.

After Louie

seen at the London Flare Festival on 17 March 2017

Vincent Gagliostro directs Alan Cumming and Zachary Booth in a film about an artist whose work has been blocked for some twenty years by his loss of many friends during the AIDS crisis in New York. He is preparing a video project about one lover in particular, the poet William Wilson, even though his agent and many friends feel that his time would be better spent on painting.

One night Sam (Cumming) takes up with the much younger Braeden (Booth), but creates a barrier between them by paying him for his 'services'. However, the two continue to meet, and the film broadens out in interesting ways to encompass Braeden's relations with his boyfriend, and also to examine Sam's interactions with some of his longstanding friends and his now very elderly arts teacher.

Moonlight

seen on 6 March 2017

This film won the Best Picture Academy Award over the favoured La La Land, which I (and many others) think is the correct choice. Directed by Barry Jenkins and co-written by him with Tarell Alvin McCraney based on the latter's play, it examines questions of identity, family, friendship and loyalty through three episodes in the life of Chiron, played by Alex Hibbert as a child, Ashton Sanders as a teenager and Trevante Rhodes as a young man. Naomi Harris plays his mother Paula, Mahershala Ali plays his mentor Juan, Janelle Monáe Juan's partner Teresa, and Chiron's friend Kevin is played by Jaden Piner, Jharrel Jerome and André Holland in the three respective ages.

It's an extraordinary film, both impressionistic and deeply engaging. At times the sound fades away, or is out of synch with the visuals, in moments of acute stress, as if the impact on Chiron is too overwhelming to take in. His predicament as a solitary child with his mother gradually succumbing to drug addiction and his awareness of being gay sapping his confidence even further is reflected in the excellent performances of the two younger players, the boy already uncommunicative and the teenager obviously deeply troubled. Juan, his accidental mentor in the first episode of the film, provides a source of strength and wisdom, but is also compromised in the child's eyes through selling drugs. However, as an adult Chiron is evidently emulating Juan not only as a dealer, but also in the accessories - flash car, metal tooth guards and tough exterior. 

The situation, though fraught with the pain of admitting to difficult emotional allegiances, especially perhaps for African-American men, does allow for the possibility of connection, acceptance and honesty in some moving scenes between the adult Chiron and his damaged mother, and between him and his closest friend Kevin. These interactions are the more believable for being understated and difficult, rather than melodramatically emotional, and provide a cautious but powerful note of optimism in a beautifully crafted film.