WHILE NOT an LGBT event as such, the Provincetown International Film Festival always offers plenty of grist for this magazine’s mill. My annual dash about P’town in June turned up five films that I found worthy of consideration here.
STRANGE JOURNEY
The Story of Rocky Horror
Directed by Linus O’Brien
Margot Station
SAUNA
Directed by Mathias Broe
Nordisk Film Production
DREAMS (SEX LOVE)
Directed by Dag Johan Haugerud
Motlys AS / Novemberfilm
JIMPA
Directed by Sophie Hyde
Closer Productions, et al.
CACTUS PEARS
Directed by Rohan Kanawade
Lotus Visual Productions, et al.
“Rocky Horror” is a story that had three lives: first as the stage musical that opened in London in 1973; next as the film version in 1975, which came and went without much fanfare; and finally as the reinvention of that same film as a midnight sensation that would become a legend and remains a permanent fixture in theaters to this day (or night).
The director of Strange Journey, Linus O’Brien—son of Richard O’Brien, who wrote, directed, and acted in the original Rocky Horror Show—takes us from his father’s inspiration for the musical to its rousing reception on the London stage and in Los Angeles (but not so much in New York) through its adaptation as a movie. That’s when the decision was made, unusual for the time, to keep most of the stars from the stage production, notably Tim Curry in the role of Frank-N-Furter. That did not guarantee success, and the film remained a sleeper until college kids began to discover it and someone got the brilliant idea to play it in college towns at midnight. People came in droves, wearing costumes, re-enacting scenes, dancing in the aisles—weekend after weekend, until it became the longest continuous release of any film in history.
Fans came from all genders and sexual orientations, but the film had a special resonance for LGBT people who were coming out in various ways at the height of the Gay Liberation era. That the undisputed ringleader of Rocky’s motley crew was a self-described “sweet transvestite” challenged the whole hierarchy of straight male authority. Linus O’Brien makes the point that drag became a source of power and charisma when combined with Frank’s complete self-confidence—in contrast to Brad’s wimpy normality. More broadly, the whole production was a manifesto telling viewers to reject conventional roles and be weird in ways that even the waning Counterculture had never fully explored.
Strange Journey arrives in time for Rocky’s fiftieth anniversary, a cause for celebration coming at a time when the film’s exuberance seems a distant memory. Rocky’s durability, and that of its cult following, attests to its role as a refuge for people who like to dress up and stay out past midnight.
The title of Sauna refers to the workplace of Johan, whose job it is to wipe down the cots and clean the cum from glass partitions at a gay bathhouse in Copenhagen—a job that doesn’t seem to match his Adonis-level handsomeness. Despite the latter trait, Johan has no luck meeting men on Grindr—until he hooks up with a trans man, William, who’s in the early stages of transitioning. While the basis for the attraction is not entirely clear, Johan professes his undying love for William, who approaches things more cautiously and seems to realize early on that Johan is a little reckless and possibly not too bright.
Johan’s first mistake is taking William to the sauna where he works, which almost causes a riot. He’s soon fired for good when he gets caught stealing money from the till (to pay for William’s top surgery), which also costs him his apartment; so he moves into William’s dorm room, though it’s against the rules. Johan does some more stupid stuff, alienates William’s friends, and spirals downward from there.
But if Johan comes off as a doomed soul, William is a savvy twenty-something who does his best to make Johan happy (e.g., buying an impressive strap-on), but seems as perplexed by Johan’s infatuation as we are. The focus shifts to William’s transition and its challenges. Even in liberal Denmark, which has a Gender Identity Center (GIC) to facilitate, it’s a fraught process that involves long wait times and bureaucratic restrictions. For example, William is denied testosterone because the GIC stipulates that one cannot be both trans and gay.
Not to diminish their relationship—there are tender moments as they stroll together in the park or take a dip in the Baltic—but the lack of chemistry between the two main characters is reinforced by a fundamental silence about their feelings for each other or about their lives. It’s a tale of two people who fall into each other’s orbit almost by accident and never quite figure out what they’re doing there.
We’re back in Scandinavia—Norway this time—for Dreams (Sex Love), a contemporary drama centering on a female high school student that becomes an exploration of three generations of women and a sublimated lesbian love affair. The story is told through the eyes of fifteen-year-old Johanne, who records her intense thoughts and feelings about her French teacher Johanna (almost the same name) in a diary, mixing dreams and real events in a way that will later cast a shadow on their relationship.
What’s certain is that Johanne has a massive crush on her teacher and longs to have an intimate connection. But longing is not the same as doing, and while Johanne spends many hours in Johanna’s flat—mostly learning how to knit—the extent of their physical interaction is unclear. This ambiguity comes to the fore after Johanne shares the memoir with her grandmother, who shows it to Johanne’s mother. The older woman sees it as a harmless crush, while the mother raises questions of propriety and even criminality on the teacher’s part. Both women are writers, and both are impressed by the memoir’s literary merit. Gram shows the manuscript to her publisher, who loves it, but she suddenly turns against the project (professional jealousy?) and withholds this information from her granddaughter, even as the mother is beginning to see it as the opening salvo in her daughter’s literary career.
The film’s technique, which is brilliantly executed, is to intersperse narrative passages from the memoir with actual dialog or other interaction between the characters. The latter serves as a reality check on the intense feelings and vulnerabilities of a fifteen-year-old girl in love and helps to separate her fantasies from the tamer reality. And yet, as the film’s title, Dreams, suggests, the truth is never as cut-and-dried as it appears.
John Lithgow stars in the title role of Jimpa—a portmanteau of “Jim” and “grandpa”—as a brilliant and flamboyant professor living in Amsterdam. He’s the grandfather of a nonbinary “grandthing,” as he calls the fifteen-year-old Frances, who has arrived in Amsterdam with their mother and father from their home in Adelaide, Australia.
We learn that Jim left Australia many years ago, having sired two daughters—one of whom is Frances’ mother Hannah (Olivia Colman)—in pursuit of a more tolerant environment after coming out as gay. Everyone is super-tolerant of both Jimpa and Frances, including the latter’s parents and Jimpa’s live-in personal assistant Richard. Hannah, a filmmaker who’s making a movie about her father’s colorful life, argues with her producers, insisting that it’s possible to make a film without a conflict of any kind.
A plot begins to emerge in Jimpa when Frances reveals that they have been secretly plotting to remain behind and live with Jimpa for a year—partly to escape their unsupportive school in Adelaide. Hannah responds with a mother’s concern and tries to get Frances to reconsider. Jimpa shows his age by expressing decidedly politically incorrect opinions on bisexuality and the word “queer,” causing Frances to have second thoughts.
What makes this film interesting is not so much the characters’ interactions in the present as the disclosure of their back stories through intermittent flashbacks in both Australia and Amsterdam. We learn how Jim came to live in Europe in the 1970s, becoming a gay activist and later turning HIV-positive; and how Frances came out as nonbinary and, in parallel fashion, resolved to leave Australia fifty years later. Whether that plan will be realized has yet to be determined.
We leave Northern Europe behind at last for a passage to India, its climatic opposite, where manicured interiors give way to the crowded indoor-outdoor spaces of a hotter clime. Most of Cactus Pears takes place in a farming village a day’s train-ride from Mumbai, which is where the main character, Anand, resides. We meet Anand as he’s leaving home and traveling to the village of his father, who has just died and needs to be given a proper sendoff. According to Hindu custom, this is a ten-day affair that requires strict adherence to ritual practice, much of it involving Anand as the last unmarried son.
Indeed Anand’s marital status will be a major topic of discussion when he reunites with his extended family and in-laws. Among them is Balya, a handsome man about his age (pushing thirty) whom Anand hasn’t seen since they were teenagers. In many ways they’re a study in contrasts: Anand has a white-collar job in Mumbai, while Balya is a farmer who herds goats and does odd jobs. But they share one thing in common: both are having to cope with mounting family pressure to get married and make a family. And since they’re both resisting this pressure for the same reason, the possibility of a hookup hangs in the sultry air. It’s hinted that they may have fooled around as teenagers, but it still takes them a while to break the silence and make a first move.
Released in India this year, Cactus Pears may be seen as a plea for understanding and a challenge to the marriage imperative for men. To a Western audience, it’s a reminder that marriage has traditionally been an economic relationship and an arranged affair—both men’s relatives are actively looking for potential wives—a social expectation that we’ve largely left behind. Indeed the gradual shift to “marriage for love” in the West is probably what made same-sex marriage possible, and “love” is the argument that ultimately won people over. Whether this argument is strong enough to overcome tradition and keep Anand and Balya together becomes the question that propels this film to its conclusion.
