MQFF Day Five

Tues March 7

Tonight was headfuck night at the film festival. I was a bit tired after a day spent at RRR working on grant applications and ideas for new applications, so I chilled at home for a bit before heading in to catch the 8pm screening of the Spanish film Inconscientes ('Unconcious'), directed by Joaquín Oristrell. I'm so glad I did! Although not a gay film, it's very, very queer - it has a deliciously deranged sensibility, and a plot that runs cheerfully amok through the early years of the modernism and the 20th Century.

Set in Barcelona in 1913, it concerns the efforts of the headstrong and pregnant Alma Pardo to discover the whereabouts of her missing husband Dr Leon Pardo, a student of Freud. She is aided in her quest by her brother-in law, the stolid and unadventurous Salvador (the most exciting thing about him are his muttonchop whiskers, or so it seems at first), who is married to her neurotic sister. As the story unfolds, we encounter whore-loving kings, underground porn movies, a flourishing cross-dressing queer subculture, incestuous affairs and other taboos, melodrama, and much, much more.

The set design beautifully evokes the world of art nouveau and the period in which the film is set; the cinematography and lighting are sharp and assured; and the script and acting superb. This clever, witty and stylish film could only come from Spain, and is highly recommended.

Thereafter, despite being extremely tired, I stayed to watch the surreal gay samurai road movie Mayonaka no Yaji-san Kita-san (‘Yaji And Kita: The Midnight Pilgrims’) from Japan. Talk about insane! This feature from first-time director Kudo Kankuro is an absurd, anachronistic, dizzying, if overlong fever dream that takes the plot of the classic Japanese road novel of 1802, Tokkaidochu Hizakurige and gives it a radical queer twist.

In the novel, the womanising Yaji and Kita flee their debts in Edo and travel to the Ise Shrine via the famed Tokkaido road. In the film, they become gay lovers, and Kita is a junkie whose hallucinatory withdrawals are beautifully incorporated into the movie. We also meet singing school girls in love with a Mafia boss, a magic-yam-juice dispensing King Arthur, demons and ghosts, drag queens, and much, much more.

Despite the film’s hilarity and moments of sublime beauty, its final act – partially set in the afterlife – manages to be surprisingly poignant and touching. While half the references in the film went over my head, and despite the fact that I could have cheerfully edited its running time back by at least 20 minutes, I definitely enjoyed it. The extract from a review I previously ran on this blog was highly apt: two hours of jaw-dropping fun indeed!