MQFF Day Two

Saturday 4th March

Starting a little later than planned, my first film of the day was Iki Genc Kiz (Two Girls) directed byKutlug Ataman (responsible for 1998's resonant Lola + Bilidikid). This Turkish production focused on the intense relationship between two teenage girls in contemporary Istanbul. Gritty cinematography (all close ups and hand held scenes) highly-strung characters and a clash between traditional and contemporary mores added up to a strong package that deserved a larger audience.

Next was the US drama Hate Crime, about the senseless murder of a gay man by a religious bigot. It started out well, with strong performances and a steady directorial hand that successfuly evoked the appropriate emotional responses for its various scenes, but about halfway through, the film took a sudden turn towards melodrama and by its conclusion, had thrown any sense of realism out the window in favour of an over-the-top revenge story that didn't so much strain credibility as completely break it. This film would have worked much better as a straight-forward murder/police procedural/courtroom drama.

I finished the day with the British Dogme film Gypo, an excellent film about the burgeoning relationship between the unhappyily married Helen, and the much younger Tasha, one of her daughter's friends, a Romany Czech refugee. The film tells its story from three overlapping perspectives, with scenes and characters shown in a different light appropriate to the various characters' points of view. Not the best Dogme film I've seen, but nonetheless a good example of this style of cinema's studied cinematic minimalism.

(After the session finished I DJ'd in the festival club for three hours, headed home for a shower, and then swung by The Barleycorn Hotel in Collingwood, to check out a monthly queer club called Dirty Minx and its resident band The Minority. My mate Sean, who I ran into on the way there (and also some of the Meredith posse) assures me that their first set was much better. It would want to be, because their second set was crap!)