On Day Three of the festival, Sunday March 18, I was lucky enough to catch what would turn out to be my standout film, the remarkable French documentary Au-delà de la haine, or Beyond Hatred. Shot with stunning simplicity by director Oliver Mayreu, the film focuses on the aftermath of a brutal murder, and the impact of the crime upon the victim's family. In 2002, a young gay man, Francois Chenu, was viciouslly murdered by neo-nazi Skinheads. He was so badly beaten that his sister could only identify her brother's body by his hair extentions: his killers had literally beaten his face to a pulp.
The film's focus is on the aftermath of the crime, and the attempts by the Chenu's family to understand both the act, and the deprivations which shaped his killers' lives. With austere restraint, we journey with this remarkably compassionate and understanding family, as they hold out an olive branch to their sons' murderers in the hope that they can be rehabilitated, and regain the humanity which they lost in taking Francois' life.
The most remarkable scene is shot at the park where the murder took place. Accompanied by a subdued score, Chenu's sister tells in voice-over how she went to identify her brother's body, often pausing to compose herself, and never once prompted by the film-maker. The camera, perfectly still, records daylight fading and the park slowly slipping into evening, as joggers pace utwittingly past the spot where Francois died. It's a heartbreaking scene, and a magnificent film which deservedly won Best Documentary at the 2005 Berlin Film Festival.
I've read at least one review of the film - by an American to whom both the French justice system and the family's reaction was incomprehensible - which called it detached. Hah. To quote last year's LOndon Film Festival: "Director Olivier Meyrou chooses to tell the story largely through the words of those closest to François, and this is a well judged, reasoned approach given that the subject has such powerful emotional force as to require no further dramatisation or sensationalising."
Next I took a break, and prepared for the panel I was facilitating after a German doco about the ongoing gay and lesbian rights struggle, Rainbow's End, presented by the Victorian Gay and Lesbian Rights' Lobby. Enjoyably, there was a large crowd present for the film, most of whom stayed for the panel discussion and Q + A afterwards.
Monday night saw me leave work and head straight in for the Melbourne premiere of the gay teen surfie feature, Tan Lines. A raw, uneven but nonetheless delightful film by English director Ed Aldridge shot on Sydney's northern beaches, it told the story of Midget Hollows (the debut performance by Jack Baxter, left), a 16 year old grommet, who slowly finds himself falling for his best friend Dan's older brother, Cass (Daniel O'Leary), who has just returned to their town after an absence of several years.Far from your standard coming-of-age and coming out story, the film's deadpan humour and innate grasp of the macho bravado of teenage boys, which typically hides their insecurities, was counterbalanced by a darker tone, what I've described elsewhere as an evocation of the Australian Gothic, something very rarely seen in our cinemas. Quite a few people I know who saw Tan Lines disliked it - often for the same elements that I loved, such as its anti-romantic ending, and timeless pace that reawoke old memories of long, lazy, empty holidays, when the weeks between school terms were long enough to be bored...
Mike, my flatmate, has described this as "an unpolished gem", a sentiment with which I completely agree, while AfterElton.com says its "see-what-sticks-to-the-wall approach needs to be replaced with a surer sense of vision. Lackluster performance does not equal teenage verisimilitude, nor does a shaky hand-held camera equal cinéma vérité..."
I wonder what extras are going to be on the DVD release...?
After Tan Lines I dropped in for the first film of the shorts collection Cocktails, which was yet another gay film about a groom and his best man from the USA, The Best Men, but was suprised to find myself in tears by the end of this concise, compassionate film about unrequited love and longing, directed by Tony Wei.
At its conclusion I nipped into the next cinema to catch British doco The Seven Secrets of Perfect Porn (dir. Max Barber, 2005), which felt more like a DVD extra than anything else, which was followed by Eye on the Guy: Alan B. Stone and the Age of Beefcake. Sadly, the late hour meant that I was unable to focus on this film as much as I would have liked, because it was a well-structed, compasionate and informative look at a past age, when public expressions of gay sexuality masqueraded as 'health and fitness' muscle mags for the discerning and nervous mail-order customer.
Thence home, to sleep, perchance to dream...
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