MQFF Day One

After an excellent start on opening night, I kicked off the first day of the Melbourne Queer Film Festival with a bang: three sessions in a row.

First up was the Canadian feature Whole New Thing (dir. Amnon Buchbinder, 2005), an engaging drama about a homeschooled 13 year old, Emerson Thorsen (Aaron Webber, left) whose bickering parents send him off to secondary school for the first time in his life. Not surprisingly, he doesn't fit in, with his precocious intelligence ensuring he is bullied and beaten.
"Think of it as a right of passage", a teacher tells him helpfully, after he gets his first bloodied nose. After a second beating by the school bully, Emerson not surprisingly asks, "How much longer is this rite of passage going to take?"

More dramatically, the youth falls in love with his lonely gay English teacher, Don (Daniel McIvor), and is flumoxed when his initial overtures are not returned. At this point in the film, it very successfully unsettles, as I sat there wondering just how far the filmmaker would go with this story, and in what direction. Ed, meanwhile, who frequents beats in the hope that anonymous sex will fill the aching void in his heart, is pining over his last lover, with whom he parted on bad terms. Simultaneously, Emerson's hippy parents are having a crisis of their own...

While engaging and heartfelt, with strong performances all round, Whole New Thing is content to tell its story quietly, although there is much to like about its low-key dramatic approach. Neither flashy nor brilliant, it was a solid, engaging although subdued start to the festival proper.

Next up was one of the short film packages, Boob Tube, billed as the latest and greatest in award-winning short films from around the world. Got help lesbian film-makers if this poor showing is all they have to display. Among the weaker films in this package, Cosa Bella (dir. Fiona Mackenzie, USA, 2005) which suffered from a muddy narrative, established two of the major lesbian tropes of this year's MQFF: rule one, each film must ideally have a lesbian stalker character; and rule two, all female characters should be glamorous and poised, ideally looking like they just walked off the set of The L-Word.

The highlights of this mostly disappointing lot were the UK historical romantic comedy Private Life (dir. Abbe Robinson, 2006), about the cross-class relationship between a Manchester mill-owner's daughter and one of the staff; and the brief but vibrant Love Struck (dir. Susan Ali, USA, 2006), a comedy featuring a punk Cupid with a poor aim. Also of note was Disposable (dir. Robyn Patterson & Jo Gell, New Zealand, 2006), a film devised and shot in just 24 hours, using only disposable, single-use cameras. Great form, not so great content.

Last up for the night was another shorts package, Short & Burly, the contents of which, it won't surprise you to learn, were all about gay men. Highlights here included the imaginative French science fiction drama Oedipus N+1 (dir. Eric Rognard, 2004), which despite a low budget extrapolated marvellously from the contemporary ex-gay movement to tell a story about cloning and a mother's attempts to 'cure' her son's sexual orientation; a droll depiction of that person we all know, who delights in putting you down while professing to be your friend, in Underminer (Todd Downing, UK/USA, 2005); and the wonderfully camp yet poignant The Saddest Boy in the World (dir. Jamie Travis, Canada, 2006), in which poor Timothy Higgins (Benjamin B Smith, above) prepares to hang himself on his 9th birthday, in a film whose lurid design and bright soundtrack wickedly contrast with the the titular character's existential misery.

Coupled with a couple of after-work/between session drinks in the festival club, a very enjoyable evening overall.