Chronicle PRIDE PRIDE GUIDE 2005

SECTION C

Our reflection on the big screen

Films with bisexuals are beginning to mature

by Kaizaad Kotwal

Cinema has not often been able to deal with bisexuality. Sometimes it is used as titillation like in the surprising hit of Basic Instinct or Threesome. Too often it is just treated as a variation of nymphomania or sex addiction like in the quaintly odd French film The Confusion of Genders.

In cinema, especially with the burgeoning of queer films in recent years, it becomes tricky to separate a gay film from a bisexual film. For instance, in Todd Haynes' amazing Far From Heaven, the male lead (Dennis Quaid) is married to a woman in 1950s America but has sex with men on the side. Is he truly bisexual, or is he simply living a life of convenience as he lives out his truer gay self in secrecy and adultery? The same could be asked about Hollywood's In and Out starring Kevin Kline.

Films about bisexuality are beginning to mature in recent years. Here then are some of the most worthwhile of the lot.

In Ang Lee's early film The Wedding Banquet, bisexuality is a cover for one of the characters. Is this then a bisexual film? The answers are tricky and will vary from critic to critic and from one audience member to another. There are a handful of great films that treat bisexuality with legitimacy and complexity.

In Julie Taymor's mostly great biopic of bisexual art icon Frida Kahlo, Salma Hayek portrays this angst-ridden and path-breaking woman with brilliance.

The film is worth watching for Hayek's work and for Taymor's intense visuals. One only wishes that Ashley Judd's character as one of Frida's lovers were more fully developed. The film also boasts a wonderful ensemble including Alfred Molina as the fiery lover and artist Deigo Rivera.

Laurel Canyon is a complex film, filled with drama and humor, focused on the life of a music producer played to the hilt by the amazing Frances McDormand. As always, McDormand creates a very complex woman and isn't afraid to embrace the head-on sexuality of her character. With the strong Christian Bale and Alessandro Nivola, this film is not to be missed.

Cinema lags behind in telling stories of transgendered people

Transgendered people face a number of problems of acceptance not simply from the straight community but also from within the larger gay and lesbian family.

Movies, which have in recent years started to more accurately reflect the lives of gays and lesbians, still lag behind in telling stories of transgendered people.

To search out the best of transgendered films, look at European cinema or the recently burgeoning Chinese film

industry.

There are, however, a group of transgendered films that are great by any standards and tell stories that are relevant and valuable to all.

Popular cinema was really well ahead of the curve when The Rocky Horror Picture Show emerged in 1975. Kitschy and quirky, it reveled in transvestitism and celebrated love in its many shapes and forms.

Besides boasting amazing songs, it features Tim Curry, who turns in one of the best performances of the last half of the last century as Dr. Frank N. Furter. The other great transgendered musical has got to be John Cameron Mitchell's Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Like its cult predecessor Rocky Horror, Hedwig too provides an amazing group of songs and

Lola and Billy the Kid

a central performance by Mitchell that was robbed of an Oscar nomination, if not the statuette itself.

Someone else robbed of an Oscar nod is Charles Busch for his brilliant turn as evil twin sisters in Die Mommie Die. Here Busch plays a woman, not a man playing a woman, and truly breaks ground in this hilarious sendup of 1950s melodramas. Busch's performance is a tour de force.

Kiss of the Spider Woman, based on the play by Manuel Puig, is a profoundly moving account of two prisoners. William Hurt's moving and haunted role as the cross-dressing inmate in love with his cellmate won an Oscar, a rare feat for such a controversial role, even in liberal Hollywood.

Coincidentally, another cross-dressing actor has won an Oscar sinceHilary Swank for the brutal and bold film based on the life of Brandon Teena. Both Kiss of the Spider Woman and Boys Don't Cry will stand the test of time and will go down in film history, not simply as great transgendered films, but also as brilliant films by any standards.

On the international front the best include All About My Mother, Bad Education, Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, The Crying Game, Ma Vie en Rose and Lola and Billy the Kid.

Continued on page C-12

Frida

A Home at the End of the World, based on out writer Michael Cunningham's novel, was an overlooked and underappreciated film. It tells the story of two best friends from a very young age who grow up to form an interesting family with a woman. The film is honest, open and features amazing performances by Colin Farrell, Robin Wright Penn and Sissy Spacek.

Kinsey, by out filmmaker Bill Condon, was released just last year and is a marvelous biopic of a very intense man who helped break down America and the world's sexual taboos and barriers by scientifically proving that human sexuality in its many variations was simply normal, Liam Neeson is stunning as Alfred Kinsey, Laura Linney is equally good as his wife, and Peter Saarsgard is very moving as Kinsey's lover and scientific protégé.

A Home at the End of the World

YTu Mama Tambien, starring two of the hottest Latino actors around, Diego Luna and Gael Garcia Bernal (who has played gay in several films) is a tough, sexy, poignant road film, Luna and Bernal's characters love each other, but they also share a woman. Their journey, leading to a tragic ending, is fascinating to watch

Velvet Goldmine, with Ewan McGregor by out director Todd Haynes, is a kaleidoscopic portrayal of the musical and sexual revolution in the 1970s glam rock era. The film has an amazing visual feel and the performances are dead-on as Haynes takes us into a world where sexuality was celebrated, not judged.

Queer filmmaker Gus Van Sant broke ground and became a filmmaker to pay attention to with his revealing and avant-garde My Own Private Idaho. Here the late River Phoenix plays a hustler in Portland, Oregon who falls in love with a fellow hustler played by a surprisingly good Keanu Reeves. But Reeves character who is bisexual and upwardly mobile, cannot give Phoenix's character what he wants. The heartbreak is moving and Phoenix turns in one of the best performances by an actor in modern cinema.

It was two early films that trail blazed when it came to images of bisexuals in cinema-Maurice and Making Love.

Making Love was Hollywood's first open attempt at going into the bedroom of a couple of men and a woman.

The film is not great cinema, but it created a pathway not just for bisexual films, but also for queer cinema in general.

Maurice, adapted from an E. M. Forester novel of the same name by the Inimitable team of James Ivory and the late Ismail Merchant, is a stunningly beautiful film. It deals with sexuality, gay and bisexual, in the world of upper-c crust Brits during the late Victorian period. The film is also a wonderful study of how social class and sexuality clash and merge in our world. The film gave rise to a group of young British actors including Rupert Graves. James Wilby and Hugh Grant.

Queer cinema is maturing, but it has a long way to go.

In an odd sort of way, bisexuality seems to be the slowest at gaming legitimacy within our celluloid world. One has to only look at the recent biopic of Alexander. The film does deal with Alexander's bisexuality, but it also shies away from it because of box-office worries and Hollywood's own brand of subtle homophobia.

And since, film like all art, is a reflection of who we are as a people, a culture, we will have to wait a while to see queer cinema truly come of age, just as we are going to have to wait to have gay rights and equality to come of age as well.