Antarctica
With reality done, the fiction sets in, starting with Israeli film Antarctica. Described as a "silly and seriously promiscuous romp" through Tel Aviv, the film deals with a love triangle between trampy Omer, who wants love, journalist Romer, who wants to give him that love, and dancer Danny, who Omer wants to love. Add in Omer's sister, who begins a lesbian love affair with her boss when her parents pressure her to get married, and it's proof that not all Israeli films deal with the military.
Antarctica's screenings are on Thursday, March 26 and Sunday, March 29 at 10 pm and 7:15 pm, respectively.
Between Love & Goodbye
Next up is Between Love & Goodbye, showing Friday, March 20 at 4:45 pm and Saturday, March 21 at 9:45 pm. Warning: Film contains nude twinks in sexual situations.
Kyle, a swarthy young would-be rock star, and Marcel, a French blonde in a green-card marriage, fell in love almost at first sight. Their relationship seems absurdly blissful, until Kyle's sister April shows up. For some reason, adding a transgender prostitute who hates Marcel and wants Kyle all to herself doesn't seem to help their relationship.
Things turn downright sour, and the two young men begin arguing and, eventually, doing almost anything they can to hurt each other.
It's far from the most coherent narrative in the festival, but it is a fascinating examination of the end of love and the beginning of destruction by Casper Andreas, director of other twink films A Four Letter Word and Slutty Summer.
Chef's Special
Getting back to that "Spanish comedy. that will be compared to Pedro Almodóvar," we have Nacho Velilla's Chef's Special, which follows chef and restaurant owner Maxi as he descends into hell, battling to get a Michelin star, get and hold onto a former soccer-player boyfriend, and deal with having his two children dumped into his lap by his exwife, who was inconsiderate enough to die.
Maxi is hardly the hero of the piece, either-bitchy, manic and utterly obsessed with that Michelin star-a sign of excellence for restaurants-he comes close to destroying everything with his seemingly impossible balancing act.
On top of that, try explaining to his 15year-old son why he abandoned him and his sister, now six years old. Or wrap your head around dealing with Maxi's insane parents, or his slutty best friend and maître d', who swears she has had enough of men, but really hasn't, and his bumbling, drunken sous-chef, whose idea of babysitting a teenager is to start rolling joints.
Well, at least Maxi can admit that he's a "dickhead," according to the subtitles. One wonders what the original Spanish was for that.
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The uproarious comedy plays on Saturday, March 28 at 9:35 pm and Sunday, March 29 at 11:20 am.
Ciao
Travelling down the alphabetical list, we come to Ciao, Yen Tan's tale of two strangers mourning the same man.
Jeff's best friend Mark dies in an automobile accident, leaving Jeff to respond to Mark's e-mails, including those from the enigmatic Italian hunk Andrea, with whom Mark was carrying on an internet flirtation.
Andrea was supposed to visit Mark in Texas after going to New York for a wedding, and Jeff figures that he might as well still come. Together, they can each learn more about Mark, who told Andrea all about Jeff but never mentioned his eboyfriend to his best friend.
Long, pregnant moments of silence throughout the film either kill the pacing or create an atmosphere redolent of the loss Jeff feels. Maybe this depends on the romance in one's soul.
It is a very intimate film, with dialogue mainly spoken between three people in the hour and a half—Jeff, Andrea and Jeff's stepsister.
Ciao shows on Wednesday, March 25 at 11:50 am and on Friday, March 27 at 7:30 pm.
I Can't Think Straight
What's this? Lesbians in a fiction film? Common enough most years, but this year seems a little short on them (other than Marcel's green-card wife, of course).
I Can't Think Straight is a British film about Tala, a Palestinian Christian whose parents want her to marry. Unfortunately, boys might not be the way she really wants to go.
She starts a relationship with Leyla, an Indian Muslim, but their families, their intolerant backgrounds and the fact that they're both engaged to be married to men keep coming between them.
I Can't Think Straight will show on Saturday, March 21 at 7:15 pm, and on Monday, March 23 at 12 noon.
Jay
From the Philippines comes perhaps the most absurdly macabre film in the history of the festival, or at least in recent memory. It's a dark comedy, but one so dark that many patrons might, unfortu-
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