STREAMING CINEMA
The Queer Stream
MUBI, reinvented for COVID, offers eclectic LGBTQ cinema
BY STEVE ERICKSON
With movie theaters
still closed and many
people sitting at
home with time to
kill, streaming services have benefi
ted. It’s not hard to fi nd lists of
recommendations for fi lms and TV
shows on Netfl ix, Amazon, Hulu,
or HBO Max.
MUBI is something different. Its
original concept offered a carefully
curated selection of 30 fi lms, with
a new movie premiering every day.
However, the titles were only available
for a month (although a few
could later be rented through the
site itself or Amazon Prime.) MUBI
has eclectic taste — you can fi nd
classic fi lms from the 1920s by gay
director F. W. Murnau, recent movies
that played international festivals
but have not graced American
theaters, Bollywood landmarks,
offerings from the indie gross-out
horror studio Troma, and retrospectives
on directors like Angela
Schanelec, Heinz Emigholz, and
Philippe Garrel.
Under COVID lockdown, the concept
behind MUBI has changed, as
it has opened up its library, making
a selection of hundreds of fi lms
available to subscribers. A monthly
subscription cost $10.98, while
one can buy a year in advance for
$95.88. Seven-day free trials are
available. It would be impossible
to sum up all the LGBTQ-themed
fi lms in a fairly brief article, so I
chose four very different titles.
Pia Hellenthal’s “Looking for
Eva” made me feel very old. Its
subject, 25-year-old Eva Collé,
is a non-binary sex worker, fashion
model, social media celebrity,
poet, and musician (among other
things) who documents their life
with numerous selfi es. “Searching
Eva” feels more like new media
than a fi lm, especially in its tone
of carefully poised, faux-casual
oversharing. It’s hard to tell where
Eva’s healthy desire to tell the
truth about their body bleeds into
a selfi e-driven narcissism. Does
even seeing this distinction just
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Eva Collé in Pia Hellenthal’s “Searching Eva.”
Jean Genet’s 1950 “A Song of Love” is a story of erotic fantasies in a men’s prison.
Marie Losier’s 2018 “Cassandro the Exotico!” chronicles the life and career of Mexican gay wrestler
Saul “Cassandro” Armendariz, whose persona in the ring incorporates drag.
show my difference from their generation?
Produced by Vice Studios,
“Searching Eva” shows signs of
their brand of woke sensationalism:
It depicts Eva fully nude, having
sex, and, though she describes
FILM MOVEMENT
herself as a recovering addict, preparing
to shoot up drugs. But if it
starts out feeling like a string of
disconnected scenes, the combination
of images, onscreen text,
and voice-over amount to a telling
character study.
Eva’s present life choices are infl
uenced by a desire to escape the
repressive and sexist Italian small
town where they grew up, the fact
that their parents were heroin
addicts who became born-again
Christians when they quit drugs,
and the poverty they’ve experienced.
Despite the apparent glamour
of their current life, one intertitle
reads, “I get more money for a
blowjob than 3 days paris fashion
week.” More than the story of just
one person, “Searching Eva” profi
les a way of life where boundaries
between private and public – and,
probably, fi ction and truth — have
become terminally uncool, but the
pain of trying to make a living and
get by in a sexist and queerphobic
word persists.
To get the obvious out of the
way, Bob Clark’s 1967 “She-Man: A
Story of Fixation” is objectionable in
many respects and has nothing to
do with the reality of trans women’s
lives. But it’s also revealing about
its times. Exploitation fi lms have
often been bluntly honest about
topics more “respectable” fare does
not even hint at: In this case, the
fantasies of a man who want to be
dominated by trans women. Clark
would later make classic fi lms like
“Black Christmas” and “A Christmas
Story,” and his talent was already
evident here, especially in
the exquisite fi lm noir-inspired use
of shadow and darkness.
Korean War vet Albert Rose is
blackmailed by Dominita, a trans
woma who kidnaps him and forces
him to dress in drag and take
estrogen pills while working as
her maid for a year. Technically,
he may be the fi lm’s hero while
she’s the villain, but he’s a bland
wimp while she’s a charismatic
bad-ass. That doesn’t excuse the
fi lm’s presentation of trans women
as threats to men, but it embraces
the fetishistic and masochistic potential
of that threat.
Without any sex and only including
a brief glimpse of female
breasts, “She-Man: A Story of
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June 18 - June 24, 2 38 020 | GayCityNews.com
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