FILM
New York Film Festival Highlights
Selection testifi es to presence of LGBTQ fi lmmakers
BY STEVE ERICKSON
Out of the New York Film
Festival entries I’ve
seen, one, Radu Jude’s
“Bad Luck Banging or
Loony Porn,” shows people wearing
face masks (without taking the
pandemic as its subject, although
one scene shows an argument over
this masking). We’re in for a fl ood
of thoughtless COVIDsploitation,
and many of this year’s fi lms may
have been shot in 2019 and the
fi rst two months of 2020. But the
effects of COVID on the festival itself,
as a microcosm of New York
(and American) life are still ongoing.
We remain stuck in limbo facing
a full return of cultural institutions.
Last year, the NYFF took place
mostly online, with public screenings
at drive-ins. This year, the
screenings all take place in person,
but under the circumstances
of the moment: No food or drink
concessions are being sold and
audiences must keep their masks
on at all times. The latest festival
has benefi ted from the pipeline of
unreleased fi lms from last year;
for instance, Wes Anderson’s “The
French Dispatch” was originally
slated to premiere at Cannes in
May 2020. Korean director Hong
Sang-soo is so prolifi c that he’s no
stranger to having several fi lms in
the NYFF, but rising gay Japanese
fi lmmaker Ryusuke Hamaguchi
also managed that double trick
with “Drive My Car” and “Wheel of
Fortune and Fantasy.” This year’s
selection testifi es to the presence of
LGBTQ fi lmmakers on the international
festival circuit, from familiar
faces like Todd Haynes, Pedro
Almodovar (who supplies the closing
night fi lm “Parallel Mothers”)
and Apichatpong Weerasethakul,
to transgender German artist Vika
Kirchenbauer, whose short “The
Capacity for Adequate Anger” is an
excellent, self-critical refl ection on
class in the art world. Perennial
problematic fave Paul Verhoeven
got the festival off with a burst of
controversy, pissing off a small
group of Catholic men who protested
“Neptune Frost,” a sci-fi musical made in Rwanda, features an intersex hacker portrayed alternately by
Cheryl Isejai and Elvis Ngdo
his lesbian nunsploitation
drama “Bendetta” in person.
While Haynes announced himself
as a major director with the
now-banned Karen Carpenter-as-
Barbie doll “Superstar” and went
on to make fi lms devoted to glam
rock and Bob Dylan (with one about
Peggy Lee in the works), “The Velvet
Underground” is his fi rst documentary.
Despite being proteges
of Andy Warhol (and stars of two
of his short fi lms), no quality footage
of the Velvets performing live
remains. In a way, that’s a gift to
Haynes’ documentary. Our eventual
glimpse of Lou Reed, John Cale
and Nico performing “Heroin” is
taken from a French concert after
the band had broken up. Haynes
skips the talking heads interviews
and archival footage formula condemning
so many recent documentaries
to mediocrity. While we
do get to see surviving members
John Cale and Maureen Tucker,
as well as John Waters, actor Mary
Woronov, and composer La Monte
Young speaking onscreen, Haynes
uses many clips from ‘60s experimental
cinema to suggest the milieu
SAUL WILLIAMS
from which the band came. Of
course, their singer and guitarist,
Lou Reed, is now dead, only heard
in audio interviews. The fi lm might
peak with its fi rst few minutes,
which kick off with Cale playing
viola like he’s burning a hole in his
amp followed by a rapid montage
of early ‘60s American TV clips (including
the musician’s game show
appearance and references to heroin.)
At that moment, it copies the
style of the avant-garde fi lms it references
rather than just showing
clips from them.
But while the band’s history
and many of these stories will be
familiar to much of its audience,
the glimpses into the early lives
of its members is new — as a high
school and college student, the
bisexual Reed played at gay bars
with a pre-Velvets band and wrote
a poetry about hookups in public
restrooms. (He wrote about queer
sexuality in several of the group’s
best songs: “Sister Ray” describes
a man receiving oral sex from a
drag queen, while more subtly but
just as subversively, “Some Kinda
Love” stated “no kind of love is better
than another.”) It also gives far
more credit to Cale than he generally
gets in histories of the group;
Haynes suggests that their creative
spark was based on tension
between him and Reed and devotes
little time to their fi nal two
albums, made with bassist Doug
Yule replacing Cale.
Playing in the Currents section,
Claire Simon’s “I Want to Talk
About Duras” is radically strippeddown.
Based on interview tapes
between writer and fi lmmaker
Marguerite Duras’ partner, Yann
Andrea, and his friend, Michéle
Manceaux (Emannuelle Devos), it
treats Duras as a ghostly fi gure,
ever-present but only shown in
documentary footage. Andrea, who
was gay and 38 years younger than
her, describes her power over him.
“I Want to Talk About Duras” may
have been more gripping if it were
even more minimalist. While most
consists of two days of interviews,
constrained in their choice of camera
angles and sets, its attempts to
open them up by showing very brief
scenes of Andrea visiting a beach or
going cruising in a park — as well
as Manceaux picturing Duras and
Andrea having sex, depicted via
drawings — takes away from the
power of Andrea’s monologue.
“I Want to Talk About Duras”
feels quite literary, in a stereotypically
French manner, but
Simon — who goes back and
forth between documentary
and fi ction — expertly brings
Duras’ dominance of Andrea to
life through his verbal recollection
of a troubled, abusive relationship.
Andrea and Manceaux
theorize about what it means for
a gay man to be in love with a
woman, but he participated in a
role reversal as degrading as an
elderly man controlling the life of
a younger female lover.
“Neptune Frost,” a sci-fi musical
made in Rwanda by queer director
Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman,
brings the shock of the new.
For one thing, its costume and set
➤ NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL, continued on p.29
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