NOW IN ITS 13TH YEAR, the Portland Lesbian & Gay Film
Festival (PLGFF) continues its tradition of bringing queer-tastic films
to the masses. Taking over Cinema 21 all this week, this year’s PLGFF
boasts 16 screenings and an opening-night party at Crush (1400 SE
Morrison). Our picks for the fest are below; for more info, see Film
Shorts, My, What a Busy Week! and plgff.org.
Patrik, Age 1.5 (Fri Oct 2)—Göran (Gustaf
Skarsgård) and Sven (Torkel Petersson) are an attractive,
successful gay couple who’ve just moved into a colorful Swedish suburb,
where they hope to start a family. They’re eventually cleared to
adopt—but due to a typo, they end up with a 15-year-old boy
rather than the 1.5-year-old they expected. What’s worse, the kid’s a
homophobe with a criminal history. Predictability dictates that
Patrik, Age 1.5 should dedicate itself to finding a happily
unconventional resolution, and after a fashion, it does, with the
likeability of the characters ultimately carrying the film to its
foreseeable conclusion. MARJORIE SKINNER
Pornography (Sat Oct 3)—With a title this
provocative, one can’t help but pay attention—and you’ll want to
pay attention to this schizophrenic thrill ride, for all the good it’ll
do you. Calling to mind Mulholland Drive and 8mm,
Pornography‘s connecting narrative involves the murder of a ’90s
gay porn star. While not without its flaws, Pornography blurs
the lines between viewer and voyeur, performer and person, and
observance and obsession. Kicking at that fourth wall with its
self-referential indulgences, it asks an obvious question, one that
goes mostly unspoken in an information age where anything is literally
at your fingertips: “Is this what you wanted to see?” BRAD BUCKNER
Out Late (Sun Oct 4)—An engaging, frank, and
poignant documentary about the lives of queer senior citizens who came
out after middle age. Between the story of the Canadian man who fell in
love with his quilting circle partner and came out in church at age 60
and scenes of an 81-year-old Florida lesbian getting down at the gay
disco, Out Late finds a refreshing sense of humor in its
subjects’ sexual and emotional honesty. SARAH MIRK
Out of the Blue (Mon Oct 5)—I was secretly
hoping this was the third Into the Blue flick, this time with
the bikini’d Jessica Alba diving for lesbian booty. Alas, no. Out of
the Blue is a subdued French film about Marion (Mireille Perrier),
a fortysomething mother who realizes that she needs to leave her
dickish husband and her obnoxious teenage daughter. It’s the sort of
fresh start, coming-of-middle-age film that you’ve seen a dozen times,
but it has good performances and a sweet lesbian love story. But no
Jessica Alba in a swimsuit. Sorry. COURTNEY FERGUSON
An Englishman in New York (Thurs Oct 8)—There
are two lives of importance in An Englishman in New York. The
more important is the life of Quentin Crisp, likely the last true
British wit since Oscar Wilde. The other life of interest is that of
actor John Hurt, who played Crisp in the 1975 television adaptation of
Crisp’s classic book The Naked Civil Servant. Here, a matronly
Hurt reprises his role as Crisp, and the resultant film is fantastic
not only for Hurt’s superb performance as the aging Crisp—he
delivers razor-sharp bon mots in a voice both grave and
wistful—but also for its loving look at New York’s gay
renaissance where Crisp became an icon. PATRICK ALAN COLEMAN