Queer Takes: Standing Out — June 23-25 at The Walker Art Center
This year’s Queer Takes series (June 23-25) at the Walker, now in it’s fourth edition, brings to Minneapolis four LGBT related films a week before Minneapolis Pride, all which tackle certain topics important to the community. Surprisingly, three of the films center prominently around homophobia in sports.
Two documentaries featured in Queer Takes both deal with lesbians and sports, a topic sometimes ignored in the greater realm of LGBT rights, perhaps because once homosexuality started to be taken seriously, women’s sports needed to be taken seriously as well. Training Rules, directed by Dee Mosbacher (Radical Harmonies; Straight From the Heart) and Fawn Yacker, is a heart rending expose about homophobic policies in women’s collegiate sports and focuses in particular on the lawsuit against Penn State University and women’s basketball coach, Rene Portland, who since the early 80’s coached the Lady Lions at Penn State. Portland had three well known rules—no drinking, no drugs, and no lesbians. Mosbacher and Yacker’s documentary is comprised mostly, and most importantly, of women directly affected by Portland’s Nazi-like homophobia, and the result is very moving footage, as many young, talented women who were indeed more often than not lesbian, had their potential chances to play professional basketball stomped out by a tyrannical, homophobic monster. Sickeningly, Portland, a staunch Christian, believed she was only furthering rights for women with her renowned reputation as women’s basketball coach. A compelling, no frills documentary, Training Rulesis a documentary about a modern monster, (one who also happens to look like John Lithgow in drag—please see Raising Cain or The World According to Garp for comparison), and also highlights the homophobic world of collegiate sports. Like the military is to the rest of the US, the athletic departments seem to follow different, unsaid rules than other educational department, with one professor commenting that athletics were insulated and out of reach, not subject to the same rules. The same can be said, apparently, about coaches actively and openly curbing a student’s sexuality, but on the flip side, would lose their position or be suspended when mere rumors of a sexual relationship with a student were whispered. One needs to see the film to witness the disgusting legacy of Rene Portland. While Training Rules does not point to any real solutions pertaining to homophobia in sports, it highlights that the climate is changing, slowly but surely, and as it is pointed out in the film, a discussion has been started.
The second documentary feature in Queer Takes, Football Under Cover, focuses on a German women’s soccer team and their journey to carry out the first female soccer team match in history on Iranian soil. While the German soccer team is purportedly lesbian in majority, we see little to no coverage of this in the documentary. In fact, one of the German players focused on more than the others, Susu, (who also happens to be Muslim and the youngest player on the team) is heterosexual. The importance of the players’ sexualities really has nothing to do with the film, which is a thought provoking and empathetic look at the restricted lives of women in Teheran, but I fail to see the relevance of this film being selected as one of four films in this year’s Queer Takes series at the Walker. While compelling viewing, the film has little to do with sexual orientation because there’s not even room to talk about gay rights when we’re dealing with a group of women that don’t have equal rights. The headscarves highlight a major reason why this documentary’s inclusion in a queer specific series is unnecessary. Muslim women must wear headscarves and keep their bodies covered so as to not tempt men with their sexuality—sexuality between women is not even an option and even though we’re dealing with homosocial spaces rife with stereotypical presentiments, to paraphrase the Iranian president’s infamous statement, there are no homosexuals in Iran. Meanwhile, the documentary could have focused on the some of the German player’s specific reactions to this culture as a woman and as a lesbian, but we see none of that. Instead, a majority of the documentary focuses on the struggle for the German team to actually get to Iran and the hardships of dealing with a government whose decisions and policies are about as mysterious and nonsensical as something out of Kafka’s The Trial. What with the new hot button election issues in Iran, Football Under Cover makes for compelling viewing, if not altogether a vague selection concerning the LGBT community, specifically.
The opening film of Queer Takes, and also it’s lightest and only fictional entry is the Spanish film, Chef’s Special (Fuera de carta), which has been recently been playing the festival circuit. The film stars Almodovar regular, Javier Cámara (Talk to Her; Bad Education) as Maxi, a gay man owning a restaurant in Chueca, the gay part of Madrid. Maxi us struggling to keep his restaurant afloat and secure an excellent review from the Michelin food guide. However, when his ex-wife dies, the rather self-centered Maxi is faced with taking care of his two children form that unsuccessful marriage. At the same time, Maxi falls in love and begins a relationship with a famed ex-soccer player, Horacio, who moves in next door. Chef’s Special is a light and fluffy romantic comedy that once in a while surprises you with some acerbic humor, but in the end simmers into the comedy-of-errors trope, followed by the resolution of every major character issue conveniently wrapping up the film. Yes, the film touches on important topics like homophobia in sports (Horacio takes the leap and announces his orientation on television with little to no repercussion) and touches, though not seriously on issues of gay men and parenting. The funniest moments in Chef’s Special happen to be between the excellent Javier Cámara and his bitchy dynamics with his young daughter, as it’s completely realistic to imagine a self-centered, bitter gay man to behave the way he does with kids. The disconnect of the film is how they all come to accept each other so quickly, what with the son’s disturbing homophobic issues and the father’s rather uncaring approach to dealing with his kids. In the end, Chef’s Special is an entertaining feature, though entirely forgettable one when all is said and done.
The most prestigious selection in this year’s Queer Takes is Canadian director John Greyson’s Fig Trees, which took home the Teddy Award for Best Documentary at the 2009 Berlin Film Festival. With a title alluding to fig trees in the Bible (of which there are about 30 separate instances, each with differing interpretations), Greyson’s film is an experiment in narrative form and exudes a Derek Jarmanesque sensibility. Dealing foremost with South African AIDS activist Zackie Achmat and his treatment strike in 1999 that caused the creation of TAC (Treatment Action Campaign), Fig Treesuses song, split screen, and playful recreations of AIDS related incidents in music and history to create a compelling, if not altogether tedious story of AIDS activism. What begins as an excellent documentary engaging us in neglected conversations concerning AIDS activism (both in a global sense and for new generations in Canada and the US), begins to wear itself down with its own experimentations, resulting in a second half that’s not entirely engaging. Nonetheless, an important film concerning important issues for not only LGBT communities, but for the world at large, Fig Trees has been a critically acclaimed success for director Greyson, whose past work also plays with cinema conventions (like the underrated 1996 feature Lilies). Though it may only attract or speak to a highly academic audience (if pressed, I suppose I would add the word pretentious here) Fig Trees is an interesting exercise in cinema—part documentary, part musical, and part activism, it’s really quite exciting that it’s here for the Walker’s Queer Takes series.
Tags: Chef's Special, Fig Trees, Football Under Cover, Queer Takes, Rene Portland, Training Rules
June 22nd, 2009 at 1:38 pm
Great post Nick. Solid roundup of this series. Sounds like none of the titles really blew you away, but some solid docs and a light-hearted narrative is a good collection for the Walker here. Any ideas for films they may have missed? What would fit in this series better? Less docs, perhaps.
June 26th, 2009 at 12:13 pm
Less docs for sure! As for missed films, it’s hard to say. Fig Trees was a lucrative selection for them, but I would say at least two fictional releases playing a current circuit would have been more satisfactory, such as Villa Amalia starring Isabelle Huppert, currently making festival rounds.