LGBT+ Film Festival
This weekend the third annual LGBT+ Film Festival took place here in Perpignan. I managed to get along to see two films from the program. The first was Xavaier Dolan's latest film, Matthais et Maxime. Dolan is a young director that tends to polarise audiences between loving and hating his films. I understand why people might not like his films as they often tend to deal with the gritty subjects of life, tortured relationships or mental disorders. There is also in his films a stark beauty, an honesty and representation of life that can make us undoubtedly at times uncomfortable. Technically his films don't please everyone either with the use of handheld filming and extreme close-ups. Having said all this I absolutely loved Matthais et Maxime. It had all the elements mentioned above but it also had a romantic tension that delivered with as much that was not spoken, as that which was, creating this tension. I also thought the acting was beautifully executed. I was part of a group of five to see this film. Two of us loved it and three hated it, with a passion!
The second film I viewed was The Blond One(El Rubio) by the Argentinian director Marco Berger. This was also story set in a fairly bleak working class background where much of the film passes in the living room with the cast watching TV. They only seem to leave the apartment to go and by more beer and cigarettes. One of the two leading characters says very little throughout the film but this doesn't mean he doesn't express himself. Like the Dolan film, this is also a story of the gay/straight duplicity within their lives. Both of the characters have girlfriends but only one is really able to fulfill his destiny as a gay man and release himself and realise his personal truth. In spite of this it is a love story and the two characters do love each other. The build up to their acting out of their desires is long and frustrating but when it finally comes the sex scenes are intense and intimate. In many ways this is quite a bleak film with moments of joy relentlessly strangled, but it still to me remained a legitimate and well directed piece of life.