Out On Film 2024 Reviews

Out On Film kicks off at Landmark Midtown Art Cinema on September 26 and continues through October 6 (with select screenings at Out Front Theatre Company). Chances are, you won’t be able to make it to every film on this year’s incredible and diverse lineup. If you’re having trouble deciding what to watch this year, here’s what I thought of some of this year’s selections.

September 29, 6pm

If you cry during “All Shall Be Well,” it won’t be from laughing. Written and directed by Ray Yeung, this excellent Hong Kong drama is about a situation that was more common in the U.S. before same-sex marriage became legal but reminds today’s couples, married or not, to take care of their paperwork. Lesbians Angie (Patra Au) and Pat (Lin-Lin Li) have been together over 40 years, 30 of them in the apartment they bought, which has only Pat’s brother’s name on the lease. Pat’s family is fully accepting of Angie — until Pat dies and she becomes Pat’s “best friend.” Pat’s brother is automatically the executor of her estate because she left no will. The first battle Angie loses is over disposing of Pat’s remains. She insists Pat wanted a burial at sea but the family is persuaded to put her ashes in an expensive crematorium. Then there’s the question of what will become of the apartment. Estate-planning lawyers will want to bring business cards to hand out after the screening.

September 26, 7pm

I certainly admired and appreciated this Belgian-Dutch film that opens the festival, but it triggered too many emotions for me to endorse it enthusiastically. Maybe I’m just too sensitive — it’s a gay thing — but “Young Hearts” made me feel like I was 14 again and had taken a time machine to the future to see what my early teens could have been like. Elias (Lou Goossens) is 14 and trying to fit in, though normal small-town life doesn’t feel quite right. Then Alexander (Marius De Saeger) moves in across the road and Elias experiences his first real crush. He finds out Alexander is gay and doesn’t care who knows it; but Elias, who is already bullied at school, isn’t ready to share feelings with the world that he doesn’t understand himself. Director and co-writer Anthony Schatteman has done his jobs well — perhaps too well.

October 5, 9pm

Critics should admit prejudices that might affect their opinions. Well, I fell in love with Javier Orán, who plays Pedro, at first glance; so I wasn’t eager for him to hook up with Maxi (Lautaro Bettoni), the childhood friend he’s reunited with a decade later at a summer resort on the Argentine coast. Writer-director Marco Berger focuses on their constant flirtation, which is complicated by Pedro identifying as gay and Maxi straight. At one point they pretend to be a couple in front of their housemates, but they’re still not as intimate as when they’re alone together. Had I known to expect such a prolonged tease I wouldn’t have thought I’d be a fan; but despite some impatient moments (“Fuck him already!”) I had a good time. Not as good as I could have had with Orán, but my husband will get the benefit of those fantasies tonight.

October 2, 7pm

I’d heard of Fire Island Pines, “a sexy beach town… 49 miles from New York City,” as a center of the gay universe long before I came out; but all these years later I still haven’t been there, except in movies like 2022’s “Fire Island” and this new documentary by Brian J. Smith. The beautiful scenery could attract straight tourists, while other beauty (limited frontal nudity but a record number of bare butts) will appeal to gays. Older, mostly white men discuss the history of the Pines community, with a few visual aids, while transpeople and people of color talk about the evolution that has included them as part of “a generational shift…new energy coming in.” Climate change is coming in too, once wiping out 30 feet of beach overnight. “Enjoy it while you can,” one man says. This film will let people enjoy it forever — on screen.

October 6, noon

Dennis Peron (1945-2018), who could be called the Father of Medical Marijuana, certainly deserves a documentary. This film by Kip Andersen and Chris O’Connell is narrated by Peron’s final interview, when he was very sick and barely able to speak (requiring subtitles in the film). He’s cool and quirky, but too much of him in the opening minutes will keep some viewers from getting involved. Peron discovered pot during an unwilling stint in Vietnam and brought enough home to start a business. In San Francisco he opened a restaurant with a pot shop upstairs. Then came AIDS, taking the lives of his lover and thousands of other gay men. Many were wasting away for lack of appetite and Peron realized the marijuana munchies could get them eating again. He started the Cannabis Buyers Club, where members (with doctors’ approval) could buy and smoke pot, socialize, and enjoy live entertainment. Joe Bannon, a conservative gay cop, raided the club and tried to shut it down, encouraged by California District Attorney Dan Lungren despite the opposition of San Francisco leadership. Lungren turned to the DEA for support until President Clinton told them to back off. The film’s climax involves California’s 1996 ballot initiative to legalize medical marijuana. It’s no spoiler to say there’s a happy ending.

September 28, noon

This isn’t exactly a spoiler, but you may wonder for some time why this film is in this festival. Apparently due to a custody agreement, Violetta and Eva travel from California to spend summers in New Mexico with their father, Vicente (René Pérez Joglar). We spend four summers with them over the course of a decade. At the end of the first Violetta starts cutting her long hair. Then she (they?) becomes progressively more masculine looking each time we see her, and flirts with a girl Vicente tutors. A fair amount of unsubtitled Spanish (Vicente is Puerto Rican) will be an obstacle for some viewers, though I doubt they’ll miss anything significant. More annoying to me were unexplained plot points that might have been filled in if the characters didn’t spend so much time shooting pool. While I wouldn’t want to spend a whole summer with them, 98 minutes still went by fairly agreeably.

September 29, 8pm

Duino is a lovely and somewhat frustrating film about love and frustration. It’s co-written and co-directed by Juan Pablo Di Pace, who also stars as Matias, an Argentine director making a movie — perhaps this one–about his first love. A quarter-century ago Mati (Santiago Madrussan) was a freshman at an international college in Duino, Italy, on the Adriatic coast, when a Swedish student, Alexander (Oscar Morgan) arrived and staked a claim to him as inseparable friend and roommate — but nothing more. There’s the possibility of a reunion — and a second chance? — when present-day Mati receives an invitation to the wedding of Alexander’s sister, who developed as big a crush on him as he had on her brother when their families got together for Christmas in 1997. Di Pace handles his three jobs quite capably but might have tightened things up a bit instead of having us wallow in his misery as long as we do.

September 30, 8:15pm

João (Michel Joelsas) is opposed to therapy, but his friends and everyone he talks to offer him advice that might come from a therapist. He’s 32 (but looks younger) and wants to be a filmmaker but settles for occasional editing jobs and photo shoots while waiting for his first feature to be greenlighted. His 10-year relationship with Hugo just ended and João signs up for a dating app to get laid. This readjustment inspires a new script, “13 Sentimentos” (this film’s original Brazilian title, which translates to “13 Feelings,” in case you wonder if writer-director Daniel Ribeiro is being autobiographical). Sometimes it’s hard to tell whether a scene is real, a fantasy, or a reenactment of João’s script. If you don’t get it, Hugo’s parting gift is a Rubik’s Cube, a metaphor for life’s complexities. “Perfect Endings” is pleasant enough but far from perfect.

October 6, 7:30pm

“I’ve always had a sense my life was happening without me — far, far away,” says Lourenço (Marco Pigossi), who is far, far from his Brazilian home in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Summer is nearly over, in more ways than one. Lourenço’s lover has dumped him and his visa will expire in a month. He has a kindly landlord (Bill Irwin) and, though a qualified accountant, is doing casual labor to survive. Things seem to be looking up when he meets Maurice (James Bland), one of the few Blacks in P-town. The ups and downs of their love affair make up much of writer-director Marco Calvani’s film, which, like the sex in some scenes (which feel like a throwback to a generation ago when they were mandatory in gay films), is hot but not entirely satisfying.