4-26-2008
Methinks the TTC strike is going to cost me my final day of movie-going
tomorrow. The logistics of getting to and from the screenings is too
much of a headache. That, combined with my growing fatigue is, at this
point, making me think that today was probably my last day at HotDocs
2008... which kind of sucks because one of my few must-see films—Hold Me Tight, Let Me Go—is showing tomorrow afternoon. I
might sleep on it.
If not, then I’m afraid the last two films I saw will have me leaving
HotDocs 2008 on a meh note.
It was a boy-movie double bill: the short The Pull (3/8),
and the feature-length Suddenly, Last Winter (5/8).
The Pull gets three slices because, in reality, it wasn’t a
documentary at all. It was a narrative story about the contracted
romantic relationship between the director and his (now ex-) boyfriend.
They had agreed to be in a relationship for a finite period of time,
with a predetermined “end date,” as a way of perhaps enriching the
(limited) time they did have together. But my beef (aside from the
meh-ness of the story and its execution) is that the film, essentially
a dramatic short made up of reenactments, wasn’t a documentary.
Following that was Suddenly, Last Winter, a cute but curiously
lop-sided look at co-directors Gustav Hofer and Luca Ragazzi – a
wonderfully funny and adorable Italian gay couple, together for eight
years – who document the aftermath in Rome when the government proposes
legislation that acknowledges same-sex couples. Narrated like a
children’s educational special, the film tracks the increasingly vocal
homophobic portion of the population as its protests (sometimes loudly
and en masse) against the legislation increase. But, after a while, the
proceedings felt very repetitive – almost the entire film is made up of
interviews with, commentary from, and footage of people opposed to the
bill. I started to wonder if Gustav and Luca were the only two gay men
in the city. Where was the other half of the argument? What were other
members of the gay community feeling? Were there pro-bill rallies?
Anything? I didn’t think the religious right and their political
counterparts really needed another platform to express their views
without opposition, and kind of wished we’d heard from the other side.
Both Gustav and Luca were in attendance for the screening, and gave a
pleasant enough Q&A. Oh, and I promised my movie-going pal today that I
would print a correction to my beef with the Scotiabank Scene Card ads
– seems, thanks to my limited attention span, the two ads are actually
for two different Scene cards. One is for the Scene points card,
and the other is for the Scene Visa card. I stand corrected.
But I remained annoyed.
