40
1.2004
FILM
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What's up, doc?
N o n f ic t io n film s p r o b e p a n d e m ic , p o lit ic s
by
C hristopher M c Q uain
ocumentary film has never had anything
approaching the currency it seems to
have at the moment. Movies like Fahren
heit 9/11, Spellbound and Winged Migration
have garnered a degree of audience attention
and critical acclaim that nobody would have
predicted. DVD upstart Docu-
Rama, taking advantage of the
DVD formats potential for rescu
ing little-seen titles, has recently
released two worthwhile docs of
pertinence to queer concerns.
Rory Kennedy’s Pandemic:
Facing AIDS is an expansive,
globetrotting inquiry into the
impact of AIDS worldwide and
the ways that different cultures
and national economies have
found (or not) to ahsorh the prej
udice and expense associated
with the disease.
Fcxzusing on parts of the glohe
devastated hy skyrocketing HIV
infection and AIDS cases,
Kennedy’s camera, aided hy
Danny Glover’s narration, follows
AIDS educators and clinicians in
hard-hit Uganda, a young woman
suffering from social hypocrisy in
sex-industry-heavy Thailand and
married couples in India and Rus
sia, where AIDS is not a “gay
plague” at all, hut a disease of,
respectively, heterosexual prosti
tution and IV drug use.
Pandemic’s most positive story
is that of Alex, a 27-year-old gay
man whose AIDS experience is
indicative of Brazil’s relatively
progressive handling of AIDS.
The fact that he is able, under his
d(x:tors’ watchful eye, to live his
life fully and go to college is a
severe indictment of the rest of the world’s fail
ure to produce more stories like his; he’s an
• emblem of what is ideally possible in the fight
against AIDS.
D
f
Q pívg with Pride
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M u s t b e a t l e a s t 1 8. M e m b e r s h i p r e q u i r e d
The film’s main liability is its sterile, some
what aloof quality; it has a timorous, overly
genteel, philanthropic-gesture feel, giving t(x>
short shrift to the raw, urgent personal suffering
AIDS can inflict. For effectively broadening
the viewer’s knowledge of what is still a horrify
ing worldwide epidemic, how
ever, it gets top marks.
On the lighter, slighter,
more entertaining side, Emily
Morse’s See How They Run is
a behind-the-scenes kx>k into
San Francisco’s heated 1999
mayoral race, wherein sh(x>-
in incumbent Willie Brown
got a gtxxl scare from write-in
juggernaut Tom Ammiano, a
flamboyant gay city supervisor
and standup comedian.
Morse dcx:s well hy her
footage, editing for suspense.
What makes See How They
Run such great, juicy watch
ing, though, is its West Wing-
style insight into the
headache-inducing, seat-of-
the-pants unpredictability of
the political pnxress, as well
as the issues of big-money
contributors, race, sexuality
and class that define the race
in question.
Morse’s regular-San Fran
ciscan interviewees ponder
which mayoral hopeful has a
fairer affordable housing plan,
while the two candidates
debate who’s more pro-gay.
(Ammiano’s candidacy dcx.*s,
however, exacerbate pockets
of surprisingly virulent homo
phobia.) It all just goes to
show that even in its most
contentious squabbles, America’s most expen
sive, most liberal and queerest city is, particu
larly given the country’s current rightward lean,
a virtually utopian oasis. jH
OUT ON 0V0
1 L ove Y ou B aby
Strand Releasing
hat initially seems like hold sexual mcxl-
emism in I Love You Baby comes with a
puzzling aftertaste. The film’s love triangle
consists of Marcos (Jorge Sanz), a sheltered vil
lage dweller just arrived in the big city of
Madrid; Daniel (Santiago Magill), an actor
with whom the curious and experimental Mar
cos falls madly in love; and Marisol, a beautiful
Dominican woman stmggling to make it in the
big Spanish city. Marcos and Daniel live like
soul mates until, after a hilarious slapstick
accident at a karaoke bar, Marcos becomes
uncertain of his orientation. When he meets
Marisol, who has a crush on him that’s been
boiling for months, it’s curtains for his relation
ship with Daniel—or is it?
While directors Alfonso Alhacete and
David Menkes (with co-screenwriter Lucia
Exteharria) do have a nicely insouciant atti
tude toward their characters and their crazy
misadventures in love and sex, the film falls
pretty far short of being “in the tradition of
Alituxldvar,” as the DVD cover boldly boasts.
D
CUATRO SUf ÑOS "
To he fair, this des
SOHRI VIVIRf ~
ignation was probably
given hy a savvy
copywriter at Strand
Releasing to put the
film into its most flat
tering context, which
is what copywriters
do, hut it doesn’t even
come close to achiev
ing the screwball
absurdity, sexual
humor and variation
or sideways tenderness you can usually count
on from Pedro AlimxJovar. I Love You Baby
skims along with decent comic timing, has its
share of gtxxJ one-liners and is wrapped up tidi
ly at the end with a cheesy hit of stunt casting,
all of which renders it more along the lines of a
particularly randy Will & Grace episode.
The film is funny and progressive enough—
hardly a thorough disappointment—hut it does
feel like a hit of a cheat; it writes bigger, more
interesting sexual-political checks than its final
conventionalism can cash.
— c m j n
■ 1*4
W M A*>KA * »*» 1 « r W H « *
I LOVE
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