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Inside Out Continues…
Only three days left in the 17th Annual Inside Out Gay and Lesbian Film and Video Festival! Last night, Eleven Men Out screened at the Bader; an Icelandic comedy with a reasonably original premise: a soccer player named Ottar being interviewed by a reporter in the locker room after a game while the rest of his team is changing decides, for the benefit of appearing on the magazine’s cover, to come out of the closet at that exact moment. As a result, he is thrown off the team and becomes the pariah of his family, including an alkie former-Miss Iceland ex-wife, a biggoted soccer-exec father, a video-store managing brother with a penchant for shemale pornography and a moody tweenage son who would rather play Counter-Strike than have a conversation with his father.
Since his former teammates will no longer associate with him, Ottar joins an amateur team known for having a few gay members. Ottar’s presence raises the profile of the team, and soon a bunch of gay soccer players start joining the team, which changes its name to Pride United and eventually winds up having to play a match against Ottar’s former team. What follows is something akin to the British “village versus the world” comedy—The Full Monty, Saving Grace, Local Hero, Calendar Girls, Waking Ned Devine, The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain, et. al. – but with a few key differences. For one, unlike the big tease that was The Full Monty, you actually see some penises. But the film also greatly differs in tone – the Icelandic sense of humour is very dry and sometimes very dark, and sequences range from deadpan hilarity to confusing blandness. The film is ultimately flawed, but charming and its Icelandic leads are uniformly easy on the eyes.
Coming up at Inside Out tonight: Straight to Bed at 7:30 at the Bader sound interesting—a collection of short films all focused on the gay male fascination with hunky straight guys. There’s also Dead Boyz Don’t Scream at 9:45, appropriately a part of the fest’s “Guilty Pleasures” screenings, this one’s a campy horror movie starring Playgirl centrefolds. On the pornier side of things, there’s One Night Stand for girls (the ROM at 9:45) and Bulldog in the Whitehouse for boys (Cinecycle at 10:00). One Night Stand (already sold out!) films a bunch of “dykes and genderqueers” as they have lots of sex and (of course) talk about their erotic fantasies. Bulldog in the Whitehouse is a super-budget re-imagining of the Bush administration as a bunch of over-sexed homos and features explicit sex. It’s also supposedly yet another adaptation of Dangerous Liasons. Torontoist got a screener of this one, and we have to admit we preferred this version. Still, it does bring a new meaning to the “Fuck Bush!” mantra.
Previously: Inside Out Update; The Picture of Dorian’s Gay; Don’t Dream It, Film It; Inside Out is Back!