NewFest Film Festival: Day 1

In this day and age of closed movie theaters and shifting release dates, I, like many fellow cinephiles, have been taking advantage of what's streaming on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBO Max and the like. It's been an interesting film journey during this pandemic which I might write about someday including trying to check off some "how have I never seen this movie before" bucket list. But I've seen a good amount of stuff from this year as well, but certainly not in the same vein as I would've in a normal year.

Enter NewFest which hosts an LGBTQ Film Festival in New York annually for the last 32 years. Previously I had been able to find the time to usually see a movie or two. This year, however, like most film festivals which haven't been canceled outright, they went virtual which allowed me the opportunity to do something I can also check off from my movie lovers bucket list: purchase an all-access pass to a film festival. And so now for the next 11 days, I can see new/new-ish LGBTQ movies from the comfort of my own home and I'm going to attempt to write about it. 2020 really is something.

Yesterday was the festival's first day. With the Virtual All-Access Streaming Pass, most of the films in their line-up were immediately made available. There are a couple of drive-in specific screenings I can't see (like Opening Night's AMMONITE starring Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan) and a handful of "spotlight" movies held back for a few days, but for the most part, I can literally watch whatever I wanted. You'd think I'd have trouble choosing, but I knew exactly the two movies I wanted to start with.

MONSOON (dir. Hong Khaou)

Like everyone else, I fell head over heels over Henry Golding in Crazy Rich Asians and when I found out that he was attached to a movie from director Hong Khaou who previously devastated me with Lilting a few years ago, I was beside myself. MONSOON is less traumatic than Hong's earlier movie, but no less affecting. Golding plays Kit returning to Vietnam after escaping it as a child with his mother and brother en route to Britain. Kit's uneasiness is apparent from the get-go as he navigates a world, a language, a culture he barely understands. His search leads him to another wayward soul in the form of Lewis played by the fetching Parker Sawyers. They both bond as unmoored individuals in a foreign country and their chemistry is electric. I wanted more of that, but I get why it wasn't the focal point of the movie. There were a lot of quiet, introspective moments in the film as we see Kit just observing, searching, listening which might have outstayed its welcome for some, but for me I was just fine staring at Henry Golding's face the entire time.

DATING AMBER (dir. David Freyne)

After seeing the aforementioned dramatic film, I knew I had to see a comedy next and I couldn't have picked better than this hilarious coming-of-age film starring two young, captivating actors. Fionn O'Shea and Lola Petticrew respectively play too-sensitive Eddie and too-abrasive Amber who team up by pretend dating to get the bullies at school and their families at home off their backs, because, oh right, they're both gay. DATING AMBER is at once playful and hilarious as well as heartbreaking and moving. O'Shea and Petticrew make an excellent pair making you invested in their parallel, but still unique journeys in accepting themselves for who they are. Set in mid-1990s Ireland, the spectres of homophobia, toxic masculinity and Catholic traditionalism hang over the procedures but the film maintains its feel-good vibe to the end.

SHORT FILM PROGRAM: BEAUTIFUL BOYS, BEAUTIFUL JOURNEYS

One of the selling points of the festival for me this year was its robust short film programs boasting 10 individual programs ranging from 6-9 short films  in each with each set curated by a theme of sorts. So of course I went and checked out these beautiful boys and their beautiful journeys.

My two favorites book-ended the program with QUERY at the beginning and SEE YOU SOON at the end. Both movies feature characters wrestling with the nature of their relationship--two roommates unpacking their straight and maybe not so straight desires in the first and two guys from opposite coasts finally uniting trying to figure out if they can continue this in the second. Another film I really liked, KIND OF, also revolves around this same theme of two characters grappling with their relationships, in this case what it means to be a trans couple in a cis world. Other standouts for me were POMPEII and THE DICK APPOINTMENT which both uses apps and social media to hilarious and poignant results. Check out the full list of shorts from this program here.

Stay tuned for more reviews! In the meantime, feel free to friend me on Letterboxd which I really should use to post short reviews versus just logging all the films I watch.