Reeling 2002, the 21st Chicago Lesbian & Gay International Film Festival, runs Friday, July 26, through Thursday, August 8. Screenings this week are at the Music Box and Chicago Filmmakers, 5243 N. Clark. Advance tickets can be purchased at Chicago Filmmakers 10 to 6 weekdays, noon to 5 Saturday; same-day tickets are available only at the venue box office. Tickets are $8, $7 for screenings at Chicago Filmmakers, and $6 for screenings before 5 PM. Discount passes are available; for more information call 773-293-1447 or the festival hot line at 312-458-9117. Films marked with an * are highly recommended.
- Gaudi Afternoon
A dozen singles looking for love and sex on a sizzling day in Madrid pair up in this 2000 romantic comedy by Juan Luis Iborra and Yolanda Garcia Serrano. Km.0 (kilometer zero), the square where most of them have arranged to rendezvous, is the symbolic center of Spain, and the characters are supposed to represent a cross section of the country’s sexually frustrated urbanites–gay, straight, and otherwise. The film flits from one relationship to another, dispensing some well-acted bedroom scenes and a fair amount of angst and philosophical dialogue in a neighborhood bar; Iborra and Serrano try for the insouciant, enchanted tone that often propels such roundelays but deliver mostly cuteness and hot air. With Concha Velasco and Tristan Ulloa. In Spanish with subtitles. 105 min. (TS) (Music Box, 9:30)
A quartet of insightful 16-millimeter shorts tracing the blurry line between friendship and sexual attraction. Queen’s “You’re My Best Friend” furnishes the theme song to Kim Cummings’s beautifully crafted Weeki Wachee Girls (1999); two teenage pals aspire to be mermaids for a water show, practicing routines in a backyard pool, but their friendship is tested when one of them develops a crush on a third girl. Jennifer McGlone’s Breaking Up Really Sucks spoofs the ups and downs of single life, as the plucky lesbian narrator bounces from one hot mate to the next. Laura Jean Cronin’s wry if occasionally clumsy Block Party (2001) follows two women as they stage a benefit in Seattle; one is breaking up with an old lover while the other is trying to hook up with a new one, and their day of snafus is spiced with cameos by colorful locals. David Quantic’s After School Special suffers from amateur touches but reaches a clever climax (so to speak) as a gay teen and the lesbian girl next door use each other to satisfy their respective queer fantasies. 74 min. (Bill Stamets) (Music Box, 3:15)
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Play Dead
Billed as the first Slovenian film directed by a woman, this 2001 feature by Maja Weiss is an allegory about sexual and political boundaries, but its own murky border between fantasy and reality makes it hard to fathom. Three young college women in bikinis canoe down the Kolpa River, a sylvan setting stocked with right-wing nationalists, refugees from China, and an assortment of vague bogeymen. At a traditional festival they hear a self-styled “guardian of the frontier” rail against city girls with piercings and no boyfriends who’d “rather have parties than families.” As two of the women busy themselves flirting with each other, the third smiles weirdly toward the shadowy forest, whose inhabitants range from a psychotic killer to the mythical King of the Forest. Weiss stirs a promising cauldron of ideas, but ultimately it boils over into nonsense. In Slovenian with subtitles. 98 min. (Bill Stamets) (Music Box, 9:00)
