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Frameline Members get early bird access to purchase Frameline32 Opening Night, Centerpiece, and Closing Night tickets! Read film descriptions below and purchase tickets in the Pass Section of our Shop. Don't forget to login first to access this offer!
OPENING NIGHT FILM & GALA
Affinity
Thursday, June 19, 7:00pm
Castro Theatre
$75 Frameline members
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This delicious period piece, based on Sarah Waters’ 1999 novel of the same name, is a women-in-prison movie with a gothic Victorian twist. Upper-class Margaret (Anna Madely), mourning her father’s recent death and looking for diversion, goes to Milbank Penitentiary as a “Lady Visitor”—presumably to improve the female convicts but really as a way to step outside her limited, conventional world. When she finds herself irresistibly drawn to Selina (Zoe Tapper), an attractive young convict, Margaret’s do-gooding quickly falls by the wayside.
Nothing is what it seems as Margaret becomes smitten with Selina, who once enjoyed celebrity as a successful medium before being convicted of fraud and the mysterious assault of a young girl. Fans of Sarah Waters (Tipping the Velvet, Fingersmith) will be happy to know that screenwriter Andrew Davies, fresh from adapting Jane Austen for the BBC, hews closely to her dark and eerie second novel. In preserving the atmospheric mood of the disturbing thriller, Davies faithfully transfers to the big screen Waters’ fascination with the seamy underbelly of Victorian propriety, where ladies’ frustrations find outlet in private sessions with a medium, and benevolence is a fragile facade for voyeuristic fascination.
Stylishly shot, Affinity features stellar performances from Anna Massey, Amanda Plummer and particularly Madely who does a superb job of conveying the unspoken longings of the intelligent and frustrated young Margaret, who is as much imprisoned by her gender and class as the mysterious Selina is by bars and chains.
CLOSING NIGHT FILM & PARTY
Breakfast with Scot
Sunday, June 29, 7:30 pm
Castro Theatre
$50 Frameline members
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Frameline32 saves one of the best for last with this only-in-Canada mix of homos, hockey and family values.
This light-hearted and touching comedy stars TV hunk Thomas Cavanagh (“Ed,” “Scrubs”) as Eric, an ex-hockey player turned sportscaster with memberships in three gyms. Eric is one of those gay guys who would describe himself as “straight-acting” in a personal ad—if he wasn’t too busy acting straight to place the ad.
Though not out at work, Eric is living the perfect gay life at home with his lawyer boyfriend Sam (the handsome Ben Shenkman of Angels in America and “Law & Order”). But their closet paradise is threatened when a long lost friend dies, and Eric and Sam are told they have custody of her 11-year-old son. Eric fears the arrival of a rude and messy brute who, before they know it, will be swiping beers from their refrigerator and deflowering girls on their 500-thread-count sheets. What they get instead is Scot (the charming Noah Bernett), an “artistic” waif who sings Christmas carols out of season, spells his name with one ‘t’ and likes to give everything, including his pee wee hockey uniform, “a little more sparkle.”
Can these uptight gay dads learn to love their sissy son? Or will Eric’s reluctance to “be gay”—or even be seen in public with Scot—stand in the way?
CENTERPIECE FILM
XXY
Tuesday, June 24, 7:00 pm
Castro Theatre
$10 Frameline members
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Argentina’s highly touted “New Cinema” had a big hit at last year’s Frameline31 Festival with Glue, a powerful drama about a trio of confused teenagers that won the juried prize for best first feature. This year the Argentines make another indelible impression with Frameline32’s Centerpiece presentation, the brilliant and unforgettable XXY.
First time director Lucia Puenzo has created a film as beautiful, tough and unpredictable as the rocky Uruguayan shoreline on which it is set. The moody and moving portrait she paints against that backdrop—with help from talented cinematographer Natasha Braier and fearless young actress Ines Flores—is like nothing you’ve seen in any other film.
XXY is a portrait of Alex, a 15-year-old coping with an extended puberty made more complicated by the presence of an extra chromosome and, according to her mother, a few extra parts. Born intersex, Alex has been brought up female. But now that her body is changing—and she’s faced with the prospect of “corrective” surgery that her father refused to allow when she was born—she’s beginning to wonder.
Things come to a head when her mother surprises Alex with a visit from a plastic surgeon and his family, and she finds herself being pushed to make a choice she’s not sure she wants to make. Her attraction to the doctor’s teenage son Alvaro just makes things all the more confusing.
Under Puenzo’s sensitive direction, Flores, who played the female corner of the teen triangle in Glue, brings Alex to the screen in an understated but powerful performance that will leave you thinking about the nature of gender and the choices we are forced to make.