This French Lesbian tale set in 1971 will premiere this week at the 30th BFI Flare London LGBT Film Festival, including the screening at the closing gala. A country girl named Delphine (Izïa Higelin) moves to Paris and meets feminist protester Carole (Cécile De France). They fall in love, which prompts Carole to abandon her male partner. Delphine then moves back to her parent’s farm because her father had a stroke and is no longer able to work.

Carole quickly realises how much she misses her lover and moves to the countryside in order to be with her lover. The two women, Delphine’s debilitated father and unsuspecting mother are all living under the same roof. The latter is blithely unaware of the relation between the two women, but then the unavoidable happens, and Delphine is forced to make a very difficult decision.

Summertime is not a bad film, but there is nothing dirty about it. It relies on unrequited love and Lesbian devices explored exhaustively and more effectively many times before, therefore the “mostly clean movie” rating. It does not have the wit and the energy of the almost equally-titled British Lesbian romance My Summer of Love (Paweł Pawlikowski, 2004), the fervour of The Pass (Ben A William’s gay-football drama that opened the BFI Flare this week), the dramatic elegance of Carol (Todd Haynes, 2015) nor strong political tones of The Dreamers (Bernardo Bertolucci, 2003), set in the 1969 student revolutions in Paris.

Corsini succeeded in delivering a beautiful picture of the both French countryside and the capital in the 1970s, but the narrative lacks a little flair and vigour. Julia Roberts lookalike Cécile De France’s performance is lukewarm, as is her chemistry with Izïa Higelin. Carole is never as charming and riveting as Carol (played by Cate Blanchett in Todd Haynes’s movie). The acting is neither poor nor amateurish, and there are a few delicate and sensual moments, but little more than that.

As a result, Summertime is a niche film, and it does not feel universal. It will be appreciated in the LGBT film circuit, – particularly by Lesbian – but it is unlikely that it will win the hearts of a broader audience.

Summertime premiered at the BFI Flare London LGBT Film Festival of 2016, when this piece was originally written. It’s on Mubi in June/July 2020.

Welcome to This House is a feature documentary film on the life of poet Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979). Hammer decided to film Bishop’s best loved homes in the United States, Canada and Brazil in order to stress the poet’s homesickness for Nova Scotia (in Canada) and her continuous search for a home. The poet became orphan very early in life, which triggered her move often. The film is hard to penetrate, as a vagina that fails to lubricate itself. The photos and images of poet’s objects and houses are juxtaposed and fragmented with no particular logic. It surely refers to the process of memory and the act of writing poetry, but in a documentary it fails to offer precise data.

For example the interviews with old lovers, friends and associates who knew the poet come with no introduction or subtitles. Who are they? What is their relation to Bishop? Some of her Brazilian friends speak in French, others in English, others in Portuguese. The confusion increases because sound of testimonies are intertwined with nature sounds of insects and other effects.

This complexity is only comprehensible to those familiar to Bishop’s poetry. Poems such as The Fish, The Armadillo and The Moose meditate on the transcendent power of nature. The poet claimed that it took her 20 years to finish the latter, which is dedicated to Grace Bulmer Bowers, one of her aunts and surrogate mothers. This obsessive way of writing startles an ordinary reader, likewise the fruition of Welcome to This House.

Missing documents enrich the narrative. Bishop’s precocious homosexuality and her preference for cities in the coast somewhat justify her staying in Brazil for almost two decades. She met the architect Lota de Macedo Soares in New York, who offered her house and love to the Canadian poet. Brazil in the 1950s was still very Catholic, hence lesbians had to be discreet, and it was probably difficult for her to adapt to this environment. Bishop was an artist without family or real ties with anywhere. She drank destructively. Her embarrassing heavy drinking was a cause for self-banishment and had serious effects on her relationships.

The film, though, does not explore this subject. It touches on Lota’s suicide as a regular note. It does not emphasize the consequent Bishop’s capacity of feeling guilty. As she wrote: “No coffee can wake you”. This event surely changed Bishop’s comprehension of the world, and influenced her following poems, but the documentary strangely dodges this. Bishop struggled to find a sense of belonging throughout her life. Her poems are filled with grief and longing, and the film never portrays this despair. On the contrary, the deaths and Bishop and Soares are deeply romanticised. Their portraits appear among the clouds, as if their deaths were a natural and painless rise.

Welcome to This House is part of BFI Flare: London LGBT Film Festival, which DMovies is currently covering live.

The Pass features an electrified Russell Tovey in the role of footballer Jason, who is unable to reconcile his homosexuality with his work. The film is based on an acclaimed theatre production by John Donnelly’s at the Royal Court, by the same name. The exquisite gay heartthrob Tovey is guarantee to hypnotise you – whether you love or you hate him.

The Pass is a very profound reflection on the shortcomings of the gay community and the football world, and how they have mostly failed to co-exist harmoniously. Tovey was branded the worst gay a few years ago for criticising effeminate gay men and blowing his own horn for being muscular and masculine. He was therefore the natural choice for the role, as in a way he does exactly what he was criticised for: feigning masculinity. Tovey delivers a highly energised, repulsively overconfident and grotesquely masculinised performance.

The film opens with Jason and fellow footballer Ade (Arinze Kene, pictured above with Tovey) in a hotel room in Bulgaria the night before a match. The two underwear-clad machos are prancing and horsing around like children to the point of sexual ebullition. Then time passes and destiny takes some twisted and unexpected turns. Williams examines the dilemmas and split life of Jason throughout the years and the difficult choices he has to make. The film never feels vulgar or exploitative. In fact, it is likely to enter the pantheon of British LGBT classics alongside Beautiful Thing (Hettie MacDonald, 1996) and My Beautiful Launderette (Stephen Frears, 1985).

The pass in the title refers to the games played on the pitch as well as to “crossing the line” in real life. Football is one of the last and strongest bastions of homophobia in the UK, and a reminder that our society still has some way to go before homosexuality is truly accepted. Above all, The Pass is a film about English obsessions and how futile and intoxicating they can become: football, celebrity culture, wealth, voyeurism and fitness. Williams minutely examines and exposes the pathology of all of them. He is supported by very strong performances, as well as simple and effective cinematography (the entire film takes place indoors).

The Pass holds a mirror to gay footballers and their homophobic counterparts. Williams’s debut has both a strong social message and universal appeal. It showed originally at the BFI Flare Film Festival this March, and it is out in cinemas on Friday, December 9th.

Watch the film trailer below:

In the 1950s and 1960s, young artists such as Martin Scorsese, Francis F. Coppola and George Lucas had to enroll in a university in order to gain access to equipment. Nowadays it is easy to be a filmmaker, as the production costs of a film have declined dramatically in the last 20 years. It is even possible to shoot an entire feature on a mobile phone. One of the best surprises of 2015, Tangerine (Sean S. Baker), was shot using an iPhone. Thanks to these changes, low-budget films like Little Pieces — which cost just £6,000 — and Benny Loves Killing (Ben Woodiwiss, 2012) — at just £4,000 — have been made possible. But access to good equipment does not necessarily mean quality.

Nearly a century ago, the Cinematograph Films Act of 1927 was introduced in order to stimulate the declining British film industry. It established a quota of British films in British cinemas. Its aim was to create a vertically integrated film industry, in which production, distribution and exhibition infrastructure are controlled by the same companies. This objective was not reached, but at least the Act helped to equip new filmmakers, thereby creating “quota quickies”. They were mostly low-cost, poor quality and highly experimental films made very quickly.

In many ways, Little Pieces is similar to these “quickies”. Firstly, it was shot in just 19 days. It tells the story of Michael and Eric, “two young men on a collision course with the world around them”. The film opens and closes with a man running, but it is quite difficult to understand what he is running from. Indeed it is tough to engage with the story from the beginning, for there is neither a climax nor thrilling sequences. The mise-en-scene is empty and poor, and the few random props do little for the narrative. The lighting is poor and the camerawork feels casual and careless, to the point of inexplicably fading out.

The filmmaker Adam Nelson affirms that his most important influence is Stanley Kubrick, but Little Pieces does not resonate any of the genius American filmmaker’s films. Kubrick possibly mastered more genres than any other director. His works include horror (The Shining, 1980), war movies (Full Metal Jacket, 1987), sci-fi (2001: A Space Odissey, 1968), classic (Spartacus, 1960), political satire (Dr. Strangelove, 1964) and period drama (Barry Lyndon, 1975).

Though some of the actors come from an acting course background, performances are meagre. It feels that the actors — and not the characters — have little focus and direction. There is a fine line between actor and character that often is disregarded in the film.

The soundtrack is clichéd, leading the audience to a melodramatic and sentimentalist response. Music, or the absence of music, is meant to enrich the narrative, or to another layer for the interpretation of the film, but sadly this is not the case here.

The film has a number of good aerial shots, though. The problem is that these little pieces of happiness do not add up to an effective movie. Little Pieces has few innovative and daring elements, which makes it a mostly clean movie (read about our rating system here). If you want to watch Little Pieces, just tweet @AppleParkFilms and you will receive a code which enables you to watch it online.

Cinema is one of the most liberating experiences one can have. The first filmmaker who deeply understood this issue was Alfred Hitchcock. He couldn’t bear moralists; on the contrary, he would challenge them. He knew that people went to the cinema in order to watch a crime, to indulge in a sin, to allow violence into their lives in a cathartic way. Being in the dark helps the audience to liberate their instincts. To see and not to be seen is a sine qua non condition for pleasure. The importance of the look and voyeurism in Hitchcock’s opus is crucial: he allows his audience to commit a crime by proxy.

To My Beloved is a tropical response to the freedom of voyeurism. Fernando (Fernando Alves Pinto) is a quiet and introspective widower, who raises his son by himself. Every night, while the boy sleeps, he recalls his lost love by sorting her personal belongings, such as clothes and VHS tapes. He is also a paranoid fetishist, who works for the police as a photographer. His world is naturally ruled by interpreting crimes and photos.

The movie relies on images (and less on dialogues) because the lead character is a photographer. There are similarities with Rear Window (Hitchcock, 1954), where framed pictures standing on a piece of furniture explain that James Stewart’s character is a photographer who suffered a car accident, and that his window is his view to the world. To My Beloved opens with a view of the living room with pictures of a dead mother and the rest of the family. This decision to “tell with images” prevails throughout the movie, while the suspense and the accurate timing entrance the audience. Fernando discovers that his wife betrayed him and he decides to run after her lover. It is incredibly easy to find him, because Fernando has access to the police files and Salvador (Lourinelson Vladmir) has a police record.

The filmmaker makes audiences switch allegiances throughout the movie. They know Fernando wants revenge, they know he has a gun, so how and when the crime is going to happen? Just like Hitchcock, the 37-year-old Brazilian director Aly Muritiba plays mind games and tones down tragedy with comic devices. For example, Fernando befriends with Salvador’s daughter, and the girl takes off her top in a car. Fernando asks whether she is sure this is what she wants to do, obviously referring to losing her virginity. But then there is a twist.

Muritiba does not underestimate the cognitive abilities of his viewers. He poses many questions to them, such as: If Fernando feigns Christianity in order to get closer to his wife’s lover, will then he regret his crime? After all, he is setting for himself a healthier routine. The film has plenty of situations that instigate curiosity, transferring the character’s obsession to the public. Fernando Alves Pinto’s performance is heady and rich.

To My Beloved premiered at the 39th São Paulo International Film Festival last year and will be in Brazilian cinemas on March 31st. The film is now seeking distributors in Europe and elsewhere.

Watch the film trailer below:

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Pregnant Kate (Clémence Poésy) lives with her partner Justin (Stephen Campbell Moore) in a flat in London. German Teresa (Laura Birn), who is also pregnant, and her controlling husband Jon (David Morrissey) suddenly move in downstairs. They try to befriend their new neighbours, but tragedy soon strikes and Teresa loses her child, and she blames Kate for the freak accident that caused the miscarriage. Kate then gives birth to a healthy child, but then unexplained events begin to unfold, and the mother becomes increasingly scared for her baby boy.

The Ones Below is about English fears of conviviality and social conventions. David Farr’s first feature film (he had previously directed TV series and short movies) deftly translates the anxieties of a very private and reserved people (the English) into very effective suspense. The film is populated with moments of awkward silence and uncomfortably cordial chatter between neighbours. Various camera shots through glasses add to the tension and the alienation. The English are often uneasy about engaging with people living next to them, with Justin noting that “in London you never meet your neighbours”. You have to look through glassed windows in order to see the people next door or below.

The fear of the outsider (non-English) is also present. Kate and Justin describe Teresa as “something else” and “cooky”, unable to find the word “foreign”. Laura Birn does indeed deliver a bone-chilling and ambiguous performance, which will make you dump your German girlfriend as quickly as possible. She has loud sex, gets naked in a public shower (while Kate keeps her bathing suit on) and insists that Kate breastfeeds in public – actions which still make some English people cringe. In other words, Teresa gets too close to the bone, which makes her creepy, and even scary.

The other three leading actors do a terrific job in incorporating the eerie side of the English. Jon is uptight and anal, always leaving the shoes outside in the same position, while Kate and Justin are too polite to express their real thoughts and feelings towards their neighbours.

Just like Roman Polanki’s Rosemary’s Baby (1968), the plot in Farr’s film revolves around a woman scared of losing her child or perhaps going paranoid (it is unclear which until the end of the movie). Both films explore maternal angst and fear of conspiracy to chilling results. Even the seemingly loving husband is at times ambiguous and suspicious, although the John Cassevetes (in Polanski’s film) is far more threatening than the equally handsome Campbell Moore (in the English movie).

The Ones Below premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival followed by the BFI London Film Festival and has been selected for Berlin International Film Festival’s Panorama Section. It is out in cinemas all around the UK on Friday March 11th.

The BFI Flare is one of the longest running and most respected LGBT film festivals in the world, and the UK’s leading LGBT film event. It takes place in London every year, and it celebrates its 30th anniversary this year. The packed programme takes place from March 16th to March 27th.

The Festival will open with The Pass, a new British drama directed by first-time feature filmmaker Ben A. Williams, starring the film and TV star Russell Tovey and Arinze Kene. The screening will take place at the Odeon Leicester Square, the largest cinema in the UK. This represents a great honour and achievement for the event: the last time it used the mammoth venue was a decade ago.

So, what is it that makes a film LGBT or suitable for the festival? The Festival Programmer Brian Robinson clarified that the LGBT angle can be in the film story but also in the history of those involved in the filmmaking process, particularly “the persona of the movie director”. In other words, the sexual diversity can be both in front or behind the camera, making the scope of the event very broad and diverse

Robinson also explains that they strive to make a festival of UK premieres, but this is not set in stone. Most importantly, “the film must tell a good story, take you to places you haven’t been, or simply inspire and inform”, he concludes.

This year the event will be divided into three sections, Hearts, Minds and Bodies with key themes emerging including British film and new British talent, transgender representation and Queer Science and new technology. Film highlights this year include Summertime (Catherine Corsini) – about a country girl who meets an urbanite during a feminist protest in Paris – and Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures (Fenton Bailey/ Randy Barbato) – an profound and uncompromising portrait of the life and work of the legendary American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. Click here in order to view the full festival programme and to buy your tickets.

As a special feature in the anniversary programme, screenings will continue on the day after the Closing Gala (Easter Sunday 27 March) with a Second Chance Sunday devoted to 2016 Festival best-sellers and a selection of LGBT archive gems from the Festivals’ history.

DMovies will follow the event live and bring the filthiest developments firsthand to you.

Many people believe that societies like Sweden treat their people fairly, with a good criminal justice system and effective social reinsertion tools for those leaving prison, particularly the young. Magnus von Horn’s first feature, The Here After, pours cold water onto common sense and strong rooted ideas. It is a hybrid of art house and thriller flick in which the backstory is fully revealed only after a whole hour into the film, when teenager John (played by the local rock star Ulrik Munther) leaves custody and goes back to his rural community.

John returns to his old school, but his schoolmates welcome him with evident fear and hatred, and bullying slowly morphs into psychodrama. The tension increases up to the point that John’s father regrets bringing his own child home again. John suffers in silence, and his pain gradually brings him closer to the audiences, who ultimately empathise with the wrongdoer. His own guilt, uncertainty and rage come to surface in a scene at the supermarket, when he meets the mother of the girl he killed. At that point, film viewers are already on John’s side, because they too have experienced his daily torment.

Fortunately, John is not alone. He befriends his female classmate Malin (Loa Ek), who is new to the community and doesn’t know anything from his past. Despite his colleague’s affection, what prevails is John’s fight to reintegrate into his environment. The filmmaker and his director of photography, Lukasz Zal, establish a rigorous camera style that privileges distance and restraint. They favour long takes and avoid extensive dialogue. The consequence is an eloquent cinematic speech.

Even though John and his family are willing to move on, their small, rural community is still resentful. A final explosion of violence becomes inevitable. Repression and access to formal education does not necessarily translate into civilised living, a recurring topic in Scandinavian cinema. There are echoes of Thomas Vinterberg’s The Hunt (2012). In the Danish movie, a kindergarten teacher (Mads Mikkelsen) collapses after one of his students implies that he had molested her, but in this case it was a lie.

The Here After played in Cannes and the Toronto Film Festival in 2015. It is out in the UK release on Friday, March 11th. The film is now available on BFI player – just click here in order to watch it!

Anna Fritz (Alba Ribas) is a young and stunning Spanish actress, who has suddenly died. Her body is transferred to a city morgue, where an employee named Pau (Albert Carbó) becomes enchanted with the corpse. He takes pictures of the dead actor and sends them to two friends Iván (Cristian Valencia) and Javi (Bernat Saumell), who quickly accede to the hospital and demand to see Anna’s body. They then engage in a cocaine and alcohol fueled binge, and quickly lose their inhibitions, taking advantage of the beautiful body in many ways. Until the unexpected happens.

There is absolutely nothing new and innovative in The Corpse of Anna Fritz. Yet the film successfully recycles and combines many old artifices of horror. It uses a twist almost identical to Quentin Tarantino (in case you haven’t guessed it yet, then watch the film), but the debutant Spanish director uses it to entirely different results.

The Corpse of Anna Fritz is a tense and riveting tale of male perversion, which blends elements of Spanish horror (as in Jaume Balagueró’s REC, from 2007) and the tradition of American teenage slashers. The atmosphere is grey and somber, and there seems to be no way out, just like for the victims of Jason of Friday then 13th series. The sexual deviation of the men in the film is so repulsive that it inevitably leads to trouble and possibly very serious consequences. In the tradition of horror movies, being caught in the sexual act normally results in being attacked by the killer. Here, the outcome is different but no less pretty.

Female vulnerability and submission are also a central theme in the film. The young men are intoxicated by the prospect of an entirely lifeless woman, they simply cannot believe their luck. It’s boys behaving like boys, exploring their fears and curiosities without restraints. Ultimately, the film is also a comment on celebrity culture, and how young people become obsessed by the idea of touching, seeing, feeling and possessing celebrity.

The Corpse of Anna Fritz is out on March 8th, International Women’s Day, and you can watch it now on FlixFling.