THE LOWDOWN ON DENVER FILM FEST

THE DENVER FILM FESTIVAL UNSPOOLS November 4–15 at area locations. The fest features several LGBT shorts, documentaries, and features. Here’s a rundown of the some of the highlights from this year’s program.

One of the festival’s Red Carpet Premieres is Todd Haynes’ stunning romantic drama Carol, adapted from Patricia Highsmith’s classic lesbian novel “The Price of Salt.” This stylish and piercing character study is both a heart-rending drama and a striking romance about two women. Therese (Rooney Mara), a young shopgirl, and Carol (Cate Blanchett), a married woman, are coming to terms with their sexual identities in the conformist era of the 1950s. Superbly acted by Blanchett and Rooney, and featuring gorgeous period costumes and design, Carol shows how each woman works toward securing professional, familial, and sexual happiness, and the cost true love entails. It’s magnificent.

Out filmmaker Ron Nyswaner directs the fine documentary She’s the Best Thing In It, about Mary Louise Wilson, a Tony-award-winning actress (for Grey Gardens) teaching an acting class in New Orleans. Teaching is a new role for the 44-year veteran of the stage, screen, and TV, and she worries about communicating to her young students as she gives them acting exercises. Nyswaner’s film shows the secrets of being a good character actor through clips of Wilson on stage and screen and from interviews with other performers, including Tyne Daly and Frances McDormand. Wilson’s candor in discussing her personal loneliness, alcoholism, and estranged relationship with her gay older brother provides as much insight as her master class on performing.

An Act of Love uses the standard documentary elements — talking heads, news footage, and recreations — to recount the heartfelt and impassioned story of Rev. Frank Schaefer, a United Methodist Church Pastor in Lebanon, PA, who was defrocked six years after officiating at his son Tim’s same-sex wedding ceremony. The film’s politics are squarely on the LGBTQ/equality side, even as it gives voice to those who condemn Rev. Schaefer for breaking the covenant of the Book of Discipline. This articulate film, written and directed by Scott Sheppard, provides an inspiring portrait of a man who unexpectedly became an activist, and his many supporters.

Call Me Marianna is a sensitive Polish film about Marianna Klapczynski and her transition from male to female. She says she is “disgusted by her own body,” and meets with various lawyers and doctors who legally, psychologically, and physically prepare her for the irreversible surgery. While her relationship with her parents and family is strained, she has supportive friends, and even a boyfriend. Director Karolina Bielawska intercuts the documentary scenes with a stage reading of a play to contextualize Marianna’s experiences provide insight into Marianna’s mental, physical, and emotional journey.

Also from Poland is writer/director Urszula Antoniak’s Nude Area, a glossy, enigmatic pas de deux between two young women (Sammy Boonstra and Imaan Hammam). Eyeing each other in a women’s shower/locker room, they play an extended game of cat and mouse as they follow one another through the city. The women never speak — even when they are intimately connected, or when one spills food (deliberately) on the other. With chapters entitled Love, Langour, Lovers, and Letting Go, Nude Area repeats motifs to gauge the women’s attractions, but Antoniak’s film becomes more enervating and less intriguing as it unspools.

In Sworn Virgin, Hana, a teenage Albanian girl, makes a considerable decision to become “Mark” (Alba Rohrwacher), so she can live “as a man.” She is following the law of the Kanun: swearing lifelong virginity so she can live in the mountain village with the entitlements of patriarchy. It’s a considerable sacrifice, the effects of which are played out in this intriguing film. Director and co-writer Laura Bispuri, who adapted Elvira Dones’ novel, chronicles Mark’s reunion with his sister Lila (Flonja Kodheli), after 14 years apart. If the atmospheric Sworn Virgin exhibits a raw, chilly tone as Mark’s transformation unfolds, his integration into contemporary society becomes more interesting.

The Denver Film Festival also features several LGBT-themed shorts.

One of the best is We Can’t Live Without Cosmos, a terrific, wordless, animated short about two cosmonauts who share a life together only to have things change when they train for a mission. Stylishly made, and unexpectedly moving, this import is highly satisfying.

Also quite strong is The Outfit, by Yen Tan, about James (AJ Bowen), a conservative Republican congressman who is literally haunted by the clothes in his closet. When an outfit he wears is deemed “gayer than having anal sex with the Wizard of Oz,” he tries to get rid of it, but the shirt and belt keep mysteriously returning to his closet. The metaphor for James to come out is not subtle, but Tan’s short nicely mixes comedy, drama, and thriller elements, and Bowen is fantastic as the insecure James.

Manchego is an amusing short about a young woman (Lisa Diveney) who comes home to come out, but encounters her parents plans to set her up with a divorced man (Nicholas Agnew). Nicely played and filmed, Manchego is a bit slight, but it is worthwhile.

In contrast, the highly stylized Hallway, filmed in a secret sex club in New York, depicts a passionate encounter between two drug-fueled women. Shot in black light, the actresses (Margaret Singer and Sarah Ellen Stephens) have multi-colored stripes painted on their faces to emphasize their expressions. This also gives them an otherworldly quality as the silhouetted bodies couple and uncouple as things grow increasingly more tense (and intense) between them.

The Denver Film Festival will also screen two films by out filmmakers: Nicholas Hytner’s Lady in the Van, based on the play by Alan Bennett, stars Maggie Smith as a woman who lives in a caravan parked in a man’s driveway, and Cemetery of Splendor the latest trance-inducing film by Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul, about a soldier with sleeping sickness.

For tickets, schedule, and more information about the festival, visit www.DenverFilm.org