Reeling

by Anna Pulley

Butch Jamie: Being a Successful Leading Lady Takes Balls, Literally

Writer/director/actor Michelle Ehlen poses the ultimate conundrum in her first feature-length film Butch Jamie: lesbian versus cat – who do we root for? Jamie is a struggling Hollywood actor who doesn’t fit the conventions of a leading lady (Is it the soul patch?). As if the humiliation of femmeying herself up and being continually shot down weren’t enough, Jamie is also forced to deal with the success of her roommate’s cat Howard, actor extraordinaire. As Howard effortlessly gets role after role, Jamie’s bitterness escalates to the point of having existential arguments with him. “I can eat fake flowers too!” Part of the charm of Butch Jamie is its irreverence, its ability to laugh at the purrformance of gender (sorry) and how these performances change our perceptions of the world and how we react/relate to others.

With the aid of her cute lesbro friend, Jamie becomes emboldened and decides to audition for a film in all her butch glory – and wouldn’t you know, she nails it. The catch is the directors want her to play a man and to pretend to be a man while on the set. So she dons a tube sock and some facial hair and becomes Male Jamie. While it looked as if someone had glued a ferbie to her face, Jamie easily passes as a man, and even catches the attention of the waifish costume designer. I won’t ruin the many discoveries Jamie makes during her foray in the male realm, though the words “piece of ass” are definitely involved, and paint cans, and a run-in with an angry German, recovering alcoholic lesbian. (Ed note: but not all at once!)

In addition to gender, dating conventions, male stereotypes and assumptions are also played with, which provided the bulk of the laughter, though sometimes in tired ways. For instance, apropos of nothing, Jamie tells a fellow male co-worker, “Yeah, I banged her” and points to a random girl on the set. And the requisite “bisexuality doesn’t exist” rhetoric is in there as well, which is quite common in queer films and kind of ironic, considering the widely held belief of “diversity” that the queer community claims to embrace. But, Butch Jamie isn’t really about seriousness – it is a romantic comedy after all. One great scene involved the discovery of Jamie’s Ace bandage, which she’d been using to bind her rack with. Not willing to give up the façade, she makes the outlandish claim that her heart has just been replaced by a raccoon’s. If you’re looking for some comic relief, Butch Jamie might be just what you’re looking for. Though don’t look too hard or you’ll scare the ferbie.

Lez Be Friends:

Directed by Glenn Gaylord (really), Lez Be Friends is a two episode feature-length film that mimics the styles of 60s era TV sitcoms like "All in the Family" and "Three's Company," replete with canned laughter, over-the-top antics and a rollicking bout of crabs (really). Butch dyke Ricca Pike - "What were my parents thinking naming me that? They might as well have toilet trained me with a strap-on" - is a lesbian Lothario whose sharp mind and sharper tongue are quick to point out the many injustices of the world and to take jabs at her gay best friend Jamie, a pretty boy with a big heart and a secret penchant for assless chaps. Ricca and Jamie have just moved from Ohio to New York, a day after the Stonewall riots. Fortuitously enough, it's also the same day that Blake, the hottie bartender at the Stonewall Inn, is in search of two roommates because his old roommates/lovers have broken up with him that morning. "And we're taking the Marilyn Monroe macrame tea cozy!"

The premise seems enticing - finally, a queer version of Friends! - but that's about where it ends. The jokes are as canned as the laugh track: let's make the butch dress as a straight girl hahahahahaha and the rest of the dialogue is one hapless zinger after another. "Who let the bulldyke in the china shop?" (ba da bing) "They don't say 'pop' in New York?" "Only if referring to how the weasel goes" (ba da...you get the idea.) There were a few genuinely funny moments but the majority of the film is grating and one-dimensional. And the stereotypes the three main characters are supposed to embody are about as laughable as watching a parrot sing the national anthem (no, actually, that'd be funnier). Ricca, the supposed lady killer, looks like a cross between Austin Powers and a chipmunk, with glue-on armpit hair, velour jogging suits and all. The first episode of the two part sitcom, "Stonewalled" is devoted to her learning to act straight to appease the lez-hating landlord. The second half, "All's Kwell that Ends Kwell" revolves around uncovering which roommate gave the other two pubic lice. With real commercials from the 60s interspersed throughout, including one for venereal diseases (really), Lez Be Friends is an attempted homage to the ridiculousness of the sitcom genre, with a few cute shirtless fags, a braless butch, a perpetually drunk drag queen and a hippy lesbian named Fennel. If you've been mourning the loss of your Full House days, this might be the dose of nostalgia you need to remember why you don't watch those kinds of shows anymore.

Spider Lilies:

I had such hope for this movie, based mostly on the erotic cover of the film yes, but also because there's a webcam girl and a tattoo artist involved. Spider Lilies by Zero Chou is an erotic drama involving Takeko (Isabella Leong) a tattoo artist mourning the loss of her father, her mentally disabled younger brother and with a severely misplaced sense of guilt around her sexuality. The stoic Takeko, tomboyish yet graceful, meets Jade (Taiwanese singer Rainie Yang) a precocious girl who earns her keep on the web, where she seduces and flirts with men, that is unless her somewhat incoherent grandmother happens to walk in front of the camera. Jade and Takeko have met before, in fact they used to be neighbors, though their rather large age difference makes for a slightly pervy dynamic

Rainie Yang plays cute webcam girl Jade, who wants to get a tattoo to attract her online clients. She visits the tattoo parlor run by Takeko (Isabella Leong), and immediately remembers Takeko to be her childhood crush. Jade sees a stunningly beautiful spider lily pattern on Takeko’s wall. She pleads Takeko to tattoo that on her body as “a mark of love”, without knowing how special this poisonous flower means to Takeko. Takeko pretends to have forgotten Jade, but there are actually traumatic experiences that Takeko can never forget…

Other new generation actors who join the cast of Spider Lilies include Jay of Taiwanese duo Awaking, John Shen of Genki Boys, and Kris Shie in his film debut.