Monday, November 3, 2008

Reeling 2008

by Anna Pulley

Changing Spots

Former child star Molly Brite (Lane West) is having a rough week. After scoring the lead in a mainstream movie - her first in years - she is soon fired. Her partner of five years, Peg, (Danielle Egnew) miscarries and then walks out on her. Molly continues to be haunted by the violent incest of her past that has never been addressed, by herself or her family.

Changing Spots tackles a number of serious and taboo issues in its comparatively brief 93-minute span. Incest, rape, pregnancy/miscarriage, middle-aged artists struggling to revive their careers and pay the rent, alcoholism – you name it. However, the film falls short of dealing with these themes in meaningful ways. In many respects, the film reads like a television drama – every single problem is neatly wrapped up by the film’s end, which makes the resolutions superficial, and ultimately unbelievable. Sure, everyone’s a sucker for a happy ending and after all the hardship the characters endure, they deserve SOME kind of gratification, but to resolve every complex situation in such a superficial way is irresponsible and underscores the severity of the circumstances. A surprise pregnancy! Cures for alcoholism and Alzheimers! Renewed successful careers for everyone! Relationships mended! Too much focus is placed on the predictability of the quick fix and because of that, the rest of the film’s laudable elements suffer.

In true lesbian fashion, several of the people involved with the film are also romantically involved with each other. Lane West is in a relationship with the director Susan Turley. Lane’s screen partner Danielle Egnew is dating Jenny Sherwin, who plays her best friend in the film. In addition, Lane and Susan co-wrote the script. Lane also co-produced the film with Jenny. And the film’s dedication went to Lane as well. While props are certainly in order for these Renaissance women, the film would have perhaps been aided had they looked outside themselves and their pillow partners for collaboration.

Sugar Rush

If Sugar Rush, the British drama surrounding the ever-adorable LiLo lookalike, Olivia Hallinan, seems anti-climactic, it’s because it is three short episodes from a television series that ended in 2006. The show’s premise involves the kind of teen angst we’re used to seeing in pretty much every teenage show ever created, only this teen, Kim, is a not-yet-out lesbian who’s in love with her straight best friend, Sugar. Also, it’s British, so add a few thousand cigarettes, and enough booze to sterilize a small lake. Despite Sugar’s charisma and general slutterrific-ness, she has no other friends save for Kim, and they spend a lot of time crying in bathroom stalls, creating mild havoc and smoking. In the last episode, Kim plans on date-raping Sugar using her parents’ well-stocked medicine cabinet, only to have it backfire in an unusual way. While this premise is problematic on a number of levels, the show manages to come across as not completely offensive because of Kim’s cluelessness around getting someone to shag her, which makes her seem more pathetic than predatory. Also, judging by Kim’s general innocence, it’s highly improbable that she could actually go through with such a thing.

When she’s not scheming up rape scenarios, Kim is also dealing with a number of familial oddities: her mother’s f*cking the handyman, her brother thinks he’s a martian, her dorky trombone-playing neighbor keeps hitting on her, etc. The pace is snappy, with a music video-quality to the editing, which is fond of extreme close-ups, mostly of boobs and molars. If Sugar Rush was watched the way it was meant to be watched, either in weekly segments or in a DVD marathon, it might become pretty addictive. But as it is, this brief glimpse is kind of “feh”—like someone you wouldn’t kick out of a coat-check closet, but not necessarily date long term. There’s too little time to invest in the characters, regardless of how much they look like Lindsay Lohan.

3Way

If MTV’s Real World impregnated Three’s Company, then thought better of it, the aborted fetus would be something akin to 3Way. The premise: Start with three lesbians, a hot couple and a rotund security guard named Geri (played by Emmy award-winning actress Maile Flanagan. Don’t tell me you’ve never seen “Jakers! The Adventures of Piggley Winks!”) Add a washed up straight girl trying to revive her ailing soap opera career. Stir in the kind of acting that lands people roles in late night Cinemax infomercials. Get baked. Really. It’s the only way to sit through this terrible TV series.

Like all shows with provocative titles and a promised cameo by Jenny Shimizu (whose claim to fame is sleeping with Angelina Jolie and Madonna), I had mild hopes for this film, if nothing else than to see girls kissing. But even with my shallow expectations, 3Way was still an abysmal disappointment. In a series of non-sequitur scenes that mimic sketch comedy routines (minus the comedy), 3Way has no tangible order or sense. One minute a stalker ex is boiling Geri’s prosthetic finger, the next minute they are wandering around Dinah Shore, then the next minute the show becomes a completely different show, a lesbian cop drama that involves none of them (but does involve the butch actress from Better Than Chocolate (Christina Cox), if anyone is feeling nostalgic). The one sketch that does have any kind of linearity is one that is also horribly repetitive, where the same lines are rehearsed 6 separate times. Granted, the straight girl is supposedly auditioning for a part, but by the time it was over, I had memorized the scene. And that’s not okay.

There are a few decent one-liners - “Some people look at her and think ‘whore.’ I look at her and think ‘opportunity,’” with the best one uttered by Jenny Shimizu, who tries to pick up the straight girl at a party. “You know, I’ve slept with a lot of beautiful women…but not all of them.” Despite the occasional successful joke, the majority of the material is canned and uninspired. Though it might be worth sitting through just to see how far Kristy Swanson has gone downhill from her role as the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Watch at your own risk.

Steam

It’s pretty hard for Ally Sheedy to do wrong in my eyes. She had me at “Hello, I’m a heroin addict” in High Art. And her adorable Brat Pack roles make watching Emilio Estevez movies significantly more tolerable. Her latest venture, Steam, revolves around the very different lives of three women, who happen to go to the same gym (?). Part romance and part Lifetime series, Steam takes a formulaic approach to addressing the problems of the three main characters, which all hinge upon the fear of disappointing others at the expense of their own happiness. Sounds like an after school special, right? It is, but it succeeds because watching women kick ass never gets old and did I mention Ally Sheedy is in this? The lesbian portion of Steam centers on a 19-year-old with a strict Christian father and a mother forbidden to make facial expressions. She meets a charismatic bisexual, Niala, in (where else?) a Gender Studies class, who schools her in the art of…Sapphic poetry. About a minute later, they have merged, sporting identical hairstyles and nose rings. But since bisexuals are often characterized as philandering, heartbreaking trollops who must have something in their vaginas at all times, things may not bode so well for our young, newly out, ex-Christian heroine. Regardless, there’s still a decent sex scene between them and another one with Ally Sheedy, her son’s soccer coach and some very lucky drywall.

The steam metaphor resonates throughout the film, as they each work through their trials and are reborn as stronger, more enlightened people. But don’t be too quick to break out the celebratory Raisinettes because there are plenty of bumps along the way. Not those bumps, you dirty birds. Well, okay a few. Bonus: If you want to see the Drill Sergeant from Saved by the Bell exhibit the most overzealous crying scene in the history of overzealous crying, then you are in for a treat!