Queer treats on show for SFF

The full program for this year’s Sydney Film Festival was announced last week, with two of the film industry’s biggest names, Cate Blanchett and Ewan McGregor, respectively starring in the opening and closing night films.

“It’s a really nice parenthesis to the festival. The opening night film [Hanna] was a no-brainer, having such terrific performances from both Cate and Eric Bana in such a striking film by Joe Wright,” festival director Clare Stewart told the Star Observer.

Wright’s muse of sorts, Saoirse Ronan, plays a girl being trained by her father as an assassin in the wilds of north Finland. Her target: CIA operative Marissa Wiegler (Blanchett).

The closing night film, Mike Mills’ Beginners, draws together several interwoven storylines, one of which sees Ewan McGregor as a mid-30s graphic designer grappling with his newly-out father’s relationship with a young boyfriend.

“There’s a lot going on and it all sounds quite serious, but it’s quite uplifting. There’s no way anyone will leave the cinema without a smile on their face, which is a necessary deliverable for a closing night film,” Stewart said.

In one of the festival’s undoubted highlights, Margaret Pomeranz and David Stratton will revisit some of the films that prompted their most heated debates over a quarter of a decade of The Movie Show and At The Movies in the session Films That Divide Us.

“It’ll be a historical clash-rehash, which will be fun. One of the things that’s absolutely essential to their appeal is the notion that they’re often very divided about films,” Stewart said.

And GLBTI viewers seeking queer-specific content at the festival won’t have to look too hard. German film Three, which is screening in sponsorship with the Star Observer, focuses on a heterosexual couple who each separately fall in love with the same man.

“It’s quite playful, and there’s a really nice difference that emerges between the two relationships. The scenes where the two men first meet in the change rooms of a pool are fantastic,” Stewart said, perhaps aware that the prospect of a same-sex rendezvous in a change room would interest SSO readers.

There’s also Tomboy, a French film about a 10-year old girl who dresses and acts very much like a boy and moves with her parents to a new neighbourhood, where she’s unquestioningly accepted as male (“She goes from being known as Laura by her family to being known as Michael amongst her new friends”). Chilean film Old Cats tells the story of a lesbian couple who visit one of the women’s elderly parents with the intention of wrangling their apartment from them — a film

Stewart described as “endearing, sharp and blackly comic”.

Keep reading the Star Observer in the lead-up to June 8 for more information on the picks of the Sydney Film Festival.

info: The Sydney Film Festival runs June 8 – 19. Tickets are on sale now. Visit http://sff.org.au/