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In ‘Neptune Frost,’ the future is nonbinary

Praise for an ‘Afrofuturist sci-fi punk musical’

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Cheryl Isheja stars in ‘Neptune Frost.’ (Photo courtesy Kino Lorber)

With all the big queer movies that came our way for this year’s Pride month, it’s inevitable that a few would be lost in the mix – an unfortunate fate, because it’s often the under-the-radar titles that most deserve to stand out from the crowd.

Fortunately, it’s never too late to discover (or to recommend) a hidden gem, and the upcoming digital release of “Neptune Frost,” which premiered at last year’s Cannes Festival and enjoyed a brief but critically acclaimed theatrical release in June, is a perfect opportunity to do both. Created by Saul Williams – an acclaimed American poet, screenwriter, musician, and actor – and co-directed by Williams and Rwandan-born artist and cinematographer Anisia Uzeyman, it’s described in its publicity material as “an Afrofuturist sci-fi punk musical,” but while that label may convey something close to the movie’s general “flavor,” it falls far short of capturing the multi-layered essence of the film itself.

Set in the African hilltops of Burundi, the film intertwines the separate flights of two refugees – Matalusa (Bertrand Ninteretse “Kaya Free”), who is fleeing a life of enforced labor as a coltan miner, and an intersex runaway named Neptune (Elvis Ngabo/Cheryl Isheja) – as they journey across the countryside; led by dreams and visions, their paths converge at a mysterious outpost in the wilderness, where a would-be hackers’ collective dreams of disrupting “The Authority” by exposing its lies and corruption. The newcomers quickly fall in love, and their connection provides the fuel the group needs to enact its plan for elevating the world’s consciousness – but even with the help of a mystical power grid and guidance from higher dimensions, will their efforts be enough to make a difference?

If the plotline seems vague, that’s because “Neptune Frost” is not a movie that follows strict narrative rules. Instead, it uses its setting and characters to transcend those expectations and take us into a frame of mind more conducive to an unrestricted flow of ideas. Equal parts primal myth and dystopian techno-drama, it exists in a state of pluralities, where past and present, dream and reality, freedom and enslavement, and all of the other “binaries” whose interplays define (and limit) our existence can be revealed as spectrums in states of constant flux. 

Key among the rigid constructs that the film challenges, of course, is the idea of gender. Neptune, the film’s eponymous intersex narrator, whose escape from a repressive tribal village is just as much an escape from repressive strictures about gender and sexuality, is empowered by transcending those boundaries. Other characters, too, tend toward the nonbinary in presentation; in the enlightened collective, gender is just one of the many irrelevant differences exploited by the powerful to maintain control over society. Yet the ignorance that persists around such matters in our world cannot be disregarded, as we are reminded when repercussions from a gender trauma in Neptune’s past become a threat to the security of the entire commune.

The gender binary, prominent as it is in Williams’s screenplay, is not the only “illusion of duality” that “Neptune Frost” endeavors to shatter, something it effects by taking us on a wild ride in which thematic threads intertwine and conflate until they all blend together like a fun house mirror maze built of metaphors. Does that get a little confusing sometimes? Yes, it does, and gloriously so. It’s precisely because it confounds our efforts to make linear sense of what we are seeing that the movie has the power to break our programming – and appropriately enough for a movie so heavily laden with the language, imagery, and conceptual building blocks of computers, programming is what it’s all about.

Williams and Uzeyman don’t just rely on short-circuiting our rational brains to get their points across, however; they draw generously from the ability of cinema – and theater, where both directors have spent considerable time honing their sensibilities – to guide us into the heightened “meta-reality” in which their story lives. Bathed in an exquisite color palette, laden with bold visual strokes and striking imagery, interwoven with symbolism as potent as it is delicate, their movie mesmerizes us; indeed, one could watch “Neptune Frost” with the sound turned off and still absorb the full gist of its messaging.

To do so, however, would be to miss out on one of its highlights: the music. It might be tempting to be skeptical about a science fiction musical, but the song score (composed by Williams) quickly dispels any concerns of gimmickry. There are no showy, glitzy Broadway-style earworms here; visceral yet erudite, observational yet fierce, the musical numbers bear more resemblance to the interjections of a classical Greek chorus, filtered through a rich musical legacy that stretches from traditional tribal chants and rhythms to soulful laments and fiery rap. They are fully realized set pieces, each crucial to telling the story, and they deliver some of the film’s most potent imagery and ideas.

On that subject, its tempting to delve into comparisons with great films and filmmakers evoked by “Neptune Frost” — the near-psychedelic dream cinema of Alejandro Jodorowsky, for example, or the reggae-fueled rebellion of Perry Henzell’s anti-heroic masterpiece “The Harder They Come.” Such observations seem moot, however, in relation to a movie whose uniqueness is part of its very essence; after all, Williams – who conceived the story as a graphic novel, explored it through three musical albums, and finally brought it to life on film – always intended it to be unlike anything else you’ve ever seen, because the stakes in our world are too high to retread old ideas.

“Maya Angelou once said that anything an artist writes should be written with the urgency of what they would write if someone were holding a gun in their mouth,” Williams writes in his director’s notes for the film. “The state of this country and the world has my mouth propped open enough to swallow whole timelines. We need art that is unafraid to challenge the narrative structure of our programming. Computational propaganda circulates at the speed of colonial diseases through indigenous populations. Music is a time-machine.”

That quote tells you everything you need to know going into “Neptune Frost.” It helps to be reassured that the cast of unknowns (in America, at least) is stellar, each giving an impassioned and luminous performance, and that the film’s whirlwind of heady sociopolitical deprogramming is balanced by moments of sheer, incandescent humanity – and it’s undeniable that, without such elements, none of Williams’s and Uzeyman’s conceits would work. Ultimately, though, the purpose of “Neptune Frost” is not to make you comfortable, or to reassure you with hope for the future, or to reinforce your faith in whatever spiritual center to which you like to anchor yourself; and though it reverberates with a proud and defiant Black voice, crying out against centuries of colonization, subjugation, exploitation, and genocide, it’s not even trying to raise awareness about Black issues, because the issues it thrusts into your consciousness go far deeper than race.

This movie is a call to action, no less urgent for being a musical, and it wants us to hack the world.

“Neptune Frost” releases on all major VOD platforms July 26.

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Neo-noir ‘Femme’ offers sexy, intense revenge fantasy

A work of real and thrilling cinematic vision

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George MacKay and Nathan Stewart-Jarrett star in ‘Femme.’ (Photo courtesy of Utopia)

They say “revenge is sweet,” and it must be true. Why else would so many of our popular stories, dating all the way back to “Medea” and beyond, be focused on the idea of getting “even” with the people who have done us wrong?

It’s a concept with obvious appeal for anyone who has felt unjustly used by the world – or, more accurately, by the people in it – but that has particular resonance, perhaps, for modern queer audiences, long used to being relegated to the status of “victim” in the narratives we see on our screens. In “Femme” — the new UK indie thriller helmed by first-time feature directors Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping, now in limited theatrical release and expanding wider over the next two weeks — it provides the irresistible hook for a gripping tale of calculated vengeance in the face of anti-queer violence. Like the best of such stories, however, it’s as much a cautionary tale as it is a wish-fulfillment fantasy.

Set in London, it centers on Jules (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett), aka Aphrodite Banks, a popular drag performer in the city’s queer club scene who, after a performance one night, steps out in full costume to buy a pack of cigarettes and becomes the victim of a traumatic “gay bashing” incident at the hands of a young man goaded to violence by a thuggish gang of friends. Months later, though he’s recovered from his physical injuries, he is still deeply affected by the inner scars that linger. Robbed of the confidence that allowed him to perform, he’s withdrawn into a reclusive life, until concern from his friends and housemates prompts him to finally venture out into the world for a night of cruising at a gay sauna – where he encounters his bully doing the same thing. 

Unrecognizable and anonymously masculine out of his drag persona, Jules finds himself beginning a dangerous and duplicitous game in which he plans to “out” his former attacker – whose name, as he learns, is Preston (George MacKay) – in the most humiliating way possible. As his scheme begins to play out, however, he encounters an obstacle: in getting to know the closeted Preston, he is surprised to discover not only empathy for someone living their life in terrified camouflage, but a mutual attraction that develops despite the horrific history between them.

Framed as a self-described “neo-noir” story, a designation that implies a certain flavor of moral ambiguity as much as it does a tense and shadowy tale of intrigue or a psychologically complex tone, it’s a movie that relies heavily on style in order to sell its conceptual premise. Realistically, we might question the boldness that permits our protagonist to enact such a potentially hazardous scheme, but in the context of its genre trappings we are lulled into accepting it. And while most of us are likely “jaded” enough to question the possibility of tenderness between its two leading characters, the accepted conceits of the film noir form are enough to sell it to us – or at least allow us to grapple with it alongside Jules, whose righteously Machiavellian master plan is threatened by the feelings he “catches” in spite of himself.

That, of course, is part of the whole point. “Femme,” though it establishes itself by virtue of its very title as a testament to the struggle to “pass” for straight in a world that places a value judgment on perceived adherence to a strict norm for gender and sexuality, hinges on the idea that such things aren’t quite as clear-cut as we want to make them. Despite the black-and-white certainty we cling to when it comes to the subject of abusive or toxic relationships, there’s an emotional component that can only be ignored or dismissed at our peril, and even our most resolute intentions can be undermined by the shades of gray we discover in our hearts. 

Freeman and Ng – who also wrote the screenplay, adapting their own BAFTA-nominated short film from 2021 (starring Harris Dickinson and Paapa Essiedu) into a feature-length expansion – seem bent on challenging our snap judgments, on forcing us to sympathize with our oppressors by showing us the ways in which they, too, are prevented from living a fully authentic life by the expectations of their cultural environment. Even more challenging for many modern audiences, perhaps, may be the unavoidable observation that, in enacting his plan of revenge, Jules crosses the line between being a victim and being a victimizer – a fine point that may trigger uncomfortable implications in a social environment that has become marked by divisive moral constructs and hardline ethical posturing.

Before we scare you off with discussion of high-concept themes and “culture war” rhetoric, however, it’s crucial to bring up the elements that lift “Femme” above and beyond the level of so many such narrative films and makes it a somewhat unexpectedly potent piece of cinematic storytelling – and all of them have to do with the skill and intention behind it.

As to the former, the movie’s first-time directors manage a remarkable debut, steeping their film in moody, genre-appropriate visuals and murky morality. They pave a path beyond the easy assessments proscribed for us by conventional thinking, and force us to follow our sympathies into a disquieting confrontation between what we “know” as right and what we feel as true; at the same time, they push back against any natural sentimentality we might have about the situation, stressing the toxicity of the relationship in the middle of their film, the ironically-reversed insincerity of its dynamic – and, perhaps most importantly, the reality of the defining circumstances around it. While we might find ourselves longing for a happier resolution than the one we expect, the film makes no pretense that these two men might overcome the deep denial and traumatic associations – not to mention the calculated lack of honesty on the side of its de facto protagonist, to achieve some kind of “happy ending” between themselves. Nevertheless, we hope for it, in spite of ourselves.

That delicate dynamic works largely because of the movie’s lead actors. Both Stewart-Jarrett (“Candyman”) and MacKay (“Pride”, “1917”) deliver fully invested, utterly relatable performances, finding the emotional truth behind their interactions with as much palpable authenticity as they bring to the chemistry between them. They force us to abandon our preconceived ideas about each character by finding the human presence behind them, and it makes the story’s final outcome feel as heartbreaking as it does inevitable.

As for intention, “Femme” – which premiered at last year’s Berlin International Film Festival and went on to gather acclaim across the international film fest circuit – might be a little hard to take for the easily triggered, we won’t deny it. Still, it’s a work of real and thrilling cinematic vision that goes beyond easy morality to highlight the tragedy that comes from being forced to live behind a mask for the sake of societal acceptance. It’s also exciting, smart, and unexpectedly sexy – all of which make it a highly- recommended addition to your watchlist.

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Tommy Dorfman makes directorial debut in ‘I Wish You All the Best’

Film premiered at SXSW

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(Courtesy photo)

Editor’s note: Jack Morningstar attended SXSW.

Based on Mason Deaver’s novel, “I Wish You All the Best” follows Ben DeBacker (Corey Fogelmanis), a nonbinary teen who is thrown out of their house and forced to move in with their estranged older sister and her husband.

The film premiered at SXSW last week and stars Corey Fogelmanis, Miles Gutierrez-Riley, Alexandra Daddario and Cole Sprouse, Lena Dunham and was produced by Matt Kaplan and Tommy Dorfman. In addition to directing and producing, Dorfman also adapted the screenplay. 

“I had never read a book that centered on an experience that mirrored mine so vividly — just being a queer kid from the South — so I immediately was interested in adapting it and was putting myself up for that,” she said.

The heartwarming film brings awareness to the plight of LGBTQ kids who grow up in conservative families and communities, while also emphasizing that, as Dorfman noted, “safety can be found in many places.” In this case, the main protagonist, Ben, finds refuge in their friendship with Nathan. Fogelmanis, who plays Ben, explains that “together they have so many first-time experiences. Learning to let your walls down with someone that is a stranger, or that you don’t have a biological bond with is really scary. And then just to see all the stuff that comes up and have that person still accept you is just the greatest thing for Ben.”

Fogelmanis and Gutierrez-Riley were obvious choices for the roles of Ben and Nathan.

“It was really clear to me from a filmmaker perspective. There were a couple of people for each role that I was interested in and enjoyed working with, but Fogelmanis, from that first tape to the last chemistry read made it so clear who Ben was, who Ben is, and who Ben could be. Miles, who plays Nathan, is so amazing as well,” Fogelmanis added. “It was really effortless in a way. Reading Tommy’s words was super easy to find my way into.”

Dorfman found it particularly easy to work with Gutierrez-Riley as well since they attended the same acting program at Fordham University. 

“I remember when I was working with Miles in the audition process, I was like, oh, I know how to talk to you. That’s huge. It helped me as a first-time director,” she said.

Dorfman wanted to be careful “not fall into the trap of dramatizing Ben’s gender or coming out too much. It is important to remember that viewing people solely through the lens of their gender or sexuality diminishes their vast and complex humanity. For instance, my life extends beyond my trans identity. I’m an artist, a wife, a mother to two dogs, a sister to four siblings, an avid reader of classic literature, 10 years sober, have ADHD, enjoy arranging flowers and charming tableware, to name a few things.”

“Similarly, my film’s protagonist, Ben, doesn’t have an identity exclusive to being a queer teenager. Although their coming out experience is crucial and worth exploring, an obvious jumping-off point in my film, it’s what happens after they’re able to open up that inspired me to make ‘I Wish You All The Best,’ Dorfman added. “My film examines the discomfort of being seventeen, falling in love with a classmate, forming friendships, finding a voice through painting and self-expression, learning to love and be loved, navigating anxiety and depression, and coping with the pressures of growing up. These are universal and very human experiences that shape Ben beyond the limits of representation or perception.” 

Dorfman describes being one of the few openly transgender directors as “an honor and a disappointment.” She added, “I wish there were more of us, but there will be. It’s exciting, though, to be part of this next generation of creators and filmmakers entering this space and telling more human experiences.”

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Nick Kroll and Andrew Rannells want to adopt baby in ‘I Don’t Understand You’

Film premiered at SXSW in Austin

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(Courtesy photo)

Editor’s note: Jack Morningstar attended SXSW in Austin, Texas.

“I Don’t Understand You” focuses on a couple whose romantic Italian getaway devolves into bloody chaos while they prepare to adopt their first child. 

The film, while veering into hilariously gruesome hijinks, tells the story of a gay couple who is willing to kill for a chance at fatherhood. It sheds light on the hurdles that same-sex couples often go through in the adoption process: Financial burdens, time constraints, fraud, and in this case, a rural Italian family.

The film premiered last weekend at SXSW in Austin and stars Nick Kroll and Andrew Rannells along with Nunzia Schiano, Morgan Spector and Eleonora Romandini. It was written and directed by Brian Crano and David Craig, who are married. They sourced inspiration from their own adoption struggles and an Italian vacay gone wrong. 

“We were about to leave for Italy when we found out that we had matched with a birth mother and our son would be born in about six weeks,” said Crano. 

According to Craig, the trip was tense and it culminated in their car getting stuck in a ditch on their way to an anniversary dinner.

“We ended up at an old lady’s house after she rescued us in her Fiat. Her family cooked us a meal and we stayed up drinking with them until 3 a.m., not understanding a word they were saying,” he said.

Without spoiling anything, the couple in the movie go to absurd lengths to ensure that their adoption goes through. Craig explained that the theme of the movie was “what would you do for your kid.” 

“We were three years into our own journey at the time and realized we would literally do anything to make that dream a reality. It’s really a love letter to our son,” he said.

The film is hard to relegate to a single genre. 

“When conceiving the story, we saw it as different parts — romantic comedy, horror movie, murder play — but I think by bringing in Nick and Andrew that blend actually became much more of an organic mix where the comedy sustained throughout. They elevated it in a more elegant fashion,” said Craig. 

“I Don’t Understand You”was produced by Pinky Promise, a women-led production company with the mission to elevate diverse voices in their storytelling. Kara Durrett, Pinky Promise’s current president was a champion of this script from the beginning. Founder Jessamine Burgum recounts that when Durrett was onboarding, she said “If you don’t get [“I Don’t Understand You”] I don’t know if this is going to work.” 

It ultimately became one of the first projects Burgum and Durrett collaborated on. 

Kroll and Rannells’ chemistry carried the film. 

“There was a desire to work with each of them because they had both separately been in such amazing comedian teams — like Andrew with Josh Gad and Nick with John Mulaney. Nick and Andrew’s characters are in almost every scene of the movie together, so they needed to be adept to basically doing a shared performance. There was no one more well-positioned to do this as naturally as possible,” said Crano. 

Their characters are easy to root for, yet also deeply flawed. 

“A big thing we wanted to do with this movie, and with all of our work in telling stories, is avoid telling a cliched gay trauma film. We’ve never ascribed to the idea that there is a subcategory to film that is LGBTQ, rather — movies are for everyone. We want to make a movie where gay characters are flawed, not for being gay, but because of who they are. They can be villains, but they are our protagonists,” said Craig. 

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