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Goldin doc captures both ‘Beauty’ and ‘Bloodshed’

Laura Poitras produced and directed Oscar-nominated documentary

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Photographer Nan Goldin takes on Big Pharma in 'All the Beauty and the Bloodshed.' (Image courtesy of Neon)

As the yearly Hollywood awards cycle heads into its final weeks before culminating with the Oscars on March 12, most of the public attention is — as always — focused on the movies in the so-called “major” categories, while the ones in the others are, if not completely overlooked, placed lower on the priority list for film fans looking to catch up on all the nominees before the big night.

As the shrewdest fans know, of course, some of the best filmmaking often goes unsung because it happens in the kind of films that win awards in categories deemed irrelevant by most of the people in the mainstream. Unfortunately, that description most frequently seems to apply to documentaries — and this year, a standout among the crop of potential Oscar winners comes from within that eternally underappreciated genre.

Nominated for Best Documentary Feature, producer/director Laura Poitras’ “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed” is a movie that tells two stories. In part, it’s a chronicle of the remarkable personal history of photographer and artist Nan Goldin, who rose to prominence in the “respectable” art world through the images that she took of herself and her friends — often in candidly intimate situations — in the post-Stonewall queer underground of ‘70s and ‘80s lower Manhattan; told in Goldin’s voice and through her own vast archive of images, it charts her life and career from emotionally traumatic childhood to esteemed artist, while reminding us that she was as much a participant in the heady lifestyle she documented as she was a witness.

While Goldin’s life and career would be more than ample as the singular focus of a documentary, though, Poitras’ movie has an even bigger purpose in mind. In service of that goal, it interweaves its subject’s personal narrative around the saga of P.A.I.N. (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now) — an organization she founded in 2017 after revealing she was in recovery from an addiction to prescribed opioids which almost led to her death from an overdose of fentanyl — and its high-profile protest campaign against the Sackler family, a billionaire pharmaceutical dynasty known internationally for its generous art patronage, who through its company Purdue Pharma were principle architects of America’s staggering opioid crisis. Moving back and forth between these two threads throughout the film, Poitras frames Goldin’s struggle to hold the Sacklers accountable within the context of the formative life experiences that shaped her into an activist, while making sure to give her subject due acknowledgment for the then-shocking celebration of queer life and sexuality in her work at a time when such things were still seen through the cold filter of anthropological distance or simply being denounced outright for violating social taboos.

As to that, many viewers will undoubtedly be drawn to “Bloodshed” by the prospect of revisiting the fabled era of Goldin’s early heyday through her up-close-and-personal pictures and footage, and they will not be disappointed. The film includes plenty of both, illuminated by the artist as she recounts the memories behind them; it offers poignant glimpses at a few future icons and fallen stars (lost-but-not-forgotten queer icons from her circle, like Cookie Mueller and David Wojnarowicz, are among those lovingly profiled by Goldin as she narrates her reminiscences), gives us an inside look at a seminal time and place in counterculture history, tantalizes us with provocative images of a sexually liberated lifestyle and throws us into the front lines of AIDS activism and the political battle over government funding of the NEA.

For those more interested in direct biography, there is also copious material on Goldin’s personal life. These sequences cover her memories of a dysfunctional childhood growing up with an older sister who would later die by suicide, her delinquent youth in and out of foster homes, her battery at the hands of a jealous lover, the horror of watching her community ravaged by AIDS while the rest of the world stood by and watched, and the crushing devastation of her opioid addiction.

Yet while these various parts of Goldin’s story may carry weight of their own, “Bloodshed” ultimately transfers it all into its saga about her effort to exact palpable retribution against the Sacklers — something her position as a world-renowned artist made her uniquely situated to do. Following her organization through a series of brilliantly orchestrated actions in which — borrowing a page from ACT UP — they staged dramatic protests at museums who had taken donations from the disgraced philanthropic dynasty, the movie deploys footage from these events to capture the raw sense of danger experienced within them with the kind of thrilling immediacy unachievable through journalistic observation or dramatic recreation. It’s this Robin Hood-esque story of taking back from the rich and amoral that drives Poitras’ movie and gives it an emotional structure, making it more than just another profile of an influential artist.

That doesn’t mean it relegates Goldin’s work as a photographer into the background. On the contrary, the bulk of the imagery we see comes from Goldin herself; even the footage of the protests was shot by P.A.I.N. for documentary purposes before Poitras had even become involved. Still, the filmmaker deserves full credit for assembling these photos and home movies into a finished product, and while it’s clear that “Bloodshed” is the result of intense collaboration between documentarian and subject, it’s also clear that her understanding of the material and her nuance in presenting it are essential elements in creating the cumulative power— and the surprising sense of urgency — that it delivers.

As for her subject, Goldin’s importance as both an artist and as activist come across plainly, but those were never in doubt. The film’s biggest surprise, perhaps, is the compassion visible at the heart of her activism, manifesting through her desire to use the privilege and influence her art has given her to help balance the scales between the powerful elite and the marginalized masses they exploit — a compassion reflected even in the revelation of her former life as a sex worker, which she discusses publicly for the first time here out of solidarity with other sex workers and to help reduce the stigma around sex work. 

While juggling two separate-but-complementary stories might come at the risk of a disjointed focus, “Bloodshed,” thanks to Poitras’ seemingly symbiotic alignment with her subject’s aesthetic and sympathies, manages to weave its dual threads together in a way which not only makes sense, but uses them in concert to convey a fiercely radical worldview — one which resonates deeply in a contemporary social environment not too different from the one in which Goldin and her fellow sexual “outlaws” were flaunting their defiance of repressive, bigoted cultural norms not just in their work but in their everyday lives. Now, as then, a younger generation confronted with unbridled corporate greed and widening economic inequity, not to mention a conservative strategy of reverse cultural engineering through backlash and legislation, has been triggered to reevaluate its priorities. 

It’s not surprising. After all, as Goldin says in the film, “When you think of the profit off people’s pain, you can only be furious about it.”

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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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