| Like A Brother
Comme un Frere |  |
Date: Sunday, 10/16/2005
Time: 6:00 pm
Venue: DCJCC
Tickets: $9 
Type: Collection of short films
Language: French with English subtitles.
Metro Weekly Rating: 
(3 out of 5)
by Randy Shulman
IT HELPS TO KNOW going into the French mini-feature Like A Brother that much of the story of Zack (nee Sebastien), who yearns for the tender touch of his best friend -- the dreamy, dark-haired Romaine -- but leaves his small town of La Baule for the bright lights of Paris in search of a gayer life, is told in flashback. (Without that knowledge, I guarantee you'll spend the first half hour completely disoriented, as though you're watching a French version of Memento.) The film is essentially a pantheon to Sebastien and Romaine, as they lounge about, touching and embracing each other like melancholy, gloomy-doomy adolescents.
The
film has one troubling sex scene involving anal sex without the requisite ''Stop
and Get a Condom'' shot. Other than that, it's pretty inoffensive stuff, steamy
in that French way, but blasé in its endgame. You have to give it credit, however,
for having the courage to conclude on an ambiguous note. It doesn't so much
end as stop. Maybe they ran out of production funds.
It's
paired with Hollywood by Accident (
), a fetching, stylized
short about a boy who is mistaken for a girl all his life and then
becomes an actual female when a drunken doctor mistakes his scheduled
appendix surgery for a sexual reassignment. Funny but dumb.
The best of the three films in this program -- and the one worth sitting through
it all for -- is a 14-minute charmer called Mostly Willing (),
in which a shy survey taker (Gregoire Hittner) becomes infatuated with one of
his subjects (Xavier Lafitte) and courts him in a rather unusual manner. As
befitting a great short film, it's got a terrific final minute, and something
of a revelation in Hittner, who gives a supreme performance.
| More information |
Film Links:
· Reel Affirmations details
Festival Venue:
Cecile Goldman Theater at the
DCJCC
1529 16th Street, NW; Washington, DC 20009. (202) 518-9400. (map)
3 blocks east of Red Line Metro / Dupont Circle station.
Tickets:
You may buy your tickets or passes in advance: Online at BoxOfficeTickets.com
or by phone at (800) 494-TIXS (494-8497). Or you may visit the Lincoln
Theatre (1215 U Street, NW, WDC); the DCJCC (1529 16th Street, NW,
WDC); Lambda Rising (1625 Connecticut Avenue, NW, WDC); or Universal
Gear (1601 17th Street, NW, WDC).
|
For more info visit the official Reel Affirmations website. |
