Tag Archives: queer cinema

Truth or Dare

During Madonna’s 1990 Blonde Ambition tour, she was filmed nearly constantly and the footage was strung together to make this behind the scenes documentary. At the time it was both lauded and condemned for being wild (she exposes her breasts!) and lewd (a gay kiss!). 25 years and a whole lotta Madonna later it almost seems whimsical but it still works as a nostalgia piece.

In fact, watching Truth or Dare, I can’t decide what lights up my nostalgia more – the costumes, or the dance moves. And it definitely makes me wonder how Madonna feels about them looking back. If you were a fan of Sex and the City, you may remember a certain episode towards the end where Carrie was tasked with cleaning out her closet. She tries on various costumes that fans recognized instantly from the series, while her friends yayed or nayed them. It was a perfect send-up to the whole era of SATC but should Madonna do the same I think the whole world might implode. Of course we all remember the cone-bras and that’s something that doesn’t really age because it’s iconic. The bustier layered on top of wide-legged trousers, however, feel like a much bigger mistake in retrospect, but one I’m glad to relive (as long as she’s the one caught on camera wearing it!).

There’s also a fair bit of celebrity gossip on hand because Madonna was of course dating (and breaking up with) Warren Beatty at the time. Beatty is definitely not fond of the constant cameras and you’ve got to wonder if they weren’t partially responsible for their parting (although Madonna’s hectic schedule and near-constant touring when health permits can’t have been easy either). Despite it being Warren in the picture, when Madonna is asked who the love of her life has been, she names Sean [Penn]. How much would you wager she’d answer the same today? Madonna herself doesn’t seem to court a lot of celebrity friends and she’s much too busy working to be out partying. A fair number do stop by to watch her concert and bump fists with her afterward, and the best cameo goes to Kevin Costner – no, to Kevin Costner’s mullet – who proves he’s beyond square by calling her show “neat” and acting rather bored.

Instead of partying, she stays in to baby her failing voice, and is often cuddled up with her dancers, decked out in fluffy hotel bathrobes. She and her dancers grow quite close during the tour, and she often talks about an intense mothering instinct that’s brought out in her. She ‘s only 32 or so, not so very much older than the dances, but in experience she’s already ancient.

There are lots of terrific Madonna moments, from being threatened with arrest for “indecency” at her Toronto Skydome concert, to reminding God that “she’s here” should he need her services during a pre-show group prayer.

I watched this as a companion piece to a more recent documentary called Strike A Pose – catching up with the dancers made famous by this documentary and her Blonde Ambition tour. Both are worth checking out, although Truth or Dare is clearly the classic.

Paris Is Burning

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Shot between 1985 and 1989, Paris Is Burning is a documentary that explores the “ball culture” of New York City. These balls were beauty pageants of sorts, for drag queens certainly, but categories for competition tended to make room for black people, latino people, gay people, and transgendered. These categories and sub-categories are so structured that I could never explain them all to you, but people competed in “executive realness” (how well you can “pass” for a business person), for example, or showed off their catwalking skills, elaborate costumes, or dance moves.

Competitors grouped together in “houses” (like the House of Chanel), which were substitute families in a community that really needed them. Director Jennie Livingston spent years interviewing people and putting this thing together, and it’s given me insight into a world I never knew existed. Drag isn’t just a subculture here, it’s a complex thing of race and class and gender identity that allowed for a pretty wonderful self-expression.

The film brought voguing into the mainstream although it was actually just a small part of the movie. What I’ve gleaned is this:

First, reading: to get a good ‘read’ on someone, you find their flaw and you come up with a good insult about it. But the truer the flaw, the better the read. It’s not just about being mean, it’s about being shrewd I think.

Then, shade: to throw shade is to slyly insult someone. You disrespect them with trash talk.

And finally, voguing: which is the dance equivalent. I never knew that all these concepts were somehow interconnected, but yes, voguing is part of a dance battle where you freeze repeatedly in glamourous positions (as if you’re a model on the cover of Vogue magazine), trying to outdo each other. A few years later Madonna will bring this trend to the mainstream, white-washing it and losing its flavour, but it’s actually a pretty cool thing to watch the real stuff go down.

Albert Nobbs

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Downton Abbey ain’t got nothin on Mr. Nobbs. He’s a servant extraordinaire – no one’s better at anticipating his customer’s needs and the restaurant hums because of his competence. Every night he goes back to his little room, counts his tips fastidiously, and hides them under the floorboards after totting them up in his ledger. So when he’s assigned a new roommate, he’s paranoid his secret will be revealed. No, not the cash. His boobs. Albert Nobbs is not a mister after all.

Albert (Glenn Close) started passing as a man after a traumatic incident at the age of 14. Realistically, it was a way to live safely and an opportunity to earn more money. But he has lived in isolation and constant fear of discovery ever since. Now all he wants is those few extra bucks so he can buy a little shop and live independently. The only thing stopping him is the lack of a wife – which, as you can imagine, is a bit of a roadbump. Luckily he meets someone to inspire him (Janet McTeer), and he soon turns his eye upon a lovely young kitchen staffer (Mia Wasikowska) who hardly knows what to do with the attention of a creepy little old man. Plus her lust bucket is filled with thoughts of the new mechanic (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) who is handsome and manly and also, it turns out, a drunken bully.

Both Glenn Close and Janet McTeer received Oscar nominations for their respective roles in the film, pretty much a given considering the depth of their perfomances. There’s an ache to watching them – to Close in particular because we are so aware of Albert’s constant pain and discomfort. She never makes a single misstep. And to its credit, the film resists moralizing, or false contextualizing to make it more relevant to today’s social and political climate. It just is. Which is fine, indeed excellent, when it comes to watching stunning performances but the film itself does suffer from being a little too close, a little too one-note.