BEING 17 follows two teenage boys from a small town in the Pyrenees when they lash out violently at each other, tripping and head butting, expressing a dislike that may only be masking their attraction to each other.
These are characters Xavier Dolan could have a field day with – just imagine the high-pitched screaming matches bouncing off the surrounding mountain landscape. But Being 17 is quieter and sturdier than that, letting the antagonistic relationship between Thomas (Corentin Fila) and Damien (Kacey Mottet Klein) ease its way from a blow-for-blow grudge match to discreet and passionate lovemaking. (See full Being 17 review).
Available to watch: iTunes
CLOSET MONSTER is a Newfoundland-set coming-of-age/coming-out/quasi-body-horror picture, featuring a carefully calibrated performance by Connor Jessup as Oscar, an aspiring monster makeup artist terrorized by his own homosexuality.
But writer/director Stephen Dunn’s feature debut is marred by an excess of story editing. The heavy emphasis on events from Oscar’s childhood – his parents’ divorce, his witnessing of a bloody hate crime – implies a troubling causality between these early traumas and Oscar’s sexual identity and professional ambitions. (See full Closet Monster review).
Available to watch: iTunes
NATASHA is David Bezmozgis’s film adaptation of the title tale of his 2005 collection maintains the key kernel of the short story: how can you know who’s telling the truth?
It’s summer and 16-year-old Mark, the son of Russian immigrants to Toronto, is bored and horny. When his uncle buys himself a Russian bride, Mark is dubious about the marriage but fascinated by his new aunt’s 14-year-old daughter, Natasha. (See full Natasha review).
Available to watch: iTunes
GIRLHOOD, set in a suburban Parisian housing project, follows 16-year-old Marieme, aka Vic (the charismatic Karidja Touré), as she tries to find an identity of her own.
She’s so busy taking care of her younger sister and staying out of the way of her abusive brother while her mother works nights cleaning hotel toilets that her grades have tanked and she’s been kicked out of the academic stream.
The absence of options for poor black kids is one of Sciamma’s themes. When Vic falls in with a gang of girls led by Lady, she gains some self-esteem, but gang life doesn’t exactly improve her choices. (See full Girlhood review).
Available to watch: iTunes
MISTRESS AMERICA is Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig’s follow-up to Frances Ha. This time, though, her character is observed through the eyes of her younger, more impressionable stepsister-to-be.
Slightly adrift at college in Manhattan, Tracy (Lola Kirke) gets in touch with Gerwig’s Brooke, who’s trying to launch a restaurant. They hit it off, and soon Tracy is tagging along to parties and meetings and using Brooke’s life as fodder for a short story she’s writing. (See full Mistress America review).
Available to watch: Netflix
Ashton Sanders in Moonlight
MOONLIGHT is a melancholic and beautiful love story about a Black man’s feelings toward another Black man – and more importantly, a Black man’s feelings about himself. That this LGBTQ film is contextualized as part of a conversation on Black masculinity that sees homosexuality as a threat makes it all the more urgent.
The film dips into different stages of Chiron’s life, as a boy, a teen and a man. At each stage, he struggles to overcome the crippling fear of who he is in an environment that refuses to accept him. (See full Moonlight review).
Available to watch: iTunes
ACROSS THE LINE mints local actor Stephan James as an actor.
James stars as Mattie Slaughter, a hockey prodigy in small-town Nova Scotia whose dreams of NHL stardom are jeopardized by the drag of his no-good brother and by simmering racial tensions in his high school. (See full Across The Line review).
Available to watch: iTunes
BARRY dramatizes a few months in the life of some kid named Barry Soetoro, newly enrolled at Columbia University and trying to figure out who he wants to be. That meant a relationship with a white woman and playing a lot of pickup basketball, feeling like he didn’t fully belong either in the white or Black worlds.
Working on what seems to be a pretty modest budget, director Vikram Gandhi creates a convincing Koch-era New York, and he’s put together a really solid cast.
Barry Soetoro is going to grow up to be Barack Obama, and screenwriter Adam Mansbach seems worried that we might not know that. (See full Barry review).
Available to watch: Netflix
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