THE ADVOCATE FOR FAGDOM (Angélique Bosio, France). 92 minutes. See here for more Hot Docs reviews! Rating: N
How ironic that a documentary about Toronto queer-punk filmmaking provocateur Bruce LaBruce should be so… dull.
French director Angélique Bosio’s movie has no structure, little tension, and her appalling photographed interviews with the shades-wearing subject himself are so unrevealing, they resemble some half-assed film school exercise.
Relying on talking heads like filmmakers Gus Van Sant, Harmony Korine and John Waters (one of the only lively interviewees), Bosio delivers a checklist of topics anyone vaguely familiar with LaBruce’s work will already know: his obsession with punks, his subversion of gay porn tropes (if you say so) and his dabbling in French literary theory.
LaBruce is filled with contradictions: he criticizes gay marriage while being married himself. (We briefly meet his Cuban-Canadian spouse in an interview that tells us nothing.) Bosio never calls him out on that.
Of course, generous clips from LaBruce’s films abound, and there’s a perfunctory look at his early queer zine, J.D.s, but why no interview with its co-founder, G.B. Jones? And why not take LaBruce back to the farming community where he grew up to interview his family and neighbours?
Presumably Bosio finished the film before LaBruce’s L.A. Zombies got banned from a film festival in Melbourne last summer. That incident – and LaBruce’s predictable response – could have provided the doc with a bit of conflict.
