Movies to Stream: Queer fever dreams
A persona swap double feature leads this week's streaming selections
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Cinema as an art form is uniquely positioned to portray dream logic, to create images that forego story in favor of emotional truth or pure feeling.
This is an overblown sentiment for anyone with even a passing familiarity with the work of Luis Bunuel or David Lynch, but not everyone who reads this column has that. So why don’t you just skip to the movie recommendations if you’re bored?
Anyway, as Pride Month draws to a close, I’m looking at some uniquely queer dreams and nightmares. These movies will sweep you up in their frenzied rhythms and/or their intentional illogic. They might even make you feel like you’re going crazy 😜
That’s the point! As my favorite philosopher Norman Bates once said, “We all go a little mad sometimes.”
(Unless otherwise noted, all movies are available to rent from Apple, Amazon, etc. in addition to the listed streaming services. But if you watch them and like them, I’d consider buying physical copies 😃)
Double Feature: Persona (1966) and Mulholland Dr. (2001)
I consider both of these persona swap movies as all-time favorites.
First, Ingmar Bergman’s legendary 1966 film, about an actress (Liv Ullmann) who has suddenly, unexplainably gone mute and the nurse (Bibi Andersson) who is caring for her. Isolated in a remote cottage, the two women form a strange intimacy. And then, in an even more inexplicable twist, their identities begin to converge.
Persona is an unparalleled cinematic psychodrama; its inscrutable close-ups, chaotic emotional outbursts, and surreal narrative logic create an atmosphere of almost unbearable claustrophobia.
“All of the film’s pathos, the fears, the jealousies, and the eroticism that bubble to the surface are legible within the framework of a love story, from meeting to blossoming romance to dissolution,” Michael Koresky writes. “In fact, if looked at through the right queer lens, Persona could be among the most penetrating break-up movies ever made.”
David Lynch’s Mulholland Dr. is definitely one of the most penetrating break-up movies ever made.
A more sprawling identity crisis than Persona, the first two-thirds or so of Lynch’s film are a wide-eyed dream about Betty (Naomi Watts), an aspiring actress arriving in Hollywood. She meets another woman (Laura Harring) who is suffering from amnesia after a car crash, and the two set out to figure out her identity. Along the way, they fall in love.
The movie takes a breathtaking dive down the abyss when the two women attend a music show in the middle of the night. In this final stretch, character identities shift, merge, or change altogether. Mulholland Dr.’s diverging narratives feature the same actors in very different realities, repeated locations that portend romance and violence, and maddening symbolism that leaves it very open to interpretation.
The first time I watched it I felt like I was in a haze. Although repeated viewings allowed me to form a more definitive reading of it, the best way to experience Mulholland Dr. is to resist the urge to ascribe meaning to everything and just enjoy the ride.
Other Movie Recommendations:
Funeral Parade of Roses (1969)- Streaming for free on Kanopy.
Toshio Matsumoto’s debut feature Funeral Parade of Roses is a dizzying portrait of the queer underground subculture in ‘60s Tokyo.
The rivalry between a trans nightclub hostess named Eddie (Pîtâ) and the current madam of the club, Leda (Osamu Ogasawara), forms the disjointed core of the film. However, Matsumoto’s chaotic, non-linear structure makes it more of an enigmatic, unpredictable mood piece than a straightforward story.
“Funeral Parade of Roses is an extraordinary film for its energies, its libidinous intensity, and its fearlessness in mixing registers—high melodrama, violent intensity, farcicality, and poetic seriousness—all against a background of late-’60s aesthetic revolt and political unrest,” Jonathan Romney writes.
Teorema (1968)- Streaming on The Criterion Channel.
The men and women of a wealthy Italian family are no match for the menacingly quiet charms of a mysterious stranger (Terence Stamp) in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s confounding parable.
Stamp’s character, identified only as The Guest, arrives at the Milanese home and seduces each member of the family one by one. He disappears as suddenly as he arrived, leaving an emotional chasm in his wake. A stunning, nearly wordless film, Teorema explores erotic liberation and its unintended, sometimes maddening aftermath.
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