While Queer Picks at the New York Film Festival Are Slim, They Are Choice

Queer fare was rather sparse at this year's New York Film Festival, but there were a handful of LGBTQ+-themed titles as well as some queer-adjacent work (by LGBTQ+ artist) that stood out.

Misericordia

The best queer-themed NYFF Main Slate film, not surprisingly, was from the daring and gifted French auteur Alain Guiraudie, who made one of the best films of the last 20 years, "Stranger By the Lake." Once again he tapped into his neo-Hitchcockian, devilishly satiric style with his latest work "Misericordia."

The plot sees bisexual baker Jérémie (a captivating Félix Kysyl) journey back to his small French hometown to attend the funeral of an older friend, whose widow, Martine (the fabulous Catherine Frot), is happy to host him. This does not sit well with Martine's volatile son, Vincent (Jean-Baptiste Durand), who Jérémie went to school with and seems to have a repressed crush on.

Jérémie, though, has his lustful sights on another past schoolmate, Walter (David Ayala), an overweight recluse. And he must fend off the advances of the horny local priest, Father Philippe (Jacques Develay). When a tragic event occurs, it's Father Philippe who does all he can to save Jérémie, which leads to a ridiculously hilarious bedroom scene.

"Misericordia" is beguilingly queer. Set in a small town where being gay could mean getting shot, Jérémie doesn't seem to worry all that much. And the priest is even more shameless in pursuing his carnal desires. Then there's Vincent's latent gayness, manifesting in his violent fisticuffs with Jérémie.

Guiraudie loves to challenge conventional notions of love, sex, longing, guilt, forgiveness, and shame, and he does so in his own original and bracing manner.

Emilia Pérez

French filmmaker Jacques Audiard's audacious genre-shattering Cannes sensation, "Emilia Pérez" offers us a different kind of cartel leader.

The darkly comedic Spanish language pic is set in Mexico and stars Zoe Saldaña as Rita, a defense attorney who receives an offer she can't refuse (or dares not, anyway) from Manitas Del Monte, a loathsome cartel kingpin. She is to help Manitas transition to becoming a woman (and the titular character), faking his own death so Emilia can emerge. Manitas also insists that their unpredictable wife Jessi (Selena Gomez) and two children now live with her in her Swiss hideaway with the post-transition cover story that she's a newfound cousin. Emilia is hoping for a kind of redemption as she decides to do some good for the people she wronged as Manitas. But the arrival of Jessi spells more trouble than Emilia could ever imagine.

Trans actress Karla Sofía Gascón does a sensational job portraying both Manitas and Emilia. Gomez does terrific work here, proving that "Only Murders in the Building" isn't the only kind of comedy she excels at. But the film belongs to Saldaña, portraying a woman caught in a number of crossroads. She transfixes throughout.

Many films featuring trans actors are about the transitioning. "Emilia Pérez," for dizzyingly zany narrative reasons, does focus on that in its first half but then goes off the rails (in a good way), which is refreshing. We also get a fully-dimensional trans character who must grapple with her horrific past.

Oh, and the film is a musical, with songs composed by the French singer Camille, that borrows from Lars von Trier's "Dancer in the Dark" and Leos Carax's "Annette"

The movie's only real misstep is the ending. The confrontational possibilities were rich, but what we get is a total cop-out.

"Emilia Pérez" is about figuring out who you are and who you want to be. The film is France's International Feature Oscar submission.

Queer

Hot off its Venice Film Festival premiere, "Queer," the hotly anticipated and already-divisive new film by Luca Guadagnino, has moments of magnificence, but never truly comes together the way it should.

Based on the Beat generation novella by William S. Burroughs ("Junkie," "Naked Lunch"), and written in the early '50s but not published until 1985, "Queer" is both mesmerizing and vexing. The script, by "Challengers" scribe Justin Kuritzkes, remains faithful to Burroughs for its first half, until it detours to Ecuador.

Set in Mexico City, "Queer" centers on gay American ex-pat William Lee (Daniel Craig), who spends his time excessively drinking, shooting up, and hitting on young men. Lee becomes obsessed with ex-Navy serviceman Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey), who doesn't seem that interested but gives in to Lee's seduction. Is he queer?

They embark on a wacky trip to Ecuador, where Lee searches for a plant-based psychedelic called yage, which may give him the power of telepathy. The film comes to life thanks to the gifted Lesley Manville having a ball playing a jungle doctor.

The other reason to see "Queer" is Craig, who delivers a fully-committed turn and breaks your heart in the film's final scenes.

The film boasts a mostly straight-identifying cast, as well as screenwriter, which is disappointing, as is the fact that Guadagnino approaches the material in an Italian-Catholic-safe manner. All of the press about daring male-on-male sex scenes is just clickbait – even the one intercourse moment is tame, and undercut by the director.