beyondasiaphilia

Gotta Eat: 2014 Frameline LGBT Film Festival

June 19, 2014 at 6:24 am 3 comments

Superhero, To Be Takei, 2014

Frameline’s San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival is upon us once again and it’s a monster. Now in its thirty-eight edition, the festival includes dozens of films from around the world screening over nearly two weeks at several venues around town.

This year’s Asian/American contingent includes about a half-dozen feature films and a smattering of shorts from Asia, the U.S, and the U.K. But this year is also all about George Takei, Star Trek’s Mr. Sulu and, more recently, a social media rockstar who’s the recipient of the 2014 Frameline Award and the subject of the festival’s centerpiece presentation, To Be Takei, directed by Jennifer Kroot (whose last project, It Came From Kuchar, similarly documented another queer media icon, underground filmmaker George Kuchar).

George Takei also has a small but significant cameo in David Au’s debut feature, Eat With Me, which also screens at this year’s festival. It’s been more than twenty years since The Wedding Banquet looked at gayness in the Asian American community and Eat With Me hews closely to the themes and concerns of that influential Ang Lee joint. The story follows the relationship between indeterminate Asian American mom Emma, played by Sharon Omi, and her grown son Elliot (Teddy Chen Culver), a cook at a nondescript Chinese restaurant, as Emma comes to terms with her own homophobia while Elliot finds a way to make his sexuality okay with his family and culture.

Tête-à-tête, Eat With Me, 2014

Although the film is somewhat soft around the edges, it’s secret weapon is Sharon Omi, who is a treasure—a veteran of Asian American theater companies in San Francisco and Los Angeles, she’s always had an impish grin and a dead-on sense of comic timing that’s in full effect in this movie. Although the film is in no way revolutionary, Omi’s performance completely rocks. The rest of the cast is also solid and director Au pulls some charming performances from them, though they’re pretty much coming-out-film stock characters–Elliot the gay son is at odds with his mom; Ian, Elliot’s too-good-to-be-true love interest, is hot, sensitive, and has a sexy British accent; and next-door-neighbor divorcee/yogini Maureen (Nicole Sullivan of MADtv) is the quirky and offbeat. It’s also nice to see another Asian American acting stalwart, Ken Narasaki (and Omi’s real-life husband), in a small role as Emma’s curmudgeonly spouse.

Snogging, Eat With Me, 2014

The film also includes the reliable motif of cute boys tearing off their tank tops and snogging at regular intervals during the film. Just like you can expect a song and dance number every thirty minutes in a Bollywood movie, in gay indie films you can pretty much set your watch by when the attractive lead characters will start a makeout session, and Eat With Me is no exception, as Elliot strips down and hooks up on a regular basis throughout the movie.

The rest of the Frameline fest is chock full of film-watching delights that will surely consume the next eleven days of my life. Along with the Kenji Mizoguchi series at the Pacific Film Archive that also starts this Thursday, the World Cup in Brazil, and the A’s and Giants duking it out for the best record in baseball, my summer vacation is shaping up just fine.

Frameline 38: San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival

June 19-29, 2014

Castro, Victoria, Victoria Theaters in San Francisco

Elmwood Rialto in Berkeley

Entry filed under: eat with me, george takei, movies. Tags: frameline 2014, george takei, LGBT.