Ticked Off Trannies With Knives
Of course some of the gay movies selected do travel around the globe and there’s more and more festivals for them to pitch up at, but this can be over a long period and you might end up writing about a gay movie that someone’s not gonna see until next year.
New York’s Tribeca Film Festival (April 21 – May 2) has come up with a great halfway solution with the launch of their virtual pass – you can watch stuff like red carpet coverage and panel discussions real time on their iPlayer, plus movie shorts and features and backstage footage. Premium membership even allows you to watch movie premieres online as they simultaneously screen at Tribeca – how cool is that?!
There’s a bunch of gay movies showing this year and a few of them sound unmissable. In fact, compared to the worthy-but-dull selection of gay movies at some festivals, the phrase to describe this little lot would be “outrageous fun”.
There’s a hermaphrodite take on Mean Girls (Spork), a coming-out comedy set in Italy that adds plenty of sauce to a story about a young gay man trying to escape the family pasta business (Loose Cannons) and a Rio-set rom-com featuring a sexy biker-chick and a trannie (Elvis & Madona).
Big congrats to Ticked-Off Trannies With Knives for also getting selected. This kick-ass gay movie is creating buzz and has ‘cult hit’ written all over it.
One of the most unique romantic comedies to emerge in years, Elvis & Madona is a colorful crowd-pleaser set in Rio de Janeiro’s lively neighborhood of Copacabana. Elvis is a talented photographer and lesbian whose father is down on his luck financially. Since her photography isn’t paying the bills, she gets a job delivering pizzas on her motorcycle. Madona is a ravishing blonde drag performer who works as a hairstylist by day and performs in Rio’s drag clubs at night. The pair’s paths cross when Elvis arrives at her first delivery only to find Madona robbed and beaten by her sometime lover John Tripod. From this first meeting, their lives will increasingly intertwine as love and desire begin to emerge.
Debut writer/director Marcelo Laffite brilliantly unfolds the relationship between his two protagonists in a natural and believable way, vitalizing his film and characters with a continuous playful energy that lets the viewer get carried away in the story. Actors Igor Cotrim and Simone Spoladore effortlessly share a natural chemistry even in their unusual scenario, bringing their characters’ passion, rather than their labels, to life.