DALIDA: Lisa Azuelos' beautiful-to-view (and hear) biopic gets L.A. debut prior to VOD

Quite a bit better than the run-of-the-mill, musical celebrity bio-pic, DALIDA, tracking the life and career of one of, if not the most popular European singers of the 20th Century, is a gorgeous movie to both behold and listen to. With the actual Dalida singing many of her most popular songs (along with those of some other greats of that century) and, spanning as it does the 1950s through the 1980s, filled with scrumptious (if sometimes tacky: remember the 70s?) period detail, and filmed with a eye for interesting composition and ace cinematography (Antoine Sanier), the movie is a consistent joy to view.

As written and directed by French screenwriter/ filmmaker Lisa Azuelos (shown at right) and adapted from the book by Orlando (Dalida's brother) and Catherine Rihoit, the movie begins with a look at our heroine, brought to surprisingly nuanced life by Italian actress Sveva Alviti (shown above and below), who looks enough like the singer to more than pass muster, and who also lipsyncs and performs the songs with a physicality that mimics the original's own style and grace (you can compare the two by watching various videos).

TrustMovies admits that some of his great enjoyment of this film may have come because he knew next to nothing about Dalida before sitting down to view the movie. He knew her name and that she was hugely successful in France, but that's it. (His spouse, who follows the music scene more thoroughly, had never heard of her at all.) Consequently, this icon's story was new and held quite a bit of interest for him, though how die-hard fans of the singer reacted to this bio-pic, he can't say.

Ms Azuelos begins her tale in media res, with some quick, sharp moments during which Dalida leaves Paris for somewhere that it is clear her family and friends don't want her to go. It's to meet a lover, and so we spend some time between the sheets, philosophizing and making love. Suddenly, we're confronted with the singer's suicide attempt, which happened mid-career.

As Dalida slowly recovers, Ms Azuelos moves us back and forth in time, picking up bits and pieces of her family history, early career (above), love life and more. One of the cleverest methods of exposition here is done via her post-suicide psychologist's interviews with the various important people in her life, as he and they try to collectively get our girl back on track. This allows us to not only learn about Dalida, but better explore the character of those giving testimony.

Certain critics have complained about the lack of depth of character in Dalida herself, but this strikes me as simply wrong-headed. What Azuelos has given us instead is a portrait of celebrity and the woman who gladly buried herself under that alluring but unwieldy and very heavy mantle. Nearly every important decision we see her make has to do with maintaining that celebrity and career -- from how she handles her lovers to why she has the abortion that will render her sterile. (That's Brenno Placido, above, as the young student by whom she becomes pregnant, and Niels Schneider, below, as a Polish prince with whom she has earlier become involved.)

Occasionally, the woman beneath all that celebrity surfaces and her needs make themselves known. But always career comes first. Interestingly enough, there are no villains here. The movie doesn't need them, since Dalida is pretty much her own worst enemy, even if she herself seems to be a relatively kind and decent person. With an unhappy childhood to deal with, even given her wonderful voice and great physical beauty, the gain did not finally outweigh the pain.

Dalida's choice of lovers would appear a bit suspicious, too. When three of the several men with whom you're involved take their own life (not to mention Dalida's own suicide attempt and then its consummation), there's clearly a problem at hand. (Above, left, is Jean-Paul Rouve, as the man who discovers her, whom she eventually marries, and who later suicides; below left is Nicolas Duvauchelle, as one of her later and most narcissistic lovers who also takes his own life.

While the movie refuses to offer any tidy explanations for any of this, the feeling we're left with, despite the talent and beauty on hand, is one of sadness at the waste of it all. (Below is pictured Alessandro Borghi, as would-be singer Luigi Tenco, the first of Dalida's suicidal amors.)

Our heroine even has something of a movie career, too; at one point, the famous Egyptian filmmaker Youssef Chahine has her star in one of his films (below), and once the disco craze hits, she becomes a gay icon -- in France, if not here in the USA.

Along the way, in addition to the wonderful period detail, we get a raft of good music -- mostly snippets, granted, but they're certainly enjoyable ones -- and enough biographical material to complete yet another sad tale of great musical celebrity gone to disarray.

From Under the Milky Way -- in French, Italian and Arabic with English subtitles -- and running  a long but consistently interesting 127 minutes, Dalida will get a one-night-only theatrical appearance in the Los Angeles area as part of the Laemmle Culture Vulture series, this coming Monday, October 23, at 7:30 pm at four Laemmle theaters: Claremont 5, Playhouse 7,  Royal 3 and Town Center 5. Click here for more information and/or tickets.

In addition the film will also be the opening night, November 3, presentation at the ARPA International Film Festival at the world-famous Egyptian Theater in Hollywood.  And if you aren't located in the L.A. area, despair not: Dalida will be released on all major VOD platforms across the country on Tuesday, December 5.

TOM OF FINLAND: Dome Karukoski's elegant, multi-faceted look at an unusual gay icon

Having pretty much come into early adulthood and gay/bisexual culture with the "artwork" of one, Tom of Finland, as a prominent guidepost, TrustMovies still, even now, knew nothing about the man who created the work. All that has changed with the theatrical opening of the movie that the country of Finland has submitted as a possibility for this year's Best Foreign Language Film -- something, I warrant, that Finland would never have done before or during the heyday of this artist's prominence. For much of his life, Tom, whose given name was actually Touko (according to the film, it became "Tom" due to his American publisher trying to make his work more marketable to the English-speaking crowd), would have been a near-pariah in his home country, had his work not been kept decidedly "under-cover."

Though part of Scandinavia, Finland was evidently not nearly as culturally, politically, socially or sexually forward-thinking as its Danish, Swedish and maybe Norwegian counterparts. TOM OF FINLAND -- as directed by Dome Karukoski (shown at left), with a screenplay by Aleksi Bardy and additional dialog (I am guessing for the portions set in the USA) by Mark Alton Brown -- turns out to be a surprisingly elegant, beautifully filmed combination of social, cultural, sexual and personal history that shows us the difficult times gays endured in Finland (and Germany) from the wartime 1940s through nearly the 1990s. By then gay culture had pretty much exploded throughout the western world -- with everything from its fashions to disco dancing to the idea of gay sex being not quite so bizarre and horrendous as formerly imagined -- seeping rather quickly into the progressive mainstream view.

As personified by the excellent actor Pekka Strang (shown above and below), Touko/Tom is brought to fine life as a young man, a middle-aged and increasing successful one, and finally the elderly gent who, having lost the love of his life even as his greatest successes occur, is left with memories. And his art.

To the film's credit, that "art" (a sample of which is shown below, and which I would call, as does Wikipedia, "erotic illustration") is never pushed forward as anything great. Instead it is shown to have a huge appeal to the gay population -- which it did and still does. With its emphasis on uniforms, leather, big bodies, and very large muscles (including those cocks), it strikes directly at certain accouterments favored by a portion, probably rather large, of the gay population.

And the drawings are indeed beautifully done: In black-and-white, they're well-composed and about as in-your-face as you could wish. The movie itself, however, is a lot more subtle that the work itself. It must be, in order to give us the fairly in-depth look at Touko and his life: first, with his sister and eventually with the young man who moves into the pair's apartment as a renter and soon becomes  Tom's lover, and finally a near-rapturous view -- so different from Finland -- of gay life in the USA during the burgeoning 1970s and then into the 80s, as AIDS begins to decimate the gay scene.

In America, we're introduced suddenly to some new characters -- Jack (Jacob Oftebro, above, left, who also doubles, I believe, as Tom's gorgeous fantasy man, below) and Doug (Seuman Sargent, above, right). Why soon becomes clear, while the how is handled with enough panache to grab our interest. One of the great strengths of Karuoski's direction (he also collaborated on the story) and Bardy's screenplay come via their refusal to hand us literally everything on a large and labeled platter. Instead they make us work, and the effort is invigorating.

Though their movie unveils in linear fashion, no dates are given anywhere in the film. Just figure it out. So we do. Neither are locations labeled. We're in Finland, then Germany, then America, then back to Finland. But thanks to an intelligent screenplay, the location is either quickly or eventually revealed.

Big events are handled with surprising restraint, as well. The death of a loved one comes and goes without the usual funeral scene, inclement weather and tears -- yet we feel it just as strongly. Notice a scene midway that deals, among others things, with yellow curtains and their meaning, then smile at how lovely is a later scene, featuring just a look at some fabric in a local shop.

The film is full of such moments, and it is all the richer and stronger for them. Oh, Tom of Finland is feel-good, all right. But we've also been given enough feel-bad, along with intelligent probing of place, culture and mores, that the finale seems more than appropriate and justified.

Performances are all you could wish for, too. From the excellent leading actor, to the fine supporting roles. That's Jessica Grabowsky, above and below, center, who plays Touko's sister, and Lauri Tilkanen, below, left, in the role of Veli, the lover. If there is one big coincidence to be faced down, that would be the fact the Veli, who shows up to rent a room in the pair's apartment, is the same fellow with whom Touko has earlier had sex in the local park. I suspect this is an invention of the screenwriter, but either way, it doesn't derail the film. (I usually allow one major coincidence per movie.)

From Kino Lorber, in Finnish and German with English subtitles and some dialog in English, and running 115 minutes, the movie opens Friday, October 13, in New York City at the Quad Cinema and the following Friday, October 20, in Los Angeles (at the Landmark NuArt), Berkeley (at the Landmark Shattuck Cinema) and San Francisco (at the Landmark Embarcadero Center Cinema). To see all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters, click here and scroll down.

A gay Iranian artist from the old days stars in Mitra Farahani's FIFI HOWLS FROM HAPPINESS

What a lucky break for the young Iranian filmmaker, Mitra Farahani (shown below), that she happened upon and grew interested in the work and then the personality of Iranian artist Bahman Mohassess just at the time that she did, for this has allowed her to meet, film and finally honor him and his work in a manner that neither she nor we could have imagined going into this odd project. The result, a new documentary called FIFI HOWLS FROM HAPPINESS (who could quite resist a title like that?), is something else. For most of us, at the very least, it will provide an introduction to a man and his art, not to mention his outsize personality, that should firmly lodge in our memory.

The "Fifi" of the title is the subject of one of Mister Mohassess' earlier paintings -- shown of the poster above, and perhaps his favorite of all -- from which he is never parted. We don't learn that much about the Fifi painting until later in the movie, a smart move, because by then we know Mohassess pretty well and so can better understand his feelings for Fifi and why and how he created her. Born in 1931 (he was 79 when the documentary was filmed), Mohassess came of age during the early days of the reign of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and then enjoyed the short-lived rule (1951-53) of Mohammad Mosaddegh, the Democratically elected Prime Minister, whom the American and British governments helped to over when Mosaddegh deigned to nationalize Iran's oil production, foolishly imagining that the country in which the oil existed might have some claim to owning that oil.

Evidently, from what we see and hear in both archival filmed footage (above) and present-day video "takes," Mohassess was gay and "out" from a surprisingly early age. Consequently, as popular as he and his art were, he had to eventually leave Iran, after which many of his best pieces -- both painting and sculpture -- were destroyed.

As a consequence, he himself destroyed other of his work in a kind of fit of rage against what his homeland had done. (The story he tells us of how a museum needed to cover up an exposed penis on one of his sculptures is a funny and sadly typical one.)

After leaving Iran, he settled in Italy, which as he tells it, is a country dedicated and devoted to sex, sex, and more sex, and where he has remained ever since. We see a good deal of Mohassess' work in both media (above and below), and -- hot damn -- it's the real thing.

So is Mohassess. He's funny, sharp and very appealing. "I'm condemned to paint," he explains. "Like taking a piss: I have to do it." He is also one of those homosexuals born and raised at a time when this state of being was so out of favor with practically everyone (including, I'd wager, a good portion of homosexuals themselves). "All of homosexuality's beauty," he tells us, "was wrapped up in its prohibition." Also, rather typically, he did not care for men who acted effeminate. No -- "All my boys had fiancees," he tells us proudly.

Around the halfway point, a pair of brothers from Dubai appear (above) and want to commission a work by the artist. They're a funny pair, and Mohassess takes to them rather well.  They claim to be artists themselves but also admit to being "rug merchants."

The filmmaker herself gets her own course in movies, as she and Bahman watch various films together -- one of which, Visconti's The Leopard, is clearly a favorite of Mohassess. Does the artist get involved in his own movie? Yes, indeed. He even describes rather fully the finale he'd like to see. "So, lady," he asks Farahani early on, "What's the plan for my film's music?"

That plan and a lot more come to lovely fruition in the course of this 97-minute movie. If its ending does not reduce to tears all lovers of The Leopard (and its music), I'll be very surprised. I think Mr. Mohassess would approve.

Fifi Howls from Happiness, a swell gift from Music Box Films, opens this Friday, August 8, here in New York City at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema and in Los Angeles the following Friday, August 15, at Laemmle's Royal and Town Center 5. I don't think that any further scheduled playdates are available now, but as the weeks wear on, you can click here and perhaps discover some new cities and venues added. Eventually, there'll be streaming and DVD.

AFA hosts BIG JOY, Stephen Silha/Eric Slade's doc on one of our lesser known icons, James Broughton, along with ten of Broughton's films

Surely I've heard (or read) the name James Broughton a number of times during my life, particularly, I suspect, in the company/subject of the Beat Generation: Ginsberg, Kerouac et al. But I managed not to be curious enough about the name or the man attached to it to do further sleuthing. Now, thankfully, I don't have to because a couple of smart, talented filmmakers, Stephen Silha (shown below, right) and Eric Slade (below, left), aided by their editor and co-director, Dawn Logsdon (further below, left), have done it for me, producing a first-class documentary -- BIG JOY: THE ADVENTURES OF JAMES BROUGHTON -- about this classy, talented, ahead-of-his-time poet and filmmaker (among other skills) who lived the kind of life that many of us might choose, had we only balls enough to pursue it.

"When in doubt, twirl!" is one of the first quotes we hear from this guy, and, yes, we think: Of course! "Broughton was a trickster," somebody on-screen soon explains, and this makes perfect sense, as well. If you were a gay man back in mid-20th-century America, you had to survive on your wits and sleight-of-hand. If Broughton might have appeared a little effete, still he managed to attract and sometimes

seduce the ladies, including, yes, famous film critic Pauline Kael, fathering her daughter, even if he did not stick around long enough to help raise the child. Broughton would later marry and spawn a son (whom the movie-makers interview, along with many, many other friends and collaborators)  before at last meeting and falling head over heels for the man who would become the love of his life, a fellow named Joel Singer, some 35 years Broughton's junior.

In between all this (and continuing after it), there was the creativity: the dancing, the poetry, and especially the films. Fleeing to London in the early 50s with his then-partner Kermit Sheets to escape the McCarthy-inspired witch hunts, Broughton, who made mostly short films, there created one of his most famous:  The Pleasure Garden, which won a special prize at the Cannes Film Festival, with the award handed to Mr. B by one of his idols, Jean Cocteau.

Among his many films, The Bed is probably best known of all -- for its funny, loony use of the title object, which Broughton, shown at right and below, fills with naked men and women doing just what you'd imagine. And more. Groundbreaking in a number of ways, The Bed appeared in 1968, precisely the right time for a breakout like this one.

Silha, Slade & Logsdon have put together a frisky, fleet and immensely enjoyable film of which, one imagines, Broughton himself would have approved. While it does enshrine its subject in a lot of humor and good will, it also makes clear the fellow's dark side, along with how difficult it must have been for women like Kael (who indeed encouraged and contributed to Broughton's film-making) and the man's later wife, who at one point on camera nearly breaks down, as she remembers her love for the man and the immense loss of him she experienced when he left her for Mr. Singer (shown below, left).

We also learn about the philosopher Alan Watts (lately such an important part of Her), and how he claimed that Broughton was the only person who understood him -- and who truly understood the playful aspect of zen.

The finale brings together so many of the people we've heard from, now all reading, one after another, a short phrase from one of Broughton's poems. This is an inspired, lovely ending to a film that seems very nearly as original as its subject. You're likely to come away wishing you'd known this man. Meanwhile, we've got Big Joy, as well as Broughton's films and poems, to fill the gap.

Thanks to Anthology Film Archives, Big Joy is having its theatrical premiere here in New York City, beginning this Friday, March 21, through Sunday, March 23, each evening at 8pm at AFA. On Friday, March 21, there will be a special after-party sponsored by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence – the location will be announced at the screening.

AFA is also hosting two programs of selected films by James Broughton:

PROGRAM 1 
Saturday, March 22 at 5:30.
MOTHER’S DAY 1948, 22 min, 16mm
THE BED 1968, 19 min, 16mm
NUPTIAE 1969, 14 min, 16mm
THE GOLDEN POSITIONS 1970, 32 min, 16mm
THIS IS IT 1971, 10 min, 16mm
Total running time: ca. 100 min.

PROGRAM 2: Collaborations with Joel Singer 
Sunday, March 23 at 6:15
TOGETHER 1976, 3 min, 16mm, b&w
SONG OF THE GODBODY 1977, 11 min, 16mm
THE GARDENER OF EDEN 1981, 8.5 min, 16mm
DEVOTIONS 1983, 22 min, 16mm
SCATTERED REMAINS 1988, 14 min, 16mm
Total running time: ca. 65 min.

For more information about AFA -- tickets, directions, etc. -- simply click on the link.

Important Update! 

Summer Theatrical Tour: 

Chicago, May 16-22 at Facets Cinemateque  

Portland, May 24, 4:30pm at Hollywood Theatre 

Mendocino, May 31, 5:30pm at Crown Hall 

Los Angeles, June 10, 8pm at West Hollywood Library 

Los Angeles, June 12, 7:30pm American Cinematheque 

Spielberg Theatre 

New York, June 18, New York Public Library, time TBD 

Seattle, June 19, 7 pm at Gay City Calamus Auditorium 

Dallas, June 27, 9:20pm, Texas Theatre

BIG JOY will also be released on DVD/VOD 

via Kino Lorber's Alive Mind label on June 3rd.