QUEERGURU’S TOP PICKS OF MUST SEE MOVIES (PART 2) @ SYDNEY’S QUEER SCREEN MARDI GRAS FILM FESTIVAL

What A Feeling: when Andrew Hebden reviewed this for Queerguru he described it as a Jolly Germanic Lesbian Romcom.  And added “It’s not often we get to put those three words together in a sentence that doesn’t include ‘Never have I ever’

Marie Theres known as Resi (Caroline Peters) is a German doctor living and working in Austria with her wealthy husband Alexander (Heikko Deutschmann). It is their anniversary dinner with friends and he has just come back from his first tree-hugging men’s retreat. While there not only has Alexander rediscovered himself but he has also discovered he no longer wishes to be married to Resi. Alexander announces it to Resi and all her friends over the schnitzel. In a devastated drunken delirium Resi staggers towards home on her own but decides to stop off at a bar she has never noticed before – the Pussycat Club. There she recognizes Fa (Proschat Madani) who had almost run her over in her van the morning prior. Fa is beautiful, studious, and charismatic. An Iranian immigrant who is a carpenter by day, with a coterie of married female customers who can’t get enough of her handyperson skills, and an open mic night slam poetry rapper in the evening. 

Roman Zabarauskas is one of a rare breed.  Not only is he a queer filmmaker in Lithuania, a country not exactly well-known for its LGBTQ cinema, but he has a refreshing approach to powerful storytelling.  This is just his 4th feature (we loved The Lawyer his 3rd film)  but it shows a maturity and a remarkable curiosity of how queer stories should be told.

Kudos to Zabarauskas for his choice of making a queer film that not only focuses on older men but one that attempts to analyze such a profound relationship and is devoid of the usual melodrama….. and also keeps us thoroughly entertained at the same time. It’s a great addition to the canon of queer cinema