WE LOVE IT WHEN OUR FRIENDS BECOME SUCCESSFUL

Sabbath Queen + High Tide + Drive Away Dolls

The Smiths said that a bit differently—and I suppose I do get jealous when friends make it big. But no, I don’t hate my pals who make movies, even good movies. How could I? Especially thinking of these three folks. They’re all so fucking talented, all so mellow and lovely, and all so exquisitely queer! (Yes, reader, I am myself am queer. And my people stick together.)

I’m slowly working on my 10 Best list for 2024—and, believe me, it’s hard this year. But I thought I should start with three films I loved but had to rule out, because I am obviously biased. I don’t generally review movies made by my peeps; I can’t be objective. Sure, I have only a couple hundred readers here on a good day, but I don’t ever want you to doubt my motives. I have no idea how many Maryellens these films deserve, but I’m sure I would give them the whole drawerful.

SABBATH QUEEN

Let’s start with Sabbath Queen, the fascinating new documentary from Sandi Dumbowski, who made the brilliant Trembling Before G-d back in 2001. I’ve been friendly with Sandi since the 1990s; I think we met when my friend Noel Alicea took me to a party at his loft in what we now call NoHo. (Said loft shows up in the film—how cool is that?) And I think I met Amichai Lau-Lavie, the film’s subject, at a seder-esque party on the Lower East Side about five years ago with another friend, Boris Khmelnitsky. Enough name-dropping. Let’s just say I know the milieu of the film.

In a nutshell, Sabbath Queen describes Amichai’s spiritual journey: Descended from a long line (as in millennium-long) of Polish and Israeli rabbis, he’s expected to enter the family business but takes a bit of a detour when he’s outed by an Israeli newspaper. He decides to screw it and flees to New York (where else?) to plunge into queer life. He finds the Radical Faeries, throws himself into leftist activism, and at some point discovers an alter ego, Haddasah Gross, the widow of a prominent rabbi. That’s her in the photo—she’s a R I O T. But she’s also very wise, and before you know it, Amichai finds himself … back in the family business.

But that’s really just the prologue. With a group of likeminded jews and gentiles, he co-founds the very queer and very left Lab/Shul. It’s a synagogue, it’s a community center, it’s a music hall—it’s a vital hub for people who need a new kind of family space. The thing is, Amichai, finding himself back in the biz, more or less, decides he really should be in the biz, and enrolls at the conservative Jewish Theological Seminary. For the uninitiated, that’s like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez campaigning for Mitt Romney. What his trip does to Lab/Shul and his friendships—including with Sandi—is complex and challenging. Where Amichai ends up is very, very moving.

HIGH TIDE

My happy place, as any of my friends can tell you, is Provincetown, Massachusetts, a little twisted-around spit of sand out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, where gayfolk have congregated lo these many decades. So imagine my delight to drift away into a film that captures its beauty, its sexy romance, and a bit of its tangled economics and politics?

High Tide, the first feature from my pal Marco Calvani, tells the story of Lourenço (Marco Pigossi), a sensitive—and it must be said, hawwwwwt—Brazilian man whose boyfriend has left him during their summer in the town. Lourenço takes up odd jobs to support himself, but with his visa lapsing, he’s got to make some difficult choices. Does he go back to a semi-closeted existence in his homophobic home town, or stay on, undocumented, in America?

Lourenço, like all undocumented people, is at the mercy of his employers. And while it may sidestep the question of Lourenço’s privilege—he is after all an exceedingly beautiful man in a place where beauty is the chief currency—the film nonetheless describes his legal limbo well. And it captures the place perfectly, showing the summer town in its most beautiful phase, as it slows down into a winter rhythm.

Pigossi is sweetly subdued as the heartbroken and quite lost Lourenço. Also terrific are James Bland, as a man he has an intense affair with; Marisa Tomei, as a generous client who becomes a mentor; Bill Irwin, as his smitten landlord; and João Santos (a local cabaret artist—hey João!) as another itinerant worker. But the real star is cinematographer Oscar Ignacio Jiménez. With no bells or whistles, he manages to capture the ephemeral soul of the place.

DRIVE-AWAY DOLLS

How do you describe a movie like Drive-Away Dolls, directed by the legendary Ethan Coen, which my friend Tricia Cooke co-wrote with him and edited? It’s a lesbian road movie, of course (a genre which is woefully underrepresented at cinemas). But that is folded into a crime caper. And it’s also a full-on sex comedy with decidedly political overtones. Mostly it’s just a lark—shaggy, irreverent, and very very trippy.

Margaret Qualley and Geraldine Viswanathan play Jamie and Marian, two friends who sign up to take a drive-away car to Florida in 1999. Jamie needs to escape her jealous ex, Sukie (a hilarious Beanie Feldstein), who promptly decides to follow them. Unbeknownst to them, some underworld characters have hidden contraband dildos (don’t ask) in the trunk. Making cameos along the way are Colman Domingo, Pedro Pascal, Bill Camp, Matt Damon, Miley Cyrus, and a very horny women’s soccer team.

The less I tell you about the plot, the better. It’s a bit of a screwball romantic comedy in the 1930s style, where opposites repel and then attract: Jamie is desperate to get laid, searching out lesbian dive bars at every stop; Marian is keen to finish her book. (Tricia, I will love you until the day I die for choosing The Europeans by Henry James.) But as the cast romps its way south in madcap style, the film does its own footloose meander. One minute it serves up It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, the next it’s Palm Beach Story, only pausing for some bonkers acid-trip flashbacks that don’t even get explained until the last minute. The irreverence and randomness may remind you of some earlier Coen Brothers gems, especially Raising Arizona and The Big Lebowski, but I suspect the movie’s fabulous denouement—a decidedly left hook—is all Tricia’s.