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Throughout Patricia Rozema’s third film, conservatives tangle with liberals, men with women, and heterosexuals with those of more fluid sexual persuasions. Surface tension aside, When Night Is Falling feels more personal than political. Camille (Pascale Bussières) teaches mythology at a Christian college in Toronto. Her fiancé, Martin (Henry Czerny, Clear and Present Danger), is a fellow theologian. Their superior, Reverend DeBoer (David Fox, The Saddest Music in the World), encourages them to marry. When Camille’s dog dies, she neglects to inform Martin. At a laundromat, she meets Petra (Rachael Crawford), a circus performer, who offers support. She also leaves her card, so Camille seeks her out, but when Petra makes a pass, she flees. Petra tries again, so Camille talks her into being friends, but mutual attraction proves too strong to resist. A simplistic reading suggests that the death of a pet can lead to experimentation, except Rozema (I’ve Heard the (more…)

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Director Marita Giovanni’s gay romantic comedy suffers all the earmarks of low-budget cinema–some uncertain performances, pedestrian plotting, and a bad theme song–and, despite some comic observation, never completely recovers from them. Loretta (Nancy Allison Wolfe) and Rachael (Liza D’Agostino) meet at a lesbian pit stop in Los Angeles, fall in love, and cause each other misery. Wolfe, playing a Woody Allen-ish neurotic, has a way with screenwriter Lauran Hoffman’s wit and supplies most of the film’s passing pleasures. The characters’ emotions, however, soon seem to change from second to second: the pair hooks up scant minutes after the opening, then spends every following moment running romantically hot-and-cold. Somewhere around the halfway point the film loses its mind, with off-key dramatics and some truly awful therapeutic dialogue (Loretta realizes “I really want to love me”). This may be an ode to human fickleness, but it’s woefully out of control in (more…)

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This warm romantic comedy by newcomer Maria Maggenti is a gay coming-of-age story framed by Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. Randy (Laurel Hillman) is a stoner, lesbian teenager who happens to be failing math and dating a married woman. One day, fellow student Evie (Nicole Parker) drives up to Randy’s gas station in a Range Rover and flips her world upside down. Evie is privileged and popular. Randy is poor, impulsive, and according to the other students, a freak. Opposites attract when the two girls kick off their friendship in detention. The flirtation blossoms after Evie introduces tomboyish Randy to the joys of Whitman and opera. Randy returns the favor by acquainting the sheltered Evie with the problems and delights of mature, taboo love. There is a beautiful scene where the two consummate their courtship on Evie’s birthday while Mom is out of town. The true test of their relationship occurs during the hilarious climax when angry families and (more…)