Three more narrative features from Reel Love Fest: each dealing with love in their own ways, which aren’t necessarily romantic.
Golden Arm (2020 | USA | 91 minutes | Maureen Bharoocha)
Danny, a champion arm wrestler (UCB’s Betsy Sodaro), has an injury that prevents her from participating in her sport’s national competition, so she brings in a ringer in her place: her childhood best friend, Melanie (Mary Holland, best known as the sister Jane from the 2020 queer holiday hit Happiest Season). While some romantic subplots do come into play, the major love story in this movie is the platonic friendship between these two leads, which is tested as things get serious at Nationals.
A greatest-hits of comedians you know from supporting roles in TV shows or indie movies parade across the screen: Eugene Cordero (Pillboi from The Good Place), Dawn Luebbe (Greener Grass), Kate Flannery (Meredith from The Office), Ron Funches (Powerless, Undateable, Kroll Show), Aparna Nancherla (Bojack Horseman, Corporate, Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet) and more each hold their own in colorful costumes and zany subplots reminiscent of the scrappy showmanship and fight dynamics of the cancelled-too-soon show GLOW.
Betsy Sodaro won Reel Love Fest’s Special Jury Mention for Breakout Performance, and with good reason. She’s been a stalwart presence at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre for years now and her improv comedy chops have won her small spots in bigger comedies like An American Pickle, Hubie Halloween, and Plus One, as well as voice work in stuff like Bob’s Burgers and Monsters University, but her larger-than-life presence and joyful manic energy, coupled with a light touch when it’s time to get serious and sincere, has been crying out for a full-on showcase role like this one. She’s got the chops to be the next Zach Galifianakis if only the right eyes come across a performance like this.
Milkwater (2019 | USA | 101 minutes | Morgan S Ingari)
Milo (Molly Bernard, from the actually-pretty-good Hilary Duff/Sutton Foster TV show Younger) is an adrift 20-something New Yorker, looking for something to give her life meaning, when she meets Roger (Patrick Breen, who I must keep reminding myself is not John Cameron Mitchell) in a bar. Roger is a 50-something gay man who moonlights as a drag queen and has been unsuccessfully trying to have a child through official processes like adoption. Milo drunkenly blurts out a proposal: that she serve as a surrogate (and egg donor) to have Roger’s child. To everyone’s surprise, they sober up and actually decide to go through with it. To no one’s surprise, things get messy.
It must be something in the zeitgeist, for this film to come out in such close proximity to Sundance hit Together Together: another story of a young woman acting as a surrogate for an older single man, leaving romance out of it but nonetheless creating much deeper and more complicated ties than either had bargained for. This one takes things to a little more out-of-control degree than the slightly gentler Sundance film did, but both are really making the same points: that families are legitimately created in a multitude of ways, and that a relationship and love doesn’t have to be romantic or even permanent to be meaningful and special.
This one does have the advantage of a gloriously dramatic lip-sync drag performance to Robyn’s “Dancing On My Own”, which is pretty hard to beat.
Summer White (2020 | Mexico | 85 minutes | Rodrigo Ruiz Patterson)
My first of three international features showcased by Reel Love Fest is a coming-of-age story from Mexico. Like the others of this post, this isn’t a story devoid of romantic relationships, but the real love at the center of this film is familial rather than romantic: the love between a mother and son. Rodrigo (Adrián Rossi) is a teen who’s used to being the only major focus of his mother’s life, but when she gets a new boyfriend, their household’s peaceful balance shifts. He begins acting out, although for most of the film it’s in quiet ways while he projects equanimity: it takes a long time for anything big to happen, and there really is never an emotional confrontation. Rodrigo never really shows his inner turmoil on his face, but just takes it out in his actions, like breaking stuff in a junkyard his mother doesn’t know he likes to visit.
I’m not sure Rodrigo’s consistently flat affect worked for me, as the story hinges on an emotional balance being upset, and I also don’t understand how the opening quote (“Memory is like the most stupid dog, you throw it a stick and it brings any old thing” – Ray Loriga) related to any of the rest of the film. My guess is that it’s deeply autobiographical, as the main character shares a first name with director Rodrigo Ruiz Patterson, which would explain the quote about memory and possibly the acting style as well, if it’s an imitation of himself.
All three of these films are still available to begin watching via Reel Love Fest until midnight PST tonight (Sunday, Feb 14th).