Framing Agnes

This is being shown as part of the Seattle International Film Festival.

I found this a heart-tugging dialog on gender experience, focusing on the experience of trans-gender "now" and in the past. The past experience comes from academic interviews conducted by academic researchers at UCLA, brought to life by modern trans actors. These interviews of course are limited to the questions asked in the room, and further limited by what was shared in this presentation, and thus the nature of the actual lives lived is two-dimensional. I found the interplay with the modern insights that the trans actors and academics drew from these interviews compelling and moving. In some ways, In some ways, I found the documentary to be more about them than the actual interviewees.

I watched this production with an open heart and mind. I had no known preconceptions - documentaries by far are often opinion pieces based on collected facts. They related what is seen in the eye of the "producers."

Various people have been negative on this title for various reasons. I still would recommend it being watched.

For me, "Framing Agnes" compellingly reiterates the humanity of all members of our species. People trying to live, and trying to live in their truth.

Saw this back at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival

This documentary is directed by Chase Joynt (Cool name) and it is about the media's ongoing fascination with trans people. With the film being shown through a talk show kind of format, it breathes into the life of six previously unknown stories from the archives of the UCLA Gender Clinic in the 1950s. The documentary is presented with reenactments and experimental fiction elements from actors to try and portray the exact moments that happened in the past. The make up from the trans actors all looked really good and feels almost like they were the real person at times. While I do appreciate Joynt doing his best to make this documentary artistically and engaging, but the movie becomes quite rough on the edges and it didn't feel really informative. It almost felt like if the participants were just best friends having conversations with no little to the main themes and purpose of the story.

Some of the interviews didn't feel like interviews but more like a conversation from a movie. Some of the things Joynt is trying to discuss kind of doesn't make any sense. It's a shame because there were some really good discussions and people being interviewed about the trans community and how media is alway interested about the topics of trans. But it's really doesn't do much and becomes kind of misinformed at times and boring. There are some good production and technical moments.

I honestly believe that if Joynt gave a more meaningful approach about this movie, then it would have been more interesting.

Rating: C+

This was my least favorite film I saw at Sundance (Fire of Love was probably my favorite). I'm guessing the source material was interesting enough, so it's too bad it turned out this way. I can understand why the topic would impress festival critics. I'm also really glad to see more trans films coming out over the last few years (all the other ones I've seen were better than this one).

I have to be honest though, I mostly agree with the other review that says this could have been a much better film than the one that was screened. The problem is the way that Framing Agnes tells its story is confusing, and not in a way that pays back interpretation beyond what the film already tells you about itself. The pacing was off too. And it wasn't visually exciting. Somehow a 75-minute feature felt like it dragged for over 2 hours. At parts, this felt like a student film, its heart is in the right place but it fails -- and not in an interesting way.

Also I'm also a fan of reenactments and experimental fiction elements in documentaries. For a couple of decades I've seen many films blur history and fiction. Maybe the most creative and stunning and well known example was The Act of Killing. Framing Agnes tries to use reenactment to produce a counternarrative to the representation of trans people in history, on TV, and other contexts. In theory that's a promising idea. In practice it doesn't work well. What the film does just isn't as new as at least one of the reviews I read claimed. A couple of the performances are really strong, which is why I'm higher on this than the other reviewer even though I agree about the director's awkward performance. Still, the reenacted segments are both poorly integrated and the writing is mostly flat. The takeaways about trans people might have been more surprising or meaningful 10 years ago than they are now. I'm sure this film will win festival awards but I can't see it finding an audience beyond a smaller group of people who want to see a film that unfortunately isn't there.

This is a weak documentary and an even worse experimental film. The focus on 1960s sociological cases of transgender people had lots of potential and could have potentially served as a powerful response to terrible representations of trans people in media. The problem is that the documentary mostly engages in ponderous, clumsy, and self-congratulatory naval gazing without yielding real insights or lessons that couldn't be gained from other, more engaging viewing. Sadly, this film doesn't work well either as an educational or experimental film. It takes a fairly familiar critical approach to archives and documentary through reflexive reenactments. But those reenactments are mostly awkward, especially in the writing and also because of some flat performances -- with the exception of successful acting from Angelica Ross and Zackary Drucker. The editing throughout the movie is also confusing and doesn't even give us stylistically meaningful confusion. This is a movie that works much better in the description than it does in its execution. I went to the opening weekend of the movie and had high hopes, but came away more bored than I expected given the topic.

This documentary has great source material and therefore great potential, it's really too bad that whoever is in charge of this mess decide to ruin it with some sort of artistic vision. I wanted to like it, but it's impossible. The fundamental problem is that the documentary flips between real footage, reenactments, and interviews with the actors doing the reenactments. It's this last part that really caused confusion, because it becomes difficult to determine who we're talking about or who's really doing the talking. Is it an actress in character? Out of character? A researcher? After a while I had to give up. It's a shame.