Fabulous! The Story of Queer Cinema

Documentary purporting to show clips from landmark gay films and how they developed over the years. I'm giving it a 9 but I can't say I liked it. The movie focuses mostly on lesbian, independent and transgender films. There's nothing wrong with that--but totally ignoring gay male films is not right. Where's "Boys in the Band" or "Jeffrey" or "Love! Valour! Compassion"? Those were landmarks and the gay male films they do cover ("Making Love", "Brokeback Mountain") aren't shown in any depth at all. It should be titled "Fabulous! The Story of Independent Queer Cinema". That aside this is fascinating. It shows gay directors and actors talking about the films, how they were made and released. Some truly fascinating remarks are here. Well worth seeing but totally ignoring gay male films bothers me. I give it a 9.

"Fabulous! The Story of Queer Cinema" serves as an interesting introduction to GLBT cinema over the last 40 years. However anyone who is familiar with the similar documentary, "The Celluloid Closet" (1995), may be somewhat disappointed by "Fabulous!". It is distinctly less ambitious in scope and depth - it spans a shorter period in time (50-60 years) and therefore does not explore homosexuality in the early history cinema - surely a crucial part of 'the history of gay cinema'? Oddly, "Fabulous!" almost totally excludes European and World Cinema while explaining that these were almost the only sources of gay cinema in the dark days of homophobic censorship in the US. On the other hand, the treatment of different ethnic and minority groups (e.g. Asian- and African- Americans) in gay movies is explored in an interesting way.

A wide range of contributors (actors, directors and critics) give their opinions on the development of gay cinema - although this commentary often resembles the shallow contributions found on TV 'best of' compilation programs. The graphics, jumpy editing and music used also give the whole production a rather cheap and 'made for TV' feel.

Where this documentary is strongest is in gathering together a wide collection of (US) gay-related cinema, particularly from the last 20 years. For anyone interesting in exploring gay cinema further these films will provide a good starting-point. A humorous and light-hearted tone is maintained throughout meaning that the documentary should appeal to a wide audience and not just ardent film buffs.

Sure, for a newcomer, 'Fabulous! The Story of Queer Cinema' was educational. For people that have been around the queer-independent block a few times, it was ho-hum for the most part. Some interviews were insightful, mostly by John Waters, but others told us what's already been said before. And the time line they showed throughout was a bit off-subject, if this was, in fact, a documentary on "queer cinema" and not on miscellaneous gay events. However, they did hit the nail on the head with the overabundance of "coming out" and "AIDS" stories. I seriously thought I would pull my hair out if another one of either genre came out in the 1990s. I understand this movie came out in 2006, so thankfully they got to 'Brokeback Mountain' but missed the new trend in more recent cinema: the return of homophobic male-bonding/bromance features. I even liked 2009's 'The Hangover' but once again, it seems the new trend is the recent craze to justify homophobic behavior. People do see it as funny, but unfortunately it allows the young males seeing this justify their hatred or simply scared actions. Unfortunately, this documentary didn't touch on that, but still it was an insightful look at pre-coming out cinema (including 'Beefcake' features) and it was nice to see a documentary that's raw and uncensored (full frontal nudity and language abound.) It's worth a viewing.

If this film were called "The Story of American Queer Cinema" I would give it a higher rating, although --as it has been written in other reviews-- it only covers a small sample of its subject in American cinema, mostly independent films from recent years. It is neither a work on self-representation by American gay independent filmmakers, since it also covers a few motion pictures made by heterosexual directors, who --with varying degrees of respect-- have worked with homosexual or lesbian stories and characters. The lack of references to significant mainstream titles as "Mikaël" (1924), "Mädchen in Uniform" (1931) and the very bad "The Third Sex" (1957), the three being from Germany, the interesting British drama "Victim' (1961), Fassbinder's "Fox and His Friends" (1975), "The Best Way to Walk" (1976) and "The Wounded Man" (1983) from France, the Mexican black comedy "Doña Herlinda and Her Son" (1985), or Wong Kar-Wai's dramatic "Happy Together" (1997), omits the different and many aspects of what it means to be homosexual or lesbian in other cultures, so we are left with what it means to be "gay" or "queer", one-dimensional terms that many persons from all over the world (including myself) seem reluctant to apply to themselves or anyone. In the end this omission affects the work, making it appear too light and shallow in terms of world contribution to cinematic representation of same-sex eroticism, even when a few of the testimonies and analysis of a couple of motion pictures make the documentary moderately interesting.

I'm always interested in any film documentaries especially when there about the history of queer films. As a gay man I am a huge movie fan and love seeing myself in the films I love. That being said this 2006 film is just slightly disappointing. After the superior Celluloid Closet it not only lacks the information in that film but also doesn't really bring anything new to the plate. That being said it's fine but there's definitely better explorations of the topic out there.

6/10