From ‘My Policeman’ to ‘Soft,’ TIFF films offer nuanced exploration of queer lives

TORONTO – More than a dozen films that centre the queer experience are headed to this year’s Toronto International Film Festival,marking what filmmakers and experts say is a step forward in LGBTQ representation.

The selection varies not only in story but in scope: from the Judd Apatow-produced “Bros” to the Canadian indies “This Place” and “Soft,” viewers have a chance to see intimate portrayals of sex, romance, childhood, family dynamics and gender.

“What I’m excited about is the nuance,” said “Soft” director Joseph Amenta. “Stories that move away from genre tropes, and (toward) the nuance of queer lives being explored and the worlds that they inhabit, as opposed to benchmarks like coming out of the closet or transitioning.”

Amenta, whose pronouns are gender-neutral, said they’ve always sought out queer media and have long been excited about the breadth of LGBTQ stories being told.

“I think the rest of the world is catching up to that,” they said.

Amenta describes “Soft,” a colourful film that follows three queer Toronto kids over the course of a summer while they try to figure out how they fit into the world, as “a love letter to a childhood that I didn’t get to experience.”

Festival CEO Cameron Bailey said TIFF programmers set out to include more LGBTQ stories in this year’s lineup, but noted they didn’t have to go out of their way to find them.

“There are more LGBTQ filmmakers making films at different scales now and in different genres,” he said in a phone interview.

“They’re telling stories that still are under-represented. And so we’re glad to be able to bring as many of these as we can to the screen.”

It’s a departure from other festivals, which tend to show only a handful of queer movies, if that, said director V.T. Nayani, whose film “This Place” premieres Friday.

“Here, we get to see the diversity of queer experiences, which is what we deserve to see,” Nayani said. “We deserve to see the expansiveness, the abundance of what those stories can look like.”

“This Place,” for example, follows the love story of two young women — one Tamil, the other Iranian and Kanien’keha:ka.

“It’s about how Indigenous communities and immigrant communities come together. It’s about two women falling in love. It’s about reconciling with family. So it’s very much about queer identity, family, diaspora,” Nayani said.

Other films on the roster include “The Inspection,” about a young gay Black man who joins the marines in the era of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” and “The Whale,” the Brendan Fraser vehicle about a housebound gay man attempting to reconnect with his estranged daughter.

Meanwhile “My Policeman,” a gay historical romance about a young cop torn between his love for his wife and his powerful attraction to another man, has already generated online conversation about the nature of queerness in film.

Harry Styles, the pop star portraying the titular police officer, was a trending topic on Twitter last month after he was quoted in a “Rolling Stone” profile as saying, “So much of gay sex in film is two guys going at it, and it kind of removes the tenderness from it.”

He promised the sex in “My Policeman” would be more sensual.

Online commentators argued that the criticism of gay sex scenes is not that they’re too unromantic, it’s that they’re not portrayed at all.

Jonathan Petrychyn, an assistant professor at Brock University’s department of communication, pop culture and film, said international film festivals such as TIFF started paying attention to LGBTQ stories in the 1990s, after notably ignoring them for decades.

But to see this many films in the category is notable, he added.

“Normally, festivals with that many queer films are queer film festivals,” Petrychyn said.

But there’s added significance when an LGBTQ film plays at a mainstream “A-list” festival like TIFF, Petrychyn said, listing the example of “Moonlight,” which screened at TIFF in 2016 and went on to win the Oscar for best picture.

“People learn … that queer films can resonate beyond queer film festivals and beyond queer audiences,” he said, adding that he’s pleased to see the breadth of queer films at this year’s festival.

“There’s a recognition here from filmmakers, as well as from production companies and festivals and distributors and the industry at large, that there’s more to our stories and more to our lives than transitioning and coming out,” he said.

“Our communities are these rich and diverse places with lots of stories to tell, there’s so many stories to tell if we’re given the chance. And so the fact that these films at TIFF are more than just ‘baby’s first coming out’ is huge.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 3, 2022.

— with files from David Friend.

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