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    ‘Pink Narcissus’: A Home Movie Both Abject and Erotic

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    Originally released anonymously, this homoerotic fantasia by James Bidgood gets its first theatrical run in 54 years at Metrograph.As its title suggests, “Pink Narcissus” is something of a hothouse flower. A feature-length movie, shot over a period of seven years on eight-millimeter film and elaborate sets constructed in the filmmaker’s tiny Manhattan apartment, it’s also a labor of love — focusing largely on a single actor.Originally released anonymously, this homoerotic fantasia created by the photographer James Bidgood, newly restored by the film and television archive at the University of California, Los Angeles, gets its first theatrical run in 54 years at Metrograph, starting April 11.The breathtaking opening sequence in which a full moon is glimpsed through a tangled forest is as fastidious as a late 1930s Disney animation, an association supported by a musical track heavy on program music like Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain.” Soon, amid busy butterflies and fluttering flowers, Bidgood’s young star, known as Bobby Kendall, makes his first appearance.The movie has no dialogue and, so far as I can tell, no women. Dressed variously in tight white jeans and short kimonos, but most often posed as a nude odalisque, Kendall plays a kept rent-boy whose fantasies provide a succession of set pieces, as when he imagines himself as a matador whose bull is a hard-charging biker. Kendall also participates in a toga party and is entertained by a provocative belly dancer in a male seraglio.Sex acts are implied and full nudity coyly veiled. Explicit yet decorous, “Pink Narcissus” is founded on a dialectic between the erotic and the abject. The rococo apartment and an idealized natural world of rosy sunsets vie with a dank public urinal and an invented, garbage-strewn Times Square where pushcarts sell vibrators and other sex toys. Charles Ludlam can be glimpsed among the denizens of this sordid domain, but more than Ludlam’s “ridiculous” theater, Bidgood’s precursors are taboo-breaking movies like Jack Smith’s “Flaming Creatures” and Kenneth Anger’s “Fireworks.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      In Alain Guiraudie’s Films, Sex Leads to Unexpected Destinations

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      Alain Guiraudie broke through with “Stranger by the Lake.” In his new movie, “Misericordia,” eroticism and death are also intimately entangled.Carnal urges drive the characters in the films of the French director Alain Guiraudie toward absurd and sometimes dangerous mishaps. In his sexually audacious narratives, which usually play out in the countryside, the temptation of the flesh is a potent catalyst.“I don’t know if you can say that desire is what drives all of cinema, but it’s certainly what drives my cinema,” Guiraudie said via an interpreter during a recent video interview from his home in Paris.That artistic mandate guides his latest picture, “Misericordia,” which opens in U.S. theaters on Friday. When it came out in France, it received eight nominations for the César Awards, France’s equivalent to the Oscars, and was named the best film of 2024 by the renowned French film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma.The movie follows Jérémie (Félix Kysyl) as he returns to the small rural town of his youth, where he soon becomes the prime suspect in a murder, while also awakening the lust of the local Catholic priest.For Guiraudie, 60, eroticism and death are intimately entangled. “There are two situations in which we return to our most primitive instincts: sex and violence,” he said. “I see an obligatory connection.”Félix Kysyl and Jacques Develay in “Misericordia.” Like most of Guiraudie’s movies, it is set in the countryside.Sideshow/Janus FilmsWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Young Hearts’ Review: Finding Acceptance

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      In this coming-of-age drama from Belgium, a 14-year-old boy falls in love with his neighbor and questions his sexual identity.There are no bigoted relatives or homophobic bullies in the pleasantly modest coming-of-age film “Young Hearts.” Instead, Elias (Lou Goossens), a 14-year-old boy, wrestles mostly with himself after he falls in love with Alexander (Marius De Saeger), his new neighbor.Shot primarily outdoors, in the Belgian countryside where the two boys ride their bikes and lounge by lakes, this debut drama by Anthony Schatteman presents a familiar conflict: Alex, who is originally from Brussels, isn’t afraid to be openly gay, whereas the provincial Elias treats their romance like a shameful secret.Elias’s friends at school, including his quasi-girlfriend Valerie (Saar Rogiers), think he’s straight, and because his dad, Luk (Geert Van Rampelberg), is a famous crooner of kitschy Flemish love songs, he’s already sensitive about being mocked.The assumptions of Elias’s family members about his sexuality — and the total absence of queer people in his life up to this point — are enough to convince him his feelings for Alex are abnormal. His mother Natalie (Emilie De Roo) and his grandfather Fred (Dirk Van Dijck) are more sensitive listeners than his self-absorbed father, but Elias insists on keeping things bottled up.The film shifts between Elias’s states of blissful surrender and angsty repression, capturing him in emotionally baring close-ups. Naturalistic performances and quiet scenes of summertime idling bring to mind Luca Guadagnino’s drama “Call Me By Your Name,” though “Young Hearts” is a more wholesome, and ultimately more cliché, endeavor. In the end, teenage brooding gives way to a sparkling fairy tale finale that shows that there was nothing for Elias to worry about, after all.Young HeartsNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Sundance Film Festival 2025: Standout Movies, Moments and Performances

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      The movies and performances most likely to make an impact in the year ahead, including an ode to 1970s New York and Josh O’Connor going full cowboy.Just as the Sundance Film Festival is in flux, likely soon to leave its longtime home of Park City, Utah, so too is the state of film — and indie film in particular. Yet the industry and its most ardent fans still came to the mountains for America’s most important event in independent cinema to schmooze, ski and see lots of movies, hoping to find this year’s “A Real Pain,” the breakout hit from last year’s slate. Sometimes it can feel like you’re wading through too much muddy snow to find the bright spots, and the 2025 festival, which ended on Sunday, definitely felt less shiny than in years past. But below are some standout moments that might influence the year ahead in culture.Eva Victor in “Sorry, Baby.”Mia Cioffi Henry/Courtesy of Sundance Institute1. One new name to know: Eva VictorThere’s a particular kind of Sundance movie that centers on a young woman who perseveres with wry humor and grit despite something terrible happening to her. Often, it takes place on a college campus. This year’s exemplar was “Sorry, Baby,” which was among the funniest, saddest and most exciting films of the week. Victor, 30, first found success in the Brooklyn comedy scene, but this is her feature directorial debut. She also wrote and stars in the tender project (alongside Naomi Ackie and Lucas Hedges).Rebecca Hall and Ben Whishaw in “Peter Hujar’s Day.”Courtesy of Ira Sachs2. Queer cinema is still ascendant (but still very male)Indie film has always been a genre through which teenagers who feel like outsiders learn to discover themselves, but this year’s roster felt especially crowded with L.G.T.B.Q. projects. Although the three with the most buzz were — for better or, mostly, for worse — about handsome white men: “Twinless,” in which two guys (one straight, one gay) meet in a bereavement group for people who’ve lost their siblings; “Plainclothes,” featuring Tom Blythe and Russell Tovey as a duo (one a closeted cop, one his target) grappling with temptation and intimacy; and “Peter Hujar’s Day,” Ira Sachs’s ode to 1970s-era New York, following the titular photographer (Ben Whishaw) as he narrates his quotidian schedule to his friend the writer Linda Rosencrantz (Rebecca Hall), based on Rosencrantz’s 2022 book of the same name.Josh O’Connor and Lily LaTorre in ”Rebuilding.”Jesse Hope/Courtesy of Sundance InstituteWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Theater

      Review: This ‘Importance of Being Earnest’ Is a Fabulous Romp

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      A new production in London, starring Ncuti Gatwa, releases Oscar Wilde’s 1895 comedy from period convention and brings it stunningly into the 21st century.Purists may reach for their smelling salts at the National Theater’s wild revival of “The Importance of Being Earnest,” the Oscar Wilde comedy concerned with self-identity, veiled sexuality and forming “an alliance,” as one character drolly puts it, “with a parcel.”More adventuresome audience members, however, are likely to have a blast with this (often literally) unbuttoned take on a familiar text from the director Max Webster, who was a 2023 Tony nominee for “Life of Pi.”Keeping one foot in the here and now, this “Earnest” — which runs through Jan. 25 and will be in movie theaters worldwide via National Theater Live from Feb. 20 — lands the verbal invention and wit of Wilde’s 1895 classic while incorporating contemporary music, the occasional swear word and a decidedly queer sensibility. At times, it may indulge in one wink at the audience too many — but even then, Webster’s intention is clearly to release a time-honored comedy from the confines of period convention.Does this sound too much? I doubt Wilde would have thought so. The Irish writer’s renegade spirit is felt here from the outset, with the introduction of a high-camp prologue that finds a gown-wearing, pink-gloved Algernon Moncrieff (Ncuti Gatwa, TV’s latest Doctor Who,) tearing into Grieg’s Piano Concerto as if he were the star attraction at Dalston Superstore, a queer East London nightlife venue that gets a passing mention.Minutes later, the play proper begins, and Algernon reappears in an extravagantly patterned suit worthy of the Met Gala.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Peggy Caserta, Who Wrote a Tell-All About Janis Joplin, Dies at 84

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      Her Haight-Ashbury clothing store was ground zero for the counterculture. But she was best known for a tawdry book — which she later disavowed — published after Ms. Joplin’s death.Peggy Caserta, whose funky Haight-Ashbury clothing boutique was a magnet for young bohemians and musicians, and who exploited her relationship with Janis Joplin in a much-panned 1973 memoir that she later disavowed, died on Nov. 21 at her home in Tillamook, Ore. She was 84.Her partner and only immediate survivor, Jackie Mendelson, confirmed the death but did not specify a cause.The Louisiana-born Ms. Caserta was 23 and working at a Delta Air Lines office in San Francisco when she decided to open a clothing store for her cohort, the lesbians in her neighborhood. She found an empty storefront on Haight Street, near the corner of Ashbury, which she rented for $87.50 a month.At first Ms. Caserta sold jeans, sweatshirts and double-breasted denim blazers that her mother made. Then she added Levi’s pants, which a friend turned into flares by inserting a triangle of denim into the side seams. When the friend couldn’t keep up with the orders, Ms. Caserta persuaded Levi Strauss & Company to make them.She named the place Mnasidika (pronounced na-SID-ek-ah), after a character in a poem by Sappho. “It’s a Greek girls’ name,” Ms. Caserta told The San Francisco Examiner in 1965, for an article about the “new bohemians” colonizing the Haight-Ashbury district.Ms. Caserta was 23 when she opened a clothing store, Mnasidika, in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco.via Wyatt MackenzieWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Sabbath Queen’ Review: Capturing the Act of Questioning

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      Sandi DuBowski’s documentary about Rabbi Amichai Lau-Levie observes the making of a Jewish identity.When Amichai Lau-Lavie was ordained a rabbi, in 2016, he joined a family tradition that had been going on uninterrupted since the 11th century. And yet this had been a fraught process for Lau-Lavie, an Israel-born gay man who just a few years before entering New York’s Jewish Theological Seminary had been a pillar of a “God-optional” community. How he went from the Radical Faeries’ joyous, transgressive vision of queerness — which led to creating his drag alter ego, Rebbetzin Hadassah Gross — to embracing Conservative Judaism is the subject of Sandi DuBowski’s fascinating look at the act of questioning yourself and your family, your surroundings and your decisions.Shortly after completing his acclaimed documentary “Trembling Before G-d” (2001), about gay and lesbian Orthodox Jews, DuBowski started filming Lau-Lavie. He kept at it for the next 21 years, which gives “Sabbath Queen” the rare opportunity to capture its subject in flight, so to speak.Yes, Lau-Lavie reflects on his family’s history during World War II, as well as key points from his own past, like being outed in his 20s. But we also watch him talk about many events, like becoming a father or cofounding the aforementioned experimental Lab/Shul initiative, while he is still in the middle of experiencing them, rather than speaking with the benefit of hindsight.After Lau-Lavie makes a big decision that goes against his recent commitment to the Conservative movement, it becomes obvious that his restlessness has not abated, and his questing days may never be over. He understands all too well that life is just not that neat.Sabbath QueenNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. In theaters. More

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      in Theater

      Uncovering Gay and Lesbian History in a 1941 ‘Sex Variants’ Study

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      The Civilians theater group has adapted a study of homosexuality into a work that explores the lives of lesbians and gay men in the early 20th century.In the 1930s, Jan Gay, a sex researcher and journalist, made the tough decision to publish material from hundreds of in-depth interviews she had done with fellow lesbians in a medical study written by a straight male psychiatrist.Though she had hoped her work might be used to curb the criminalization of homosexuality, the final study ended up further pathologizing “sexual deviance.” Yet Gay knew that without it, the interviews, which provide an intimate look at gay and lesbian life in the early 20th century, might never have been published at all.That history has inspired the Civilians theater company to create “Sex Variants of 1941: A Study of Homosexual Patterns,” which takes its name from the study. The show seeks to breathe Gay’s sense of humanity back into a problematic text through a blend of songs and scenes, many of them taken verbatim from the report. The piece, directed by Steve Cosson, will be performed at N.Y.U. Skirball through Nov. 24.Cosson conceived the work along with the visual artist Jessica Mitrani, and wrote the book with James La Bella. A cast of six performs the material as a sort of animated lecture, allowing for a kaleidoscopic look at the interviews as conducted, original music inspired by the lives of the subjects, and imagined stories dramatizing the creation of the study itself.“A good part of the contemporary conversation we’re having with this show is saying queer people need a history,” Cosson said in an interview. The study, he added, “became such a useful thing to make theater out of because they approached it as documenting these people’s lives, interviewing them and doing every scientific test that could be done at the time.”Jo Lampert and Robert Johanson in the show.Greg KesslerWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Music

      Chappell Roan Seeks the Line Between IRL and URL

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      For Chappell Roan, who has been toiling in the pop music trenches for several years now, the recent burst of acclaim she’s received has been overdue, affirming and more than a little disorienting. Perhaps the most energizing breakout star of this year, she has songs that center queer romance, a robust aesthetic gift and, most striking of all, an unusually moral sense of how a famous person should be treated.As she’s being embraced, she’s also being tested. The last couple of weeks especially have provided Roan a case study in the difference between IRL and URL fandom — the people who show up to commune with you, and the people who make you the object of their study and chatter online — and which to stake her future on.Last Tuesday in Franklin, Tenn., she took a mid-show breather to survey the 7,500 people who’d come to see her perform at the FirstBank Amphitheater.“I know how hard it is to be queer in the Midwest and the South,” she said. She grew up around seven hours west, in Willard, Mo., chafing against her conservative surroundings. As a young person, she continued, “I really needed a place where people weren’t going to make fun of me for how I dressed or who I liked.”For the night, the amphitheater just outside of Nashville had become such a place. Carved into a rock quarry, the open-to-the-sky venue felt cloistered, protected. A place for intimate but very loud conversation out of view of prying ears and eyes.Fans came to the show in costume: Realtree camouflage, pink cowboy hats, Western boots, frilly dresses, hand-drawn shirts with Roan references. Amy Harris/Invision, via Associated PressWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More