From child exploitation to toothy vaginas, this year’s film roster kept Park City glued to their plush movie theater seats.

By Lawrence Ferber

Gays are over themselves. At least one might get that impression after surveying the 2007 Sundance Film Festival’s lineup. Many established and new gay filmmakers were in attendance, yet few with explicitly queer works in content, characters and even subtexts. In fact, only two features could really be labeled gay—Save Me, in which Chad Allen and Robert Gant play ex-gays who fall in love at a ministry lorded over by Judith Light, and For The Bible Tells Me So, a documentary examining how the “good book” has been used—and misused—as a weapon against homosexuality. A runner-up would be Auraeus Solito’s Tuli, the final third of which entails a lesbian love story.

That said, outside the theaters, Sundance—unofficially the gayest non-gay film festival in the country —remained queer as ever. The Queer Lounge, now a two-level suite housed in the Silver King Hotel, buzzed with queer filmmakers, festival programmers, musicians and others schmoozing, drinking, networking and chilling out. There were queer brunches and a GLAAD shindig to announce this year’s media nominees. One publicist felt this was more than enough, lamenting, “I’ve seen the same homos all day and night—I’m over queers, too!”

Out Sundance programmer Shari Frilot feels that the year’s dearth of overtly queer films (and submissions) by queer filmmakers is due to the simple fact that “gays are doing their thing just like any other artists. Not everything is gay-themed, but they’re bringing their flavor to whatever they touch.” Out director Tommy O’Haver, who followed the very gay Billy’s Hollywood Screen Kiss with Get Over It and Ella Enchanted, brought the harrowing An American Crime. A sort of Flowers in the Attic meets Lord of the Flies, the film stars Catherine Keener as an unhinged single mother who turns her basement into a torture chamber for an adolescent girl (X-Men 3’s Ellen Page) she’s supposed to look after. The premiere came to a temporary halt when an audience member suffered a seizure.

Ian Iqbal Rashid, director of the 2004 Sundance queer pick, Touch of Pink, returned with How She Move, a Bring it On for the stepping competition set. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory screenwriter John August made his feature directorial debut with The Nines, a perplexing sci-fi dramedy in which Ryan Reynolds plays three characters, one being a gay TV show writer. Writer Mike White (Chuck & Buck) also turned director with the comedy Year of the Dog, in which Molly Shannon plays a dog lover turned animal activist (says Frilot—“It can be said there are some gay notes in it—not overly sexual but in the spirit of the movie.”). The Wedding Banquet star Mitchell Lichtenstein’s Teeth caused chatter with its sardonic tale of a young woman whose vagina packs a set of chompers. Longtime Sundance vet Gregg Araki returned to comedy with Smiley Face, in which a pothead (Scary Movie franchise’s Anna Farris) spends a day in pot brownie nirvana.

Meanwhile, the documentary A Very British Gangster revealed that its subject is gay, and openly so, but didn’t dig very far into specifics. Jessica Yu’s Protagonist blended puppetry and Greek myth with the stories of four charismatic individuals who become what they hated most, one being an ex-gay minister. Bought for $7 million, the delightful comedy The Son of Rambow sees a pair of British preteens in the ‘80s make a stunt-filled amateur movie with help from a new wave-styled French exchange student who attracts as many boys as girls. Fox Searchlight’s $4-million pickup, Joshua, is a delicious Bad Seed remake set in Manhattan’s Upper West Side in which the titular piano-playing hellspawn is enamored with his erudite gay uncle (A Home at the End of the World’s Dallas Roberts).

A few films sparked off controversy, most notoriously Hounddog, aka Dakota-Fanning-gets-raped. Reportedly, the Salt Lake City screening was met with protests and, in both local and national media, cries of child pornography. But after the press screening of this Southern Gothic, most audience members felt it should be investigated for racism and stereotyping—the black characters sit around singing blues and talking rattlesnake magic while the whites are morally/spiritually bankrupt rednecks, even the rich ones—and shitty filmmaking. Another film involving sexual exploitation of children, but this time for real, was Children of God: Lost & Found. Playing the concurrent Slamdance Film Festival, the startling documentary—produced by World of Wonder’s Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato—investigates a cult known as The Family that subjected its children to abuses, carnal and otherwise. Two members of The Family infiltrated a screening with recording devices, but were caught and detained by police.

A war has begun against “swagdance.” Sundance distributed large buttons labeled “Focus on Film,” subtly protesting the freebie fever that saw Paris Hilton’s comp shopping garnering as much if not more press and chatter than Sundance itself. Some corporations were nowhere to be seen this year while the few lodges/suites that remained aimed to at least have an altruistic edge. The Ultimate Green Room boasted organic goods like Pureology hair products. Besides Mary Louise Butter’s aromatic artisan brownies and Lolly Lu’s queer and campy flasks and mugs, The Winter Warm-Up Suite dedicated space to The Freedom Campaign, which endeavors to free political prisoner Aung San Suu Kyi, and helped young filmmakers make connections and network by introducing them to visitors.

Putting their buttons where their mouths are, some stars skipped the swag. But others swagged up anyway, including Lance Bass and Reichen Lehmkuhl, who both showed up at the Save Me premiere. Earlier in the evening, I attended a private dinner with the filmmakers and stars, during which Gant discussed his getting a new dog and how Queer as Folk could have endured at least another season were the escalating costs of renewing the stars’ contracts—and at least one principal actor’s being totally over the show—in the way. During a post-screening Q&A, Light admitted her character’s ultra-religious beliefs were far removed from her own: “My heart and soul belong to the gay community,” she shared, to smiles and applause. The post-film party, held in a condo, was equally warm and celebratory. Patrik Ian Polk, whose Logo series Noah’s Arc is set to evolve into a 2008 feature film, swung by.

There was additional celebration for gays at Sundance before its climax Sunday night. Cynthia Wade’s short documentary Freeheld, which follows the struggle of dying lesbian police lieutenant Laurel Hester to leave her pension to life partner Stacie Andree, was awarded a Special Jury Prize. And Slamdance’s Red Without Blue, a documentary about a pair of twins—one gay, the other transgender—won that fest’s Audience Award. A sweet, perhaps bittersweet, victory at a not-very-gay yet very much memorable year in Park City.