Locarno Review: Gender Reveal (2024)
Locarno Film Festival
Pardi di Domani International Competition
Three extravagant, non-binary queers struggle to survive a very boring, heteronormative gender reveal party – wacky Canadian short premieres in the 77th Locarno Film Festival
Rhys (Ayo Tsalithaba) is in an intimate relationship with Ting (Ke Xin Li). Mati (Alex Miron Dauphin) moves in with the couple after their flatmates evict them, following a tragic incident involving a DIY fruit fly trap on “a vegan floor” (a very clunky “woke” joke). The twosome quickly morphs into a love triangle. Our three young, flamboyant, and outrageously Camp protagonists enjoy the perfect multiethnic (Rhys is black, Ting is Asian, and Mati is white) and polyamorous relationship.
Rhys’s boss Marc (Alexandre Bacon) invites Rhys and their partners to a lavish gender reveal party. Countless heterosexuals sip colourful drinks, while their children run around and scream. The action takes place in a large garden decorated with pink and blue balloons, some of them shaped like a penis or a vagina. Proud mum-to-be Chloe (Lauren Beatty) is visibly uncomfortable with the presence of three dissonant adults, and they reciprocate the feeling of awkwardness. Rhys, Ting and Mati possess a subtle sense of self-deprecation and a far less subtle sentiment of contempt towards the oppressively heteronormative event. Their only source of entertainment is ogling the straight hunks, and making snide comments, occasionally spouting the odd quip in French (after all, this is bilingual Canada).
With a duration of just 11 minutes, Gender Reveal sets out to mock both the traditional family and the LGBT+ establishment. The pronoun profusion/confusion is a prominent topic: Mati is “she”, while Rhys anticipates to his hosts that they are non-binary (long before anyone asks them). The ostentatiousness of the party combined with Chloe’s snobbish attitude makes the environment a very undesirable one. This absurd space is the perfect arena for the conflict between gender-conforming and gender-fluid adults. Scribe and helmer Mo Matton tacitly raises a very peculiar yet strangely pertinent question: should we wait until human beings grow up and allow them to decide their gender themselves, instead of allocating it ourselves even before they are even born? Just a few years ago this reflection would have sounded frivolous and absurd. Times have changed very quickly.
A fiery and sanguinary denouement offers the identity movement a very inconvenient type of redemption. The only problem is that it comes too soon and too abruptly. The story lacks character development, and the narrative is just too frenetic for its own sake. This is an effective, high-octane absurdist comedy that would have benefitted from a longer runtime.
Gender Reveal directed by the Canadian helmer Mo Matton has just premiered in the Pardi di Domani International Competition of the 77th Locarno International Film Festival.
©Travelling
This piece is cross-published in partnership with DMovies.
