Lesbian Films Among Highlights at ‘Outfest’

“Outfest ‘95” continues at the Directors Guild through Sunday with more worthy films.

Yet another of the gay festival’s impressive lesbian films, Marta Balletbo-Coll’s “Costa Brava,” (Tuesday at 9 p.m.) asks, “Can an aspiring monologist/Barcelona tour guide (Balletbo-Coll) and a Tel Aviv-born, Boston-bred seismic engineer (Desi del Valle) find happiness together? This romantic comedy, made in English, is as refreshing as a summer breeze as two ambitious women cope with making a life together.

Mindy Kaplan’s riveting “Devotion” (Wednesday at 7 p.m.), surely among the festival’s strongest entries, cuts so deeply into raw, universal emotion that we forget about its people’s sexual orientations and identify with them as individuals. Jan Derbyshire is absolutely smashing as a sharp, popular lesbian stand-up comic with a pretty, devoted live-in lover (Kate Twa). The comic gets a chance to move on from Vancouver to a featured role in a Hollywood TV sitcom. The offer, alas, comes from a woman (Cindy Girling) who 15 years earlier rejected Derbyshire’s love so cruelly that it nearly destroyed the comedian. Kaplan has a profound understanding of how undying and dangerous passion can be for all concerned. Sonke Wortmann’s “Pretty Baby” (“Der Bewegte Man”) (Wednesday at 9 p.m.)--a sparkling romantic comedy, smart yet sweet-natured--was Germany’s biggest domestic grosser of 1994. Til Schweiger stars as Axel, a handsome, hunky nightclub waiter caught with another woman by his longtime lover (Katja Riemann), who throws him out. He ends up being given shelter by a nice gay man (Joachim Krol, who looks like Paul Simon), who can’t help but quietly fall for him. As these three sort out their lives, Wortmann turns loose a straight man in a gay world with humor, affection and insight.

Midi Onodera’s stylish “Skin Deep” (Thursday at 9 p.m.) is a striking portrait of a confident, determined independent filmmaker (Natsuko Ohana). She’s a sensual, elegant woman too self-absorbed for a romance with her assistant (Melanie Nichols-King) to pay enough attention to her intense new production assistant (Keram Malicki-Sanches), a mercurial figure so androgynous that it’s impossible to say for sure whether the assistant is a man or a woman or a transsexual, either pre- or post-op. “Skin Deep” takes a shrewd assessment of both what it takes to be a filmmaker and of a chic, brittle world of sexual minorities and ambiguities.

Douglas Keeve’s “Unzipped” (Friday at 7 p.m.) is an affectionate portrait of major fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi as he prepares his Fall, 1994, collection, meant to be a comeback after a couple of off-years. Mizrahi emerges as an enormously likable man, witty, bright, a terrific mime but rightly tough and decisive when it counts. You come away understanding that the fashion game is a matter of gambling on hunches, requiring terrific courage and self-confidence as well as talent.

Part-documentary, part-recreation, at once satirical and serious, Dirk Shafer’s “Man of the Year” (Sunday at 7:30 p.m.) recounts the filmmaker’s experiences as Playgirl’s Holiday Man of the Year for 1992 and its impact upon his personal life as a gay man. Shafer’s film is a bit repetitive but more often funny and always pertinent. Information: (213) 951-1247. Tickets: (213) 466-1767.

Wu Ma’s “The Deaf and Mute Heroine” (Monica 4-Plex, Fridays and Saturdays at midnight) has some of the most breathtaking swordplay you’ll ever see. In the title role Helen Ma could have dispatched Errol Flynn in seconds. The slender plot of this 1972 period piece revolves around her attempt to defend herself against the lethal Miss Liu, enraged that Ma had succeeded in retrieving a fortune in pearls, stolen from her by Liu’s innkeeper brother, killed by Ma. Information: (310) 394-9741.