Outfest’s superstars and bright young things

Outfest never has a shortage of provocative fare. The 22nd edition, running tonight through July 19, is no exception.

Actor-comedian Stephen Fry, memorable star of the 1998 film “Wilde,” makes his directorial debut with “Bright Young Things,” which he adapted from Evelyn Waugh’s 1930 novel, “Vile Bodies.” As adroit behind the camera as in front of it, Fry captures the giddy high life of the young and privileged Brits of the late ‘20s as it fizzles out. On one level it is a love story between a well-connected but impoverished struggling writer (Stephen Campbell Moore) who is chronically too broke to marry a beautiful aristocrat (Emily Mortimer). On another level it is a social satire in which rich, reckless youths rebel against their propriety-minded elders, with all their shenanigans recorded breathlessly in the London scandal sheets. The writer’s pals are a silly, self-destructive lot, yet Fry captures the poignancy, even gallantry, in their inevitable fates. Among the friends is a gay man (Michael Sheen) as undone as Oscar Wilde himself when his letters to a former lover fall into the hands of the police. “Bright Young Things” glows with glittery glamour and much humor, but it is rightly tinged with a pervasive melancholy.

With her ivory complexion, delicate features and dark mane of hair, Stephanie Michelini is so distinctive a beauty she seems to have stepped out of a Renaissance painting. In Sebastien Lifshitz’s lyrical yet succinct “Wild Side,” Michelini’s Sylvie is a prostitute and pre-op transsexual. Working the streets of Paris with aplomb, Sylvie at times is flooded with childhood memories of beautiful open fields in the north of France. News of her mother’s impending death brings an unexpected return home, accompanied by her best friend, a North African male hustler, and a handsome Russian who is falling in love with her. With complexity, delicacy, yet stunning directness, Michelini expresses the passionate and independent Sylvie’s attempt to resolve her past and sort out her present. This process unfolds in terse, compelling fashion.

Even more powerful is “Beautiful Boxer,” which screened at UCLA last month, the true story of a young Thai transsexual who paid for his sex change surgery by becoming a kickboxing champion.

Rodney Evans’ “Brother to Brother” is a highly original and beautiful film in which an embittered, young black gay man (Anthony Mackie) gains perspective and encouragement from a chance meeting with Bruce Nugent, who at his death in 1987 was one of the last surviving key members of the Harlem Renaissance of the ‘20s. Disowned by his family, Mackie’s Perry determinedly continues his studies on a scholarship at Columbia University, where his paintings have drawn critical acclaim. Perry longs for love but trusts no one until he encounters the elderly Nugent (Roger Robinson), a man of unshakable wit and dignity. Nugent’s memories trigger flashbacks of the Harlem Renaissance, when Nugent was a colleague of Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston and Wallace Thurman, which Evans gracefully interweaves with Perry’s struggle for self-acceptance.

Jim de Seve’s “Tying the Knot” could scarcely be more timely, as it charts the gay marriage movement and its backlash. What gives this lively, incisive and comprehensive documentary its punch is that it sets the movement’s progress and setbacks against accounts of two couples who lost their life partners and suffered dire economic consequences. Well-liked and respected Tampa, Fla., policewomen Mickie and Lisa had been a couple for a decade when Lisa was killed in the line of duty. Despite all the support of their friends and colleagues, Mickie is denied death and pension benefits; and Lisa’s relatives, who gave their blessings to the women’s holy union ceremony a decade earlier, turn against Mickie.

Worse yet is the case of an Oklahoma rancher whose partner of 22 years died, leaving him everything, but had failed to get a third signature on his will. Because of this, an estranged cousin of the dead man successfully contested the will, confiscated the ranch, forced the rancher to sell off his horses -- and then charged him for back rent.

Another key aspect of the film is its historical survey of the institution of marriage, which shows that it has evolved through the ages, with the key reminder that not so long ago interracial marriage was as controversial as gay marriage.

Jackie Curtis (1947-1985) is best remembered as an Andy Warhol superstar. But he resisted all labels in his personal and professional lives, saying that he was Jackie Curtis before and after Warhol and that was why he survived -- until succumbing to the drugs that fueled and consumed him. That he was much more than a performer, regardless of sexual persona, is made abundantly clear in his friend Craig B. Highberger’s loving and wide-ranging documentary, “Superstar in a Housedress.” A poet and a playwright, Curtis skewered sexuality in gleeful travesties with homages to such camp icons as Maria Montez and strong divas like Joan Crawford, Bette Davis and Barbara Stanwyck. Lily Tomlin, who narrates the film, and La Mama theater’s legendary Ellen Stewart, who produced some of Curtis’ outrageous plays, are but two of the many people who took him seriously as an artist.

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Outfest

Selected screenings

* “Bright Young Things,” 9 p.m. Monday, Directors Guild of America, 7920 Sunset Blvd., Hollywood.

* “Wild Side,” 7 p.m. Monday, Laemmle Monica 4-Plex, 1332 2nd St., Santa Monica, and 7 p.m. Wednesday, Directors Guild.

* “Beautiful Boxer,” 10 p.m. Friday, Regent Showcase, 614 N. La Brea Ave., Hollywood.

* “Brother to Brother,” 2:30 p.m. Tuesday, Directors Guild.

* “Tying the Knot,” 5 p.m. Saturday, Directors Guild.

* “Superstar in a Housedress,” 2:30 p.m. Saturday, Directors Guild.

Contact: (213) 480-7065; www.outfest.org