This is a retrospective screening of Jamie Babbit’s iconic 1999 romantic comedy, which was Frameline24’s Closing Night film. This John Waters–influenced, off-the-wall comedy brilliantly blends hilarity with romance as a high school girl finds the courage to be herself. Megan (Natasha Lyonne, Party Monster, He’s Way More Famous than You, G.B.F.) has got it all. She’s pretty, a model student, and a cheerleader! Just as she’s about to go to the playoffs, Megan walks right into a rude surprise—a group intervention, led by her parents (Bud Cort, Mink Stole), to force her to admit that she’s a homosexual. The evidence is overwhelming: she eats tofu, has a Melissa Etheridge poster, and hates kissing her boyfriend. She’s whisked off to True Directions, a five-step homo-rehab camp, where Mike (Ru Paul, in boy drag) tries to change her ways. Megan is the perfect student at the “conversion camp” but doesn’t believe she’s gay—until she meets Graham (Clea DuVall, Girl Interrupted, Argo), a sexy rich tomboy. The film uses highly aestheticized set designs, luridly feminine color schemes for the girls, and hyper-masculine props for the boys. It speaks profoundly to society’s homophobia and confining gender roles, and it sparkles with an in-your-face radicalism and side-splitting humor.

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SLEEPING BEAUTIES

This short (which premiered at Sundance in 1998) retells the fairytale and centers on a morgue beautician who is trying to get over her ex-girlfriend and finds love with a photographer's assistant.