VENICE 2023 International Film Critics’ Week
Review: About Last Year
by Elena Lazic
- VENICE 2023: Dunja Lavecchia, Beatrice Surano and Morena Terranova's documentary about three cis-gender women in the Turin Ballroom scene offers little insight into the role of Ballroom in their lives
As part of the growing general awareness about LGBTQ+ issues in the western world, documentaries about queer communities have multiplied, shedding light on a culture that remained in the shadows for a long time. Many of those focus on the dangers and prejudices they face, but others centre on the joyous aspects of their lives: their art, their beauty, the moments and places where they feel safe enough to truly be themselves.
One such place is the Ballroom scene, where LGBTQ+ contestants compete at balls in various categories — two of the most famous being Voguing, where participants dance in the style popularised by Madonna’s song “Vogue” in 1991, and Catwalk, where the goal is to show the judges the most model-worthy catwalk possible. The American show Ru Paul’s Drag Race has made many people of all genders and sexual orientations aware of this fun and creative aspect of Ballroom culture. But the 1990 documentary Paris is Burning also showed its social function as a refuge. The founders of the Ballroom scene were Black and Latino drag queens in New York City who fled the racism of established drag queen pageants to create their own ball, and put in place a system of Houses. More than a team of contestants, a House is a chosen family of friends who protect and support each other.
In About Last Year [+see also:
trailer
film profile], directed by Dunja Lavecchia, Beatrice Surano and Morena Terranova, the difference between Ballroom as fun and Ballroom as refuge is very blurred. To some degree, this is a condition of a changing culture. But the film, premiering in the International Film Critics’ Week section at the Venice Film Festival, practically avoids the question altogether.
Celeste, Giorgia and Letizia are three cis-gender women in Italy’s Turin who belong to the Kiki House of Savoia and compete at the local Ballroom scene in the category Sex Siren. The challenge? With handmade outfits and sensual movements, they must exude more sex-appeal and confidence than their opponent. As the film follows the three women over the course of a year, we see them at work, at home, making their outfits, rehearsing, exercising, and hanging out with each other. One is preparing to go to university abroad, another is trying to get her drivers’ licence. But the assemblage of these moments yields little of interest, whether about them or about the place of Ballroom in their lives. We can see that they devote a lot of time and energy to it, but when they say that Ballroom offers them a safe place to express their sexuality, we can only take their word for it — it is not something we are truly made to feel and understand.
The film does not explore the ways in which their sexuality is otherwise suppressed — which seems all the more strange considering that the three women live in Italy, where sexism remains a vivid reality. I know this because I have been there, but the film does not show it, nor does it tell us about the history of Ballroom as laid out earlier in this review. The way Celeste adopts a much more feminine and open persona when performing suggests there is something preventing her from presenting herself that way in public, but this is not explored further. The competition sequences are more visually dynamic than the rest of the film, but remain sedate compared to other recent Ballroom documentaries like Sara Jordenö’s Kiki [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (2016).
As debate around the mainstream re-appropriation of all aspects of Black and queer culture and the dilution of its radical aims continues, About Last Year centres on women who represent an exciting new development in the long history of Ballroom. But the film unfortunately does not satisfyingly explore the function Ballroom actually performs today, either for these three friends or for others.
About Last Year was produced by Italy’s Base zero.
Photogallery 06/09/2023: Venice 2023 - About Last Year
21 pictures available. Swipe left or right to see them all.
© 2023 Fabrizio de Gennaro for Cineuropa - fadege.it, @fadege.it
Did you enjoy reading this article? Please subscribe to our newsletter to receive more stories like this directly in your inbox.
