Chuck Chuck Baby

Chuck Chuck Baby
(photo modified)

Chuck Chuck Baby, dir. Janis Pugh, 2023 United Kingdom, 101 min. 💖

Saturday, June 22, 2024, 3:30 PM, Roxie (not streaming)

Frameline’s description: “British writer/director Janis Pugh made a huge splash at the Toronto and Palm Springs International Film Festivals (to name a few) with Chuck Chuck Baby, a singular combination of a classic lesbian romance with an unconventional jukebox musical set in a Welsh chicken factory.

“Living with her ex-husband and his family, Helen (Sherlock’s Louise Brealey) finds relief in two places: the cathartic throes of music and, surprisingly, at the local chicken factory — thanks in large part to the tight-knit group of working-class women who toil alongside her. Hollowed by loss, Helen’s former crush Joanne (an ever-charming Annabel Scholey) returns to the small town. 

Chuck Chuck Baby
(inside the factory)

“While Helen and Joanne woo each other, they rekindle an adolescent love that never was, allowing Pugh to beautifully render the simultaneously fleeting-yet-unending feeling of a first queer love. Infused with humor and warmth throughout, Chuck Chuck Baby’s musical moments underscore its strengths. While the film’s characters may relish the escapism, viewers who have starred in the music videos of their imagination will find Pugh’s grounded approach stunningly relatable.”

My thoughts: When you think of a setting for a musical love story, what could be better than a dreary chicken packing plant in a dead-end town in northern Wales? Sometimes bleak, sometimes effusively joyous, but always heartfelt, with a fabulous soundtrack. MUST SEE.

[Note: the upper photograph was cropped both from the sides and from the middle to fit the format constraints of the blog.]

• IMDb • Official website • Filmmaker • Twitter: @ChuckChuckFilm • Instagram • Facebook • preview • Rotten Tomatoes: 100% •

Glitter & Doom

Glitter & Doom, dir. Tom Gustafson, 2023, USA/Mexico, 116 min. 💖

Thursday, June 22, 3:30 pm, Castro • not streaming

U.S. première

Glitter & Doom

Tom Gustafson’s Were the World Mine (Frameline32) is one of my all-time favorite films — so much so that I saw it in Toronto at InsideOut and then again twice in San Francisco at Frameline. Gustafson did not disappoint in this latest.

“Glitter” is the stage name of an aspiring circus artist (Alex Diaz, pictured right), a bright, bouncy, optimistic free spirit. “Doom” is the stage name of a dark and brooding musician (Alan Cammish, pictured left). Glitter lifts Doom into the light, while Doom grounds Glitter, mostly in a good way. They go off on weekend camping trips and periodically break into big musical numbers with a dozen or so backup dancers mysteriously appearing from nowhere. It’s a beautiful musical coming-of-age story, with some family drama (on both sides) as a backdrop, and on-screen appearances by Lea DeLaria, Tig Notaro, Kate Pierson (The B-52s), and the Indigo Girls themselves, whose music is the soundtrack and occasionally some of the dialogue. Definitely a MUST SEE.

Note: the printed Frameline program indicates that this film will be available in the streaming encore, but the website says that it will not.

• IMDb page • Official website (n/a) • trailer (n/a) •