Austin FF Report: Colma: The Musical

Posted by Peter Martin at 3:58pm.

Posted in Film & DVD Reviews , Musical, USA & Canada, Random Festival News.

Our friend Wells Dunbar covered the San Diego Asian Film Festival for us, and now that he’s back home in Austin, Texas, USA, he’s all set to take in some more films at the Austin Film Festival. Here are his comments on a film that was programmed at both festivals.

Watching a DVD screener of Colma: The Musical under the covers on a Friday night can’t possibly do it justice - the same jokes that killed in a crowded theater fall flat.

I first laid eyes on Colma at the San Diego Asian Film Festival, catching the first 45 minutes or so between screenings, and was flattened by the waves of laughter rolling over the audience. And that was in a cavernous, semi-nameless octoplex; its screening tonight in the decidedly more intimate Landmark Dobie Theater, as part of the Austin Film Festival, will no doubt engender more collective yucks. [It plays again on Sunday, October 22, at the Regal Arbor Theater.]

Colma won special jury honors at the SDAFF for it’s blend of broad, rollicking guffaws and intimate, young adult uncertainty. Despite its five minute drive from San Francisco, Colma is a nowheresville suburban enclave of strip mall drudgery and shitty college parties. It’s where Rodel, Billy, and Maribel have lived their entire lives.

Their defacto leader, Rodel, is hilarious, charismatic and closeted from his dad. Maribel is his boisterous enabler, teetering on the precipice of fag-hagdom, while straight-arrow Billy mopes around, pining for his ex. Fresh out of high school, they’re content to coast on teen-ennui until all the demands of young adulthood - jobs, school, and relationships - force a reckoning in their lives and friendship.

And there’s the songs. The first half is pretty lighthearted stuff - jokes about transparent hipness and romantic foibles that go easier on the actors and their limited vocal abilities. When the film takes a more emotional track in the second half (enlivened notably by Billy’s turn in the movie’s much-discussed meta musical, “Friend Joseph"), it’s harder for the songs to hold you - or the film as a whole.

Still, Colma and director Richard Wong have created a raunchy crowd pleaser. Despite the issues of Asian and gay identity subtly bandied about, Colma proves true, biting and bittersweet to anyone who’s ever graduated and asked, what’s next?

LINKS

Trailer (Embedded YouTube)

Official Site

Austin FF info page

Report by Wells Dunbar