A Glorious Gabfest

Aimee and Jaguar Possibly the best feature screening at Outtakes is the festival's closer, director Max Faberbock's lush, urgent, dizzyingly erotic saga about a cabal of lesbian Resistance agents in Berlin near the close of World War II. The romantically conflicted trio at the heart of the film--Jewish "Jaguar" (Maria Schrader) and her revolving lovers, the sheltered German wife "Aimee" (Juliane Kohler) and her maid, Ilse (Johanna Wokalex), also working the underground to spirit Jews out of the city--seem always to be toiling under a palpable and intensifying threat, thanks to Faberbock's seasoned sense of pacing. Jaguar works at a German newspaper, typing anti-Semitic editorials by day as she helps generate and distribute fake passports for Jewish escape. (In one of the film's hilarious interludes, she and her friends pose for basement cheesecake photos to be sold on the black market to German soldiers in exchange for a photographer's help with the fake i.d.'s.) Something of a ladies' lady, she romances women in her circle on a whim and goes after Aimee, a confused, frightened, and impetuous woman whose abusive husband is out on the front lines against the Allies. The film takes us right up to the end of the War, which means we are kept breathless waiting to see if Jaguar's anti-Nazi activities (and her passionate romance with Aimee) can continue as the authorities tighten a citywide crackdown. In these rabidly anti-tobacco times, it's easy to forget why smoking was ever considered cool in the first place. Aimee and Jaguar reminds you how, properly wielded during tense or playful moments, smoking can look sexy as hell on a movie screen. Faberbock has fashioned a mini-ode to the great women inhalers of 1940s films. Graft this onto a series of rapid mood and plot changes triggered by wartime turmoil, and you have an exercise in style with a fat, bloody heart's beating away in its well-appointed vest. P.S. It's a good thing there are two weekends between this stunner and The Broken Hearts Club, because when you watch them back to back, Aimee and Jaguar makes you want to slap those West Hollywood boys and tell 'em to get a life. (Nov 12, 7:30 p.m.)

Living With Pride: Ruth Ellis at 100 There aren't many people around who can say they lived through the dawn of American women's right to vote, the Civil Rights movement, and the gay rights movement. Let's get more specific, and try to find an individual whose life was directly affected by all of them. Filmmaker Yvonne Welbon pulled off this daunting task and recorded the results as Living With Pride: Ruth Ellis at 100. Extensive footage of Ruth Charlotte Ellis at a rest-home dance reveals time has slowed her quite a bit, but she has a clear command of the details of her extensive experience, which include moving from Illinois to Detroit and creating, alongside her love of more than thirty years, a salon for black gays and lesbians. "The Gay Spot," as Ruth and Babe Franklin's home was known from 1941 to 1971, provided a safe place for college students to drink, dance, play cards, and hold hands with their same-sex partners. At the centennial marker in her life, Ruth is hilariously frank about her sexual habits--she last got laid at 95, and informs us that church is the best place to pick up chicks--and this helps make Living With Pride something more than the typical paean to a survivor. (Nov. 12, 1 p.m.)