I'm not a movie person at all. First, I can't always understand what they're saying in movies without subtitles. Second, it's expensive to see movies in theaters, and they can be as horrible as Twilight. Therefore, I would usually watch DVDs but not movies.

However, I took MUNI all the way to the Castro Theater on Saturday, June 27 to see this film even by myself. Why? because it was directed by the filmmakers of my most favorite movie ever, Colma: The Musical, and it was free since I had vouchers for Frameline's 33rd San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival.



Since you can find the storyline elsewhere, I won't go into the details other than that it's about a woman who has a lot of gay friends, hence "fruit fly." What I liked about this movie is that I saw API womyn couple kissing. How many times have I ever seen something like that? Barely. I'm not saying this with a sensationalizing gaze, I just felt good that I saw it on a big screen at a theater full of people. I also liked that it made me even more in love with San Francisco. I kept trying to figure out in which part of the city certain scenes had been filmed.

The director H.P. Mendoza is a Filipino American musician, filmmaker, and actor who grew up in the Bay. While Colma is his autobiographical film, Fruit Fly is more about L.A. Renigen, an actor from Colma. According to him from the Q&A session after the screening, the idea of this film is to feature a fruit fly character, who always plays a sidekick role in gay films, whereas a gay character always plays a sidekick role in staright films.

There were some weird/questionable/problematic things about this film, but I'm definitely buying the DVD and the soundtrack. Did I mention that I'm not a movie person?