What's the greatest queer film ever directed by a Canadian?

Queeries is a column by CBC Arts producer Peter Knegt that queries LGBTQ art, culture and/or identity through a personal lens. 

A few weeks ago, CBC Arts published a project that counted down the 50 greatest films directed by Canadians, at least according to a poll we conducted with film critics, journalists and programmers across the country. I'll admit that as one of the project's producers, I was nervous about a whole variety of things — one of which was the list's representation of queer films and filmmakers.

After all, I am a Canadian queer who has dedicated a sizeable portion of my life to watching, studying, writing about and even making LGBTQ-focused movies, so it's very reasonable this would be a primary concern. I'm protective of our national reputation when it comes to queer cinema, and ideally I wanted this list to both include a few examples of what I think makes it special and ignore some films I personally feel are quite overrated.

But before we get into whether or not I ultimately felt satisfied in that regard, let's just run down what was included. 

Defining a film as "queer" is arguably even more complicated than defining a film as "Canadian." This essay gets into the many reasons why, and warns against succumbing to "the canonical and overused explanation that queer cinema is any film whose main storyline represents LGBT characters." But for the purposes of this discussion, let's briefly succumb to it anyway, if only for the sake of figuring what films on the overall list might qualify as "queer."

Looking at the full poll results (which included around 230 films), here are the top 10 films that at least arguably have a primary LGBTQ character or storyline:

1. Crash (David Cronenberg, 1996)
2. C.R.A.Z.Y. (Jean-Marc Vallée, 2005)
3. I've Heard The Mermaids Singing (Patricia Rozema, 1987)
4. Rude (Clement Virgo, 1995)
5. Outrageous! (Richard Benner, 1977)
6. Zero Patience (John Greyson, 1993)
7. Forbidden Love: The Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives (Lynne Fernie and Aerlyn Weissman, 1992)
8. I Shot Andy Warhol (Mary Harron, 1996)
9. Laurence Anyways  (Xavier Dolan, 2012)
10. Winter Kept Us Warm (David Secter, 1965)

Notably, only the top 4 films here actually made our published list of "the 50 greatest films directed by Canadians" (the other 6 were each somewhere in the top 150). Of these 4, only one is actually directed by a LGBTQ-identifying person: Patricia Rozema, whose I've Heard The Mermaids Singing ranked 28th on the overall list. David Cronenberg's Crash ranked #6, Jean-Marc Vallée's C.R.A.Z.Y. ranked #8 and Clement Virgo's Rude ranked 40th.

By this measure, Crash would be this poll's choice for the greatest queer film ever directed by a Canadian, but I do find it hard to qualify Crash as a "queer film." Beyond being written and directed by a straight man (albeit a straight man whose work doesn't exactly conform to norms of sexuality), it's also at its core "a meditation on emptiness and technology's emerging ability to fill that void," as Rachel Ho explains in the wonderful essay she wrote on the film for this project. Some characters are certainly pansexual, but their sexuality the context of the film doesn't seem to have so much to do with who they're having sex with but more how and where.

C.R.A.Z.Y. is much more undeniably a queer film and, to me, reads as this list's true champion when it comes to "the greatest queer film directed by Canadian." Its narrative is driven in many ways by the sexual awakening of its lead character, a gay man, and while it is directed by a straight man, its screenplay was co-written by the openly gay François Boulay, giving it at least some LGBTQ authorship.

• Jean-Marc Vallée's C.R.A.Z.Y. was a surprise hit when it became bigger than Batman in Quebec

But this does beg the question as to whether queer cinema needs to be directed by a queer filmmaker. It's debatable, as some of the most iconic and celebrated American films dealing with LGBTQ subject matter were directed by people who at least publicly identify as straight: Mike Nichols's The Birdcage, Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain, Barry Jenkins' Moonlight (the latter of which was, like C.R.A.Z.Y., co-written by a queer screenwriter, in this case Tarell Alvin McCraney). 

That said, let's do a different ranking of films from the poll, just to see what it looks like if we focus only on the ones with openly queer filmmakers:

1. American Psycho (Mary Harron, 2000)
2. Mommy (Xavier Dolan, 2014)
3. I've Heard The Mermaids Singing (Patricia Rozema, 1987)
4. The Body Remembers When The World Broke Open (Kathleen Hepburn and Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers, 2019)
5. Outrageous! (Richard Benner, 1977)
6. Zero Patience (John Greyson, 1993)
7. Forbidden Love: The Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives ((Lynne Fernie and Aerlyn Weissman, 1992)
8. I Shot Andy Warhol (Mary Harron, 1996)
9. Laurence Anyways (Xavier Dolan, 2012)
10. Winter Kept Us Warm (David Secter, 1965)

Once again, there are only 4 films here that made the top 50, but it's an entirely different group save Patricia Rozema's I've Heard The Mermaids Singing. Openly queer filmmakers Mary Harron (with American Psycho, which ranked 17th), Xavier Dolan (Mommy at 25th) and Kathleen Hepburn (who co-directed #30, The Body Remembers When The World Broke Open, with Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers) all had films on the published list, though none of them deal primarily with LGBTQ content or could really be considered "queer cinema." Thus, if we go by this standard, it's clearly I've Heard The Mermaids Singing that's been voted "the greatest queer film directed by a Canadian."

Interestingly, both Harron and Dolan have two films on this particular ranking: one with a primary queer narrative, and one without. Harron also represents something entirely unique to any of the films mentioned so far: her films noted here — American Psycho and I Shot Andy Warhol — are both American productions. On the overall list, we had tons of examples of this from straight filmmakers, from Titanic and Moonstruck to Arrival and Ghostbusters. 

I suppose it makes sense that it would be much less likely for queer filmmakers to head south to make queer films. One assumes the primary catalyst to working in the American system is access to Hollywood money and resources, and it's not exactly often (at least not historically) that either of those things are doled out for LGBTQ content. And when they are, it's not always a good thing: see what is probably the most high-profile American film with a primary LGBTQ storyline to be directed by a Canadian, the Oscar-winning but wildly problematic Dallas Buyers Club (which I was very grateful got absolutely no votes in this poll).

The Canadian system has generally been a place where filmmakers have been much more free to be as queer as they want to be with no notes from studio execs. Which is I why I do wish there were just a few more examples of this in the overall top 50. Three films that made the top 100 — Richard Benner's Outrageous!, John Greyson's Zero Patience and Lynne Fernie and Aerlyn Weissman's Forbidden Love: The Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives — would have been wonderful representation of that.

If someone were to ask me what I think the greatest queer film directed by a Canadian is, I'd offer this very annoying answer: there's simply too many exceptional options to narrow it down. I've Heard The Mermaids Singing and C.R.A.Z.Y. are certainly two of them, but so are Outrageous!, Zero Patience and Forbidden Love. There's also a whole group of films from the queer Canadian canon that, despite receiving some votes, didn't even make this poll's top 100 that absolutely are worthy of consideration: Bruce LaBruce's No Skin Off My Ass, Deepa Mehta's Fire and Thom Fitzgerald's The Hanging Garden, as well as additional titles from Greyson (Lilies) and Dolan (J'ai tué ma mère).

I'd also be inclined to mention that lots of the greatest queer films directed by Canadians have come from the last decade (polls like this tend to generally ignore the most recent work, and this was no exception) Chase Joynt's Framing Agnes, Stephen Dunn's Closet Monster, Kathleen Hepburn's Never Steady, Never Still, Bretten Hannam's Wildhood, Gail Maurice's Rosie and Pat Mills's Guidance are examples that immediately come to mind. So do three films in theatres this summer that I highlighted in last week's column: Emma Seligman's Bottoms, Luis De Filippis's Something You Said Last Night and V.T. Nayani's This Place.

Canadian filmmakers have made an embarrassment of queer riches over the years. So ultimately, my answer to this article's title question is a bit of a cop-out, but one I feel is important: instead of ranking them, what would be really great is making sure more people see them for themselves.

You can find most of these films on streaming services, and if you want to watch one on the big screen, we'll be screening C.R.A.Z.Y. as part of our 50 Greatest Films Directed By Canadians series at Toronto's Paradise Theatre this Sunday, July 30th at 7pm.