BECKS is one of those films that will provoke long discussions over coffee after you see it at the Queer Screen Film Festival.  For, there’s a complex character and a stunningly real performance at the centre of a film that is heartbreaking in places and despairingly conflicted in others.  There’s behaviour that will divide viewers and had me shaking my head and tutting at the screen in between tearing up and being unable to look away.

The film begins in heartbreak.  “I’m single and I’m broke and I’m living with my Mom” leads to becoming one of those people … ‘Becks will teach you guitar’.

Mid 30s New York singer/ guitarist Rebecca (Becks) finds herself back in St Louis, a place with a small town feel where everybody knows your past.  Reconnecting with her mate Dave, she begins to play in his bar and develops a following for her lesbian folk rock music.  The breakup was with a hot lead singer who moved on to younger and hotter and Beck’s low key, soulful music is made even more affecting by being accompanied by the images of love lost.

Elyse and her husband happen in on Becks’ first gig and later Elyse brings her waspy sorority sisters in for more.  And to hang with the only lesbian they have ever hung with.  Add to her woes, that her loving mother’s hard work in accepting Becks’ orientation and home return has a few strings.  Some tough love to get her off the sofa and Church on Sundays in a dress… a bad one.  There’s disaster written all over Becks’ attempts at healing. Under the watchful gaze of Elyse who is now taking guitar lessons and Mom when the old tensions return.

Lena Hall, who is known much more for her stage and music work on ‘Hedwig and the Angry Inch’ and with her band The Deafening, is everything you want in a leading role.  Despite her breakup Becks is confident and charismatic and the singing and execution of the melancholic music is sheer bliss to watch and bring out a tissue for.  But Hall also has a real grit to the less attractive aspects of Becks’ makeup.  She travels quite an emotional arc and her closeup work is brilliantly modulated. Her story of college coming out, despite the graphic nature of it, is expressed with the matter of fact strength of knowing for sure that we need to see on screen. And she’s sexy as!  But, I felt like yelling at Becks several times and Hall’s performance heading toward the finale is absolutely wrenching.

Mena Suvari is Hall’s equal in the multifaceted expression of change and inner skirmish.  Early on she gives us an assured a domestic goddess, but Suvari has a way of looking out of the screen that leaves the viewer as conflicted as she as to whether something is going on.  There’s such truth in her performance and the longing unsatisfied and the confusion of yearning is rendered with simmer and flashes of fire.  And her story will definitely divide in those those heated coffee conversations.

The lesbian content of this film is faithful and respectful and relatable and realistic.  Including an hilarious discussion of nomenclature with a Harry Potter joke that I am completely stealing as a pick-up line.  Becks has no inner turmoil related to orientation, though she is chock full of other issues, some of which seem genetic. The family dynamics are intricately woven with alcohol and escapism and bailing on drama and avoidance of consequences.  And yet there is love.  Christine Lahti is so loving as Becks’ mother, Ann.  It’s such a replete and understated performance from this veteran actress.  The turmoils between belief and compassion are paramount to the film’s success and Lahti’s grounded, empathetic and knowable struggle is layered and tears at your heart.

And beautifully foregrounded in the writing and direction.  Co-directors Daniel Powell and Elizabeth Rohrbaugh also share the writing credit with Rebecca Drysdale and the film has so many little moments that serve both the story and the characters.   Ann caught in a moment’s eavesdropping on her kids is so poignant. The realism of the story and the themes, however, are visibly supported in the unfussy shooting style and closeups which linger on Hall’s left profile reinforcing the weather-beaten realism of this muso’s story.  Yet the lyrical nature of the music and song is matched with beauty of the small-town architecture and parks and home gardens.  BECKS is character driven traditional storytelling lightly delivered with discrete moments of eros and touching humour to speak to anyone who has loved too much.

I watched it on my own in preview and I fully intend to drag my friends to see it in the hope that the coffee discussion afterwards will help my perspective.  Probably not, I know what I saw and what I felt… unreasonable anger and perfectly reasonable whistfulness.     But before you rush out of the Queer Screen Film Fest showing, stay for a few minutes and listen for the song that covers the final credits.  There you will find your common ground.

You can see more about BECKS at the official website and Facebook and purchase tickets to the screenings Sat 22 Sep 7:00 pm (Event Cinemas George St) or Sun 7 Oct 4:00 pm  (Mount Vic Flicks) at Queer Screen Film Fest [Facebook] .