Portland Film Festival – A Rising Star
Portland Film Festival may be a relatively new festival, and it may not quite carry the cachet—yet—as Sundance or Cannes or Toronto, but it has some pretty great pleasures all its own. It’s not every fest when you can party with Jason Momoa and Haley Joel Osment and Doug Benson and Bronx Obama and the producer of Oscar-nominated No—I mean, really party with them, not just watch them party behind a velvet rope. And it’s certainly not every fest where you can take a few hours off of watching films to play a part as an extra in the iconic hipster show Portlandia.
I had already seen the fascinating doc Glena before I ever got to the festival, as well as eventual Best Northwest Film winner BFE and a handful of others. But the festival brought plenty of surprises, nonetheless. The first, and maybe the best, came on the second night of the fest (my first night there). It was the world premiere of Isaac Feder’s Sex Ed, and neither the film nor the event disappointed. Hundreds packed the beautiful Crystal Ballroom in downtown Portland, and after some great shorts and an especially spirited performance by local hip-hop dance group Hippoh Dance Project, the main event was on.
Sex Ed is obviously Feder’s bid for a studio picture. It has a certain slickness of production, and many of the same beats that a Ron Howard picture with the same premise would have. And the casting formula feels familiar as well—take one well-known name (Osment), and surround him with some proven supporting players (Laura Harring, Abby Elliott, Chris Williams, Retta) and some promising relative newcomers (Lorenza Izzo and Glen Powell, both of whom should be headed for big-name status very soon). It’s a solid, calculated approach.
But that doesn’t mean it’s without heart. Quite the contrary. Sex Ed does show that Feder can make a studio-esque comedy on a low budget, but it shows a lot more, as well. The film is very entertaining, very funny, and actually very committed to its subject matter. As Osment’s character Ed becomes more and more committed to his cause of standing up for these kids ill-served by the traditional sex ed curriculum (or lack thereof), so do we. And that’s a pretty good accomplishment for any movie. Sex Ed won the Best Narrative Film prize.