QFlix Philadelphia, celebrating its 22nd year of bringing LGBT films to the public, enjoyed a stellar opening night at the Kimmel Center’s Perelman Theatre July 5. The lovely venue attracted the crème de la crème of GLBTQ intelligentsia, hotties, tarts, and even straights to view the world premiere of writer and director J.C. (Juan Carlos) Falcon’s film, People You May Know. 

The evening began with a montage of festival films. Producers Thom Cardwell and James Duggan spoke from the stage to introduce the film. They also introduced the handsome director, J. C. Falcon, who spoke a bit about his film. 

According to the press release, the film deals with four close friends (gay, straight, male, female, and bisexual) who begin to question their lives and the directions their lives and careers are taking them. Then, all of a sudden, something happens which will prove to change everyone’s life, whether for better or worse. 

According to John Hopewell’s May 2016 article in Variety, Breaking Glass pictures acquired the U.S. rights to the Spanish film, which was shot mostly in Los Angeles (a fact which we know from a few scenes of the film) co-produced by La Panda Productions, with young Spanish producers in Los Angeles, and Madrid’s Pony Films. Called a “dramedy,” it stars a sultry Sean Maher, Andrea Grano, Adorable Mark Cirillo, Curt Hansen, and Nacho San Jose. 

The extravagant plots may turn off some, while turning on others. We meet the four friends at a birthday party. One of them is attending by Skype on a laptop. Later, we are privy to a conversation between the married couple, again by computer conversation. Rodrigo is working in Madrid, and will work there for many more months, while wife Delia (pictured as an executive, nattily dressed in a swank office) petulantly inquires why he must be away from her for so long. We then meet the tall drink of water, Joe, who at first appears to be living with cynical gay Herbie (Joe cooks Herbie eggs for breakfast, for example). Joe is a cliché gay (he sleeps around), while Herbie is overly intellectual and shy (the Woody Allen-type of comical cliché gay).  These are the four friends. Plot twists include, among many others: an accidental pregnancy; an adorable youth with a Komodo Dragon; a selfish, self-directed woman who insists she loves one man, yet has a child by another man, the cuckolded husband who needs to ask his mother what he should do; online gay sex presented as sorry and perverted; Facebook as lurid cesspool; straight sex portrayed as romance and dancing; “catfishing”; sexual obsession; bisexuality; promiscuity (male and female); careerism; a  gay man impregnating a straight woman, with the gay man marrying the woman; lots of drugs and alcohol which made people make bad choices; and a transgender bartender. Two themes brought home by characters during conversations: “Time heals all wounds,” and everyone lies to themselves as well as to others.

People You May Know is a film with something in it to please just about every element of the LGBT film-going public. 

Future films of special note in the festival which runs through Sunday, July 10, are: Real Boy, a fi about a transgender youth; Home(less), about queer homeless youth in Philadelphia; Lazy Eye, Kiss Me, Kill Me, Guys Reading Poems; Film Hawk; and many others at both the Prince Theatre and Caplan Theater. For more information, visit www.qflixphilly.com