The New World (Le nouveau monde) SOUTHWEST PREMIERE
3:30 p.m. Sunday, June 1

In this fresh and sly take on lesbian parenthood, things go awry right from the beginning. Lucie accidentally announces her need to have kids with her girlfriend Marion . . . via microphone to a karaoke club. When Marion agrees, they go through one train-wreck of a sperm donor after another. And when they tell their families, the real fun begins. Lucie's neurotic hippie parents worry that her desire to have kids means she's becoming "too normal". Marion's pathologically homophobic church-lady mom refuses to call Marion a mother, only because she's not the one giving birth. Just as things start to stabilize, the dyke-parent couple that are their role models go down in drunken messy flames. And their donor Hugo, whom they're hoping will take interest in the pregnancy, seems more interested in a poker game than an ultrasound. All this before the final trimester! Amidst the pile-up of trouble, The New World has plenty of warmth and humanity, as well. Family, the film shows us, is something you create, as much as it is something you're born into. What's more, the film subtly but successfully skewers France's homophobic laws about gay parenting. These wide-eyed mommies-to-be may have no idea what they're doing, but they're in it together. In French with English subtitles.

Director: Etienne Dhaene
France, 2006, 92 min.