“Excruciatingly hot” roommates, a masked madman & more from the Cannes canon to stream this weekend

Welcome to your weekend streaming recommendations, a.k.a. the Weekend Watch, a handy guide to the queerest film and TV content that’s just a click away!

Who would like to join us on a trip to the French Riviera? Not, sadly, a literal one—but if you’ve been jealously watching the 2023 Cannes Film Festival unfold from afar this week, we know what will make you feel you’re experiencing the historic fest in person. 

While Berlin’s international film festival has its Teddy Award and Venice’s gives out the Queer Lion, it’s in Cannes that the global filmmaking community has bestowed cinema’s highest honor for specifically LGBTQ+ movies; the Queer Palm has been recognizing queer excellence on screen since 2010. 

The film that won the inaugural Queer Palm award kicks off our list of streaming recommendations you Cannes—and should—boot up this weekend. Immerse yourself in all the queer cinematic glamour below and you just might feel that sweet Mediterranean breeze.

Kaboom

Gregg Araki has always been such an eccentric visionary, his storytelling style couldn’t help but advance the New Queer Cinema movement. And it’s a testament to the 2010 Cannes Film Festival jury’s taste that they recognized that, anointing Kaboom with the first-ever Queer Palm. Starring Thomas Dekker, Juno Temple, Haley Bennett, and James Duval, it’s the story of sexual mayhem among young adults, a confused scholar of film, and a potential apocalypse—motifs that have repeated throughout Araki’s oeuvre, but seldom at this level of free-wheeling fun. 

Now streaming on AMC+, Tubi, and Kanopy.

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Portrait of a Lady on Fire 

An instant classic and high water mark in queer filmmaking, Portrait of a Lady on Fire scorched Cannes audiences before going on to set fans of windswept, romantic cinema everywhere a-blazing. (Why it left the Academy of Motion Pictures cold remains a confounding mystery!)

Writer-director Céline Sciamma’s tale of a portrait painter and her subject is better experienced firsthand than described, but suffice to say our heavy-handed fire metaphors are apt; Noémie Merlant and Adèle Haenel, wholly different yet undeniably cohesive, turn up the heat with every daring glance. 

It’s also a notable entry on this list for being the first woman-led title, in 2019, to win the Queer Palm prize. Stream it before a visit to your nearest portrait museum and thank us later. 

Now streaming on Hulu.

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Knife+Heart

If Sciamma is too romantic for you and Araki too American, you should satisfy your craving for hardcore homoerotic slasher films—as should we all—with Yann Gonzalez’s Knife+Heart. It’s sort of like if Henri-Georges Clouzot or Dario Argento centered one of their thrillers around gay porn. And it features an all-out performance from French pop star Vanessa Paradis as a low-budget filmmaker whose actors are being hunted by a masked madman. Given that this week marks the film’s anniversary, exactly five years after it took Cannes by storm (despite losing the Queer Palm to Lukas Dhont’s Girl), now is the time to take a stab at it. 

Now streaming on AMC+.

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Stranger by the Lake

Another anniversary worth celebrating among queer cinema fans is Stranger by the Lake, turning 10 after its Queer Palm-winning Cannes premiere in 2013. Although celebrating may not be the right term for such a dark ode to shameless lust. Centered on a murderer and a voyeur whose lakeside trysts lead to twists as shocking as they are sexy, this French thriller from Alain Guiraudie builds a growing tension around who saw what, who’s lying, and why. This film would make Alfred Hitchcock proud. And the chemistry between stars Pierre Deladonchamps and Christophe Paou would make him blush. 

Now streaming on Kanopy and rentable on Amazon Prime Video. 

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Pride

In 1984 England, a group of LGBTQ+ activists rallied to support the national mining strike, a campaign that grew into the Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners alliance. In 2014, the film that director Matthew Warchus and Stephen Beresford crafted about that story earned awards, critical praise, and not a dry eye in the house of theaters everywhere. 

Pride is anchored by a first-rate ensemble, including Andrew Scott, Dominic West, Imelda Staunton, and Billy Nighy, who give vivid life to everyday people realizing the power of solidarity. It’s the kind of film that proves “feel good” stories are among us, and does so with more laugh-out-loud humor than saccharine inspiration. 

If, in streaming this movie, it doesn’t make you cry, see a doctor. 

Now streaming on fuboTV and rentable on Apple TV.

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The Kicker…

Why are we shouting out Shrek 2 in a list of queer and Cannes Film Festival-related streaming suggestions? Because this Palme d’Or competitor is one of the fest’s highest grossers—and one of animated cinema’s not-so-subtly queerest hits, honey. Its fairy tale characters run the gamut of gender expression, from a transgender bartender to a Pinocchio implying he wears women’s underwear, after all. In fact, an anti-gay fundamentalist group solidified this sequel’s queer bona fides by singling out those so-called problematic elements!

And the clip below, a rousing rendition of “I Need a Hero” from Shrek 2’s deliciously campy villain, makes our little gay hearts sing right along with her. You know that internet meme du jour about “serving c*nt”? Well, this is how you serve c*nt while being a fairy godmother… take it away, the absolutely fabulous Jennifer Saunders: