ND/NF: Eleven Men Out

My only film at this year's New Directors/New Films Festival was Eleven Men Out (Strákarnir okkar), the story about what happens when an Icelandic soccer star, Óttar, announces he's gay. (Don't confuse this with Guys and Balls (Männer wie wir), the story about what happens when a German soccer star announces he's gay.)

The strange thing is, we never learn much about him at all. We learn much more about Óttar's family: his son (typical 13-year old), his ex-wife (alcoholic former Miss Iceland), his father (homophobic jerk), his brother (misogynistic jerk), and his sister-in-law (dull-witted victim of the misogynistic jerk). His coming out is a spur-of-the-moment attempt to move an article being written about him to a more prominent position in the magazine. Then things just seem to happen all around him, frequently for no good reason other than people are stupid.

He's thrown off his team (which is coached by his jerk father), joins an amateur team that has a couple gay guys quietly on it (thereby sending all of the straight players fleeing), attracts a bunch of other gay players to the team, and starts a relationship with one of them. No one wants to play the gay team, so they keep winning by default, and end up in the play-offs. Except their opponents are from a little fishing village, and half the team is on a trawler at sea, so they don't play that game either.

Then somehow it's decided the gay team will play Óttar's old team. The game just happens to be scheduled for the same day as Iceland's gay pride parade--thereby ensuring a huge crowd.

I won't tell you the game's results--just in case there is actually someone out there with enough interest in Icelandic films (or gay soccer movies, which seems to be a growing sub-genre) to want to see this thing. I will tell you that as a comedy, it's not very funny, as a character study, they're all one-dimensional, and as a drama, the plot is ridiculous.

Oh, one other thing. There is hardly any soccer shown in the movie at all. But there is a fair amount of nudity, and some gay sex. And a lot of rain.