This year’s Inside/Out Toronto Lesbian and Gay Film and Video festival lineup is headed up by a powerful French one-two punch. André Techiné’s The Witnesses (HHHH; May 23, 9:45pm, Isabel Bader) and Jacques Nolot’s Before I Forget (HHHH; May 17, 2:15pm, ROM) both chronicle shrinking social circles in Paris and, despite their marked aesthetic disparities (the former is gorgeously supple where the latter is stubbornly static), they almost demand juxtaposition. Set in the halcyon days of 1984, The Witnesses centres on an ethnically diverse, polyamorous quartet: unhappy marrieds Sarah (Emmanuelle Béart) and Mehdi (Sami Bouajila), affluent middle-aged doctor Adrien (Michel Blanc) and his handsome teenage pickup Manu (Johan Libéreau), whose mutual joie de vivre reflects the free-spirited tenor of the times. When one falls ill with a mysterious new disease, a contemporary strain of anxiety begins to infect their interactions.

Despite its tragic trajectory, The Witnesses is a hopeful piece of work — it documents a subculture’s perseverance and celebrates the living and the dead in the same deep breath. Before I Forget, meanwhile, plays like a sombre game of catch-up: this is what it has come to for the survivors. Sixty-something Pierre (director Nolot, who also has a brief cameo in Techine’s film) pays a younger man for companionship, a cruel turnaround from his salad days as a much-sought-after gigolo. (We learn that he used to hang out with no less than Roland Barthes.) Pierre’s failing health and flat-lined finances compound the indignity of his existence — and, of course, there’s not much of that left either. Before I Forget is undoubtedly stark, yet it’s also shot through with welcome, beautifully precise bolts of humour.

Levity is in short supply in closing gala selection XXY (HHH; May 25, 7:30pm, Isabel Bader). In Argentine director Lucia Puenzo’s Uruguay-set debut, a 15-year-old hermaphrodite named Alex (Inés Efron) endures a summer by the sea with her family and their friends — one of whom happens, not so coincidentally, to be a high-end reconstructive surgeon. Puenzo’s fondness for fragmented shots of bodies at rest recalls the work of Lucrecia Martel, yet she lacks her countrywoman’s facility for subtle visual metaphors — or maintaining narrative momentum. XXY is thoughtful but inert — its characters sit around worrying about what is to be done about Alex. It’s also chock full of ham-fisted imagery (a shot of a carrot being sliced is nearly unforgivable), but Efron’s terse performance holds our attention amidst the strenuously maintained torpor.

Arthur Russell’s wild side

Heady, ethereal yet always with an unabashedly sensual pull, the music of Arthur Russell transcended boundaries to become a category unto itself. Little wonder that it wasn’t until years after the AIDS-related death of the New York cellist and composer in 1992 that he got his due (i.e., deluxe reissues, a Soul Jazz comp, a DFA remix). He’s since been embraced as a musical maverick of rare distinction, one who was equally adept at the rambunctious mutant disco and ambient avant-pop.

Making its Canadian premiere this weekend at Inside/Out, Matt Wolf’s joyful documentary tribute captures the artist in all his combinations and contradictions. Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell (HHHH; May 18, 5:15pm, Royal Ontario Museum) charts Russell’s shifts from an acne-scarred Iowa teen to a beatific San Francisco hippie to an ultra-prolific musician in New York. There, he was allied to both the serious music scene (alongside the likes of Philip Glass) as well as the not-so-serious one at David Mancuso’s disco The Loft, where dancers responded warmly to the rhythmic abstractions of Russell’s music. His perfectionist habits and penchant for career self-sabotage may have frustrated his peers, but they clearly regard him with almost as much love as is expressed here by Russell’s salt-of-the-earth parents and his former partner, Tom Lee. Yet what’s most remarkable about Wild Combination is how well Wolf’s rapturous images complement the music’s febrile beauty. JASON ANDERSON