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Produced & Maintained by Idaho Mountain Express, Box 1013, Ketchum, ID 83340-1013 
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Copyright © 2001 Express Publishing Inc.
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For the week of  September 12 - 18, 2001

  Arts & Entertainment

Three new films 
cap festival

Magic Lantern screen gems 
light up the week


By DANA DUGAN
Express Staff Writer

Doesn’t the passage—semi-transsexual alcoholic homemade rock musical—just incite you to restless must-see celluloid longings?

John Cameron Mitchell as Hedwig. Photo courtesy of RAFY/Fine Line 20001 Features

It should. Because that’s the simple description behind one of the year’s loopiest flicks, "Hedwig and The Angry Inch," opening this week for a limited engagement at the Magic Lantern’s Fall Film Festival.

For actor John Cameron Mitchell, who created and directed both the stage show and the movie, Hedwig has been a revelation for him as an openly gay performer. It also has been an opportunity to build on his résumé, which includes Broadway productions of "Six Degrees of Separation" and "The Secret Garden," off-Broadway work on "Hello Again" and "The Destiny of Me," studio B movies such as "Band of the Hand," A-list indie Spike Lee’s "Girl 6" and TV work in "Party Girl" and "Law & Order."

This anatomically incorrect film follows the travails of young post-op transsexual Hedwig, played by Mitchell, and his band The Angry Inch as they journey across Middle America performing in strip malls and chain restaurants.

Using flashbacks, music, narration and even animation, Hedwig’s story is related from her beginnings as a young boy named Hansel making the least of life in East Germany to the failed surgery that transforms the lad into the brittle and bitter Hedwig—leaving her with the so-called "angry inch"—and a story filled with heartbreak, triumph and surreal hilarity. The show’s catch phrase is "to be free one must give up a little piece of one’s self."

And yes, like the flamboyant "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert," with its fab costumes and wigs, it’s got drag scenes.

As in drag-queens.

"Hedwig uses drag conventions to cope with the tragedy of her life. But her main conundrum doesn’t involve sexuality. It’s really about freedom and gender and identity and wholeness," said Cameron.

Mitchell and co-creator Stephen Trask’s energetic, film version of their Off-Broadway smash has been called the year’s most enjoyable movie—or "Rocky Horror" for a new millennium—a post-punk odyssey filled with wit and remarkably poignant observations on the human condition.

Earlier this year, the movie had a successful launch at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival, where it danced off with the audience award for best dramatic film, and a directing award for first-timer Mitchell, "Hedwig" now descends—like an outrageous beer-swilling glam-rock tour—upon Ketchum.

In addition to the fabulous "Hedwig," a few more enthralling oddballs will be appearing on the Magic Lantern’s screens.

Writer director Francis Veber last brought us the completely kooky "The Dinner Game, " in 1998.

This year we get "The Closet," a story of a perfectly forgettable man, Francois, played by Daniel Auteuil, whose wife has walked out, taking their son.

He’s also about to lose his precious job as an accountant at a condom factory, no less. It’s from this nearly tragic set of circumstances that this quintessentially French comedy erupts.

Francois, goaded by a friend, cooks up a kind of politically correct scheme. He’ll come out of a closet he was never in and pretend to be gay. This way, the theory goes, the company cannot fire him for fear of retaliation.

Suddenly, despite the fact that he remains the same quiet man he has always been, he seems that much more interesting. It’s all about people’s perceptions, and one’s reactions to those perceptions.

The third new movie is the much anticipated follow up to German writer director Tom Tykwer’s "Run Lola Run."

"The Princess and the Warrior" sets Lola star Franka Potente in a bizarre world where eternal questions of chance and fate are weighed.

Tkywer has brought to this new movie more of a sense of internal struggle. "The emotional ups and downs and dreams in Princess play a much more important part," he said.

The three new movies join "The Deep End" at Magic Lantern in Ketchum. Check local listings for times.


The Idaho Mountain Express is distributed free to residents and guests throughout the Sun Valley, Idaho resort area community. Subscribers to the Idaho Mountain Express will read these stories and others in this week's issue.