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.