Just out., August 18, 2000, Page 31, Image 31

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T he F ive S enses
R
ight about now, the glut of summer flicks
aimed at teen boys is dissipating, making
room for some films that might appeal to
a slightly older crowd, say over 20. If you
like moody, introspective human dramas, then
The Five Senses might he just your ticket— the
queer content is a bonus.
Canadian Jeremy Podeswa directs his own
script and drapes his intertwining stories on
architecture both real and metaphoric. Each
character has some connection to one building
in Toronto and has a story line exploring one
o f the senses, often with a twist— a masseuse is
out of touch with her daughter, a pastry chef
hakes flavorless cakes, a baby sitter loses sight
of her charge while she’s busy being a voyeur.
Podeswa, an openly gay filmmaker who is
one of the founders of the Toronto G ay and Les-
hian Film Festival, spoke with Just Out recently
from Toronto, where he is in preprcxJuction on
his next film, Wild Geese. He says the writing of
The Five Senses began not with a story hut with
fascinating details from a kx)k by Diane Acker­
man, The Natural History of the Senses.
“So many different experiences are avail­
able to us; we take senses for granted— and
people as well,” he explains. “ 1 really like struc­
tural devices, as long as they’re in service to
the story.”
Podeswa sees the key players as members of
one big dysfunctional family, and the building
they all pass through functions as their village.
Mary-Louise Parker, who forever endeared
herself to lesbians with her role in Fried Green
Tomatoes , plays Rona, the baker who only is
concerned with how her avant-garde cakes
lixik. She d(X?s begin to appreciate her sense of
taste when her Italian lover shows up unex­
pectedly and moves in with her.
Roberto fixes romantic feasts for her, in and
out of the bedroom. W hen R on a’s gay friend
Robert drops by, he notices the change in her.
“O f course 1 look good,” she tells him. “All
I do is fuck and e at!”
But Roberto’s commandeering of her kitchen
starts to wear on her. “H e’s like Julia Child with
a blender up his ass,” she tells Robert.
The film is very much about people in
search of connectedness. A t one point, Robert
asks Rona, “ Do you think we use each other to
avoid intimacy with other people?”
But she doesn’t want to go there. She does,
however, use visits to her dying mother as a
way of avoiding the problematic Roberto.
“ Don’t use me; go hom e and deal with
him," her mother tells her. “You can see me
tomorrow; I’ll still he sick.”
In another poignant scene of disconnected­
ness, a young man receiving a massage from Ruth
Stop making sense
Disconnected characters cross paths in The Five Senses ;
troubled Waters gets his wires crossed
in Cecil B. Demented
by
O riana G reen and C hristopher M c Q uain
Roberto inflicts his taste on Robert as Rona looks on
tells her, “Nobody’s touched me in such a long
time.” As he cries softly, she whispers, “I know,” a
reference to her own recent widowhood.
Ruth’s daughter, Rachel, searches for con­
nectedness by befriending Rupert, a young man
she recognizes as another misfit. (Yes, virtually
all the characters’ names begin with R. Podeswa
says it all started when he named a character
after his mother, Ruth— and apparently couldn’t
stop!)
Rupert and Rachel find a hideaway in an
abandoned building, where she helps him trans­
form into a female. “I feel mysterious from the
neck up and exotic from the neck down," he tells
her as he kisses his image in a shard of minor.
Rachel offers him this perceptive observa­
tion: “It’s like looking at you inside out.”
Robert, the gay pal, is the character chosen
to explore the sense of smell. He’s convinced
that by smelling all his former lovers, he’ll be
able to discern if any of them still loves him.
Podeswa shares his queer casting theory: “ I
include gay characters when it’s appropriate. If
you’re making a film about people looking for
love, you have to include us because we’re part
of the world.”
The film has many layers of reality and illu­
sion. One especially touching character is
Richard, an optometrist who is going deaf and
who loves to eavesdrop on his next-dix>r neigh­
bor, who has a singing studio. A s PcxJeswa
explains, “We make certain assumptions about
people all the time that aren’t true.”
W hat’s true about The Five Semes is it’s a
rich, complex story that avoids tidy endings.
Much like real life, few relationships ever
resolve themselves in neat packages. — O G
C ecil B. D emented
I It’s hard to understand how Cecil B. Demented,
. the new film from notorious queer director
and undisputed master of underground
trash/camp John Waters ( Pink Flamingos, Hair-
spray), ended up just this side of bland.
The premise: Crazed young independent
filmmaker Cecil Demented (Stephen Dorff)
and his motley crew of underground-cinema-
obsessed outsiders kidnap spoiled Hollywood
starlet Honey Whitlock (M elanie Griffith) and
force her to act in their zero-budget movie. It
seems like it would make for vintage, vicious
Waters, who began his career with virtually
homemade, aggressively indelicate films and
had to scrounge for any budget he ever got.
So why does this purported sweet-revenge,
anti-mainstream vitriol seem so dispassionate,
forced and detached, lacking the sharpness
even of his last movie, 1998’s meanderingly
autobiographical Pecker ? T he answer lies in the
fact that Waters’ writing— normally so full of
twisted, satirical jabs and hilariously perverse
dialogue— is weak here; judging from his past
work, the film’s numerous laugh-free moments
could have been remedied with a little inspired
jotting.
Unfortunately, as the unfunny moments
drag, questions seep in: Why does Whitlock,
who at the beginning of the film is dyed-in-the-
wcxil HollywixxJ and a headstrong bitch, give in
so easily to Demented’s agenda? And why does
Waters spend such an inordinate amount of
time and energy taking one-sided potshots at the
easy target of Hollywood while trying to pass off
his same old bizarre marginal protagonists (who
nowadays don’t even seem that marginal or
bizarre) as an implausibly idealistic indie film
crew?
Cecil B. Demented has quite a few bright
«pots thanks to Griffith, who actually seems
more game for going over the top than the
script allows for, and has some pointed, funny
tirades against Hollywood sequelitis and those
reprobates who dare enter a movie theater after
the feature has started (you know who you
are). However, the film puts an undue em pha­
sis throughout on ordinary things like plot and
characterization, which never have been
W aters’ strong suits, as they detract from his
usually arbitrary and obscenely funny scenarios
and dialogue.
It has its moments, but ultimately, although
the director’s characteristic gross-outs remain,
it’s more mundanely cheesy than thrillingly
trashy. T his is unthinkable from Waters, who
always has gotten his kicks (and given us ours)
by sharply criticizing and parodying the merely
mundane and cheesy.
He once boasted that he creates “ lowbrow
films for highbrow audiences,” which makes
the finally middlebrow Cecil B. Demented sub-
par by his own standards.
— CM
■ T he F ive S enses will he shown 8 p.m. Aug. 19
at the Hollywood Theatre, 4122 N .E . Sandy Bhd.,
as a fund-raiser for Portland's L G B T Film Festival,
followed by a party at the nearby Chameleon Restau­
rant. Tickets are $15 from the theater box office, Gai-
Pied, In Other Words and Balloons on Broadway.
For more information, send e-mail to pdxgayfilm @
aol.com. The film unll open theatrically Aug. 25.
ORIANA G reen likes to drink pickle juice to stim­
ulate her senses; she is the Entertainment Editor of
Just O ut and can he reached at orianiM justout.com.
C h risto pher M c Q u a in is a Portland free­
lance writer and a tireless observer of pop culture.
W t'u Me M lUnttm puli em hc U.
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